Many Architosh readers and CAD professionals may be aware of the Open Design Alliance (ODA), an open industry consortium of software companies that pool software development resources together to engineer open standards APIs (application programming interfaces), and often for proprietary CAD industry file formats.
If you are not using Autodesk’s AutoCAD on Mac or Windows but using another CAD software package that can import and export native DWG/DXF files chances are high your software is putting to work ODA-based APIs via its Teigha branded platform of software tools.
The Big News Is Revit Support
The big news these days shaping up at the Open Design Alliance is the new Teigha BIM development tools for software companies (aka: software OEM’s). So what are these?
Teigha BIM is a set of development tools that enable cross-platform, multi-device software development that allows new software packages to be able to read and write .rfa and .rvt file formats (aka Revit files). With such capability a tool like—say, and let’s pick one randomly like SketchUp or Rhino—would be able to have a direct ability to open up Revit files.
01 – The ODA’s Teigha BIM API development tools will enable OEMs to integrate powerful new native support for .rfa and .rft (Revit) files.
If other CAD, BIM, and 3D software packages can open up Revit files, it means a wealth of new 3D model information would be available to users of rival programs. Hundreds of thousands of high-quality 3D models of manufactured products exist on the Web in various formats but these days in the BIM world Revit is by far the dominant.
Teigha BIM API Details—What Is Public Today
Teigha BIM is a powerful object-oriented API that can read, write and render BIM data. As noted earlier it supports development on any desktop, server, or mobile platform. And it happens to be royalty-free regarding licensing by OEMs.
Teigha BIM provides direct access to database objects (managers, tables, curves, brep, et cetera) as well as “families” and BIM objects like doors, windows, slabs, roof, HVAC elements and more all in .rfa and .rvt files.
Teigha BIM makes use of the Teigha Rendering Framework to achieve high-quality rendering of BIM files in both 2D and 3D wireframe and shaded views. The TRF also supports all standard rendering operations (zoom, pan and 3D rotate, etc) and integrates with the Teigha Cloud to store drawings in the cloud and render remotely in the browser.
Availability
Teigha BIM is stated to be available January 1, 2017, according to the ODA website. You can a learn a bit more here as well as register for product updates.