Running the IFC Importer in the Command Line

You can use a command-line application called External3DImporter, installed as part of GraphWorX, to import .ifc files and export them as .xaml files that you can later import into a 3D view in GraphWorX.

To use the IFC importer, open a command line in the directory where External3DImporter.exe is located (default C:\Program Files\ICONICS\GENESIS64\Clients\GraphWorX) and execute the following command:

where the argumentvalues are the following:

• <input>—The path to the input .ifc file.

• <output>—The path to the output .xaml file.

  If the input argument is a directory, the output argument is also interpreted as a directory; the command imports all .ifc files in the input directory and exports their .xaml equivalents into the output directory.

• [options]—Either an empty string or a string containing any combination of the following options.

  • -p <param>—Also imports the BIM properties and stores them into a .csv file. A parameter must follow that specifies the path to the .csv file into which the BIM properties should be exported.

    When using the -p option to import BIM properties, its parameter is also interpreted as a directory, and all output .csv files are stored there. Name collisions between the output files and existing files are resolved by overwriting the existing files.

  • -r—Only relevant if the input argument is a directory; makes the importer also process its subdirectories recursively.

  • -v—Turns on the verbose reporting mode. When the verbose mode is on, the importer reports its progress into the console.

    The reported progress might not be entirely accurate.

  • -n—Makes the importer print the name of each input file into the console before it starts importing it.

    When combined with the -v option, the simplified name of the imported file is also printed at the beginning of each progress report. Although this also works when importing a single file, this option’s purpose is to inform the user how the importer progresses through files when the input argument is a directory.

  • -s—Also imports space objects, which are otherwise not imported.

  • -h—Shows help and usage information.