Monthly Meetup

The OSArch community meets up the first Saturday of each month at 20:00 UTC (some exceptions may apply, the final date is announced on the forum). The meetups are held online with video, voice and screensharing. There is a shared spreadsheet to enter your details if you would like to have an email reminder sent to you to join.

The meetup has a loose, informal structure, starting with a single presenter for approximately a half to full hour usually talking about a project they've agreed with our meeting coordinator (Ioannis). Following the presentation, there is a short Q&A session, and then informal chat and discussion around current events in the OSArch community.

Each meetup will be recorded and published publicly online under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license to help share everything we learn and discuss with the public. If you are uncomfortable with your presence being recorded and published publicly online, you can turn off your microphone and webcam using the buttons at the middle bottom of your screen. You can still participate by typing into the chat window which can be found on the bottom left. If you want, you can also change your display name to an alias using the menu button on the bottom right, and then clicking your name at the top of the menu that appears. You will be given the option to rename your display name. Alternatively, you are free to not join the meetup, and watch the recording online later, which will be uploaded to a public Peertube channel and OSArch Youtube (new) or Dion Moults Youtube channel (old).

At the start of each meeting, we will reiterate the public nature of these meetings to allow for any privacy concerns, and give time for users to anonymize themselves as necessary, and then start the recording and begin the meeting.

Next Meetup

No meetup has been scheduled yet.

Upcoming Meetups

No upcoming meetup has been confirmed yet.

Previous Meetups

IFCconnector: Managing and visualizing BIM data, Monthly Meetup #20

Frédéric Beaupère @fbpyr from ERNE Holzbau presented IFCconnector, a project for managing and visualizing BIM data that focuses on non-geometry data (storing, manipulating), connecting various applications and services using an asynchronous web-app database connector.

BridgeLink: Open-source Bridge Engineering Software, Monthly Meetup #19

Richard Brice @Rick_Brice focused on structural analysis and design presenting BridgeLink, an open-source bridge engineer software published by the Washington State Department of Transportation. The flagship application, PGSuper for design, analysis, and load rating of precast, prestressed concrete girder bridges, was highlighted including recent efforts to support bridge data exchanges with IFC 4x3.

IFC Toolbox: Features and Examples, Monthly Meetup #18

@Yousheng Wang from BIM Mars presented the ins and outs of IFC Toolbox, a set of user-friendly tools to process Industry Foundation Class (IFC) files for automating and facilitating specific tasks.

UHStudio: Blender for Architectural Concept Design, Monthly Meetup #17

@dimitar Pouchnikov from UHStudio presented case studies of architectural concept design with the use of Blender and showcased its utility for exploring the early design stages of projects.

Xeokit:a 3D Web Programming Toolkit for AEC Graphics, Monthly Meetup #16

Lindsay Kay (@xeolabs) talked about Xeokit, an open-source web programming toolkit that has been developed for visualizing 3D BIM models in the browser and that is currently used by a number of leading BIM platforms in the AEC industry.

BlenderOSM Add-On: Current state and ongoing development, Monthly Meetup #15

Vladimir Elistratov (@prochitecture) presented the current state of the Blender-OSM Add-on and the ongoing development regarding building facade classification and the interaction with OpenStreetMap data. OSArch Discussion Active polls for "Preferred work day" and "Preferred time in a work day" for a monthly meetup ( see discussion by User:Jesusbill) Ideas for a fixed agenda for our monthly chat User:Duncan (see below) Updates: Funding: Epic MegaGrant Jobs: Ryan is looking for new colleagues Superheroes: BlenderBIM FreeCAD Blender Project drawings: Ideas for a fixed agenda for our monthly chat User:Duncan: Current OSArch projects & status organization, website, community, media Current supporter projects and status would be great with a list ...

BlenderBIM Add-ons in Production, Monthly Meetup #14

Frédéric Beaupère @fbpyr, from ERNE Holzbau and one of the active members of OSArch, presented his work on developing and using two BlenderBIM Add-ons in Production. Ifc_Void_Data: A void data aggregation tool that overlays IFC models of multiple disciplines and combines data of interest for "ProvisionForVoids". Rn2BB2Rvt: Connector to translate specific models from Rhinoceros into IFC for Revit Topic Links BlenderBIM Addon ifc_void_data: https://github.com/erneagholzbau/ifc_void_data BlenderBIM Addon rh2bb2rvt: https://github.com/erneagholzbau/adapto_rh2bb2rvt Open source info on voids in rvt: https://github.com/fbe-work/rvt_void_exchange/tree/master/03 Blender Rhino importer user in rh2bb2rvt: https://github.com/jesterKing/import_3dm PyRevit: https://github.com/eirannejad/pyRevit Admin-free pyRevit installer: https://github.com/erneagholzbau/pyrevit_installer

Speckle, Monthly Meetup #13

Dimitrie Stefanescu and Matteo Cominetti gave the keynote presentation on Speckle, a cloud based solution for the AEC industry that provides interoperability, version control, real time collaboration, data management and automation.

COMPAS, Monthly Meetup #12

Gonzalo Casas @gonzalocasas presented COMPAS, an open source framework for research and collaboration in Architecture, Engineering, Fabrication, and Construction.

BIMxBEM, Monthly Meetup #11

Cyril Waechter presented BIMxBEM: Processing IfcRelSpaceBoundary to generate local standards boundaries for energy analysis (Switzerland currently). Despite numerous scientific projects, studies and articles on how to use BIM for building energy modeling (BEM) this topic is not solved for various reasons. This project aims at the following workflow for BEM. Retrieve building data from IFC. Process it accordingly to local standards. Send processed data to energy analysis software. Get feedback through IFC and/or BIM Collaboration Format (BCF). Due to technical difficulties the presentation by Thomas Hächler on BIMaps.io was postponed for a later date.

IFC.js, Monthly Meetup #10

Antonio González Viegas @agviegas presented IFC.js, a library that converts any browser into an IFC viewer, parsing IFC entities to WebGL geometry through THREE.js.

Home Builder for Blender, Monthly Meetup #9

Keynote For our 9th monthly meetup, Andrew Peel @Andyrexic Youtube channel gave a keynote presentation on Home Builder, an open-source asset library for Blender that focuses on the process of creating interior architectural spaces with a wide variety of parametric assets and features to make designing interior spaces easy for beginners, while also providing builders the engineering information they need to build the physical objects. Agenda Follow up from previous meeting We quickly went through the notes from the previous meeting and can see there is some movement on all points. Quick announcements The hunt for the new osarch.org logo is getting close, please submit ideas if you have something to add There are now some social media accounts, they are added to the footer of the osarch.org site Recordings We've agreed that we will have two separate recordings. One for the main session and any related questions. After that session we will start a new recording for our general discussion. OSArch logo We talked about ways to narrow the selection of logos without biasing the result. We may need to have a multi round system for voting so logos with similar themes don't cancel each other out. This can be discussed further on the hunt for the new osarch.org logo thread General Discussions Funding We went through many scenarios and no one seems to object to us offering many solutions. We are here to support solutions and not build our own empire. Help people find places to make direct donations to projects (see [Donation_Directory]) Accept donations and distribute them directly to projects based on our priorities. For example using LiberaPay. Requires no legal or financial organization. Accept donations / seek funding as an organization. Option one is in place but needs serious expansion. Options 2 & 3 require looking into. Currently Dion & Duncan are looking inot this when they have time. Would be great if someone else could step forward and help. Meeting notes by Duncan (talk) 00:04, 6 December 2020 (UTC) with additions by

Vi-Sense, Monthly Meetup #8, November 7th, 2020

Recording: Peertube YouTube Maximillian presented Vi-Sense for the first hour and we then had a rich discussion, mostly about the website, marketing and educational resources/courses. Video on peertube: https://peertube.social/videos/watch/245c1e66-1980-4803-97bb-b1632e993f26 Website We all agree that the website needs a better presentation. The sections/topics need to be visually distinct. The organisation needs to be clearer. User:Duncan has been looking at some alternatives to the current wiki skin, Chameleon looks interesting. Robert has offered to work on a new section for basic software relevant to running an office. Robert will post something on the forum and we can take it from there. Actions Make more use of for the guides and how to we have. (There's a bunch of Revit ones) (Duncan) Look more into visual identities of pages. Maybe just distinct banner and footers is a good start. Robert (@RWA108) will post a bit on the forum about regular FOSS software useful for an office environment which we can be developed further on the website Education/courses We talked about different ways to create training/teaching contents on FOSS. Recording the short sessions that evolve out of questions in the forum and on the chat. Cyril has some content for teaching IFC, Dion has the content he made for buildingSMART. Two well respected open content learning systems are https://moodle.org/ and https://open.edx.org/ . One way forward is partnering with existing institutions to create open coursework anyone can then access. Marketing / outreach Update 2020-12-12: see the new page: https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=Outreach We talked about how stronger ties to academic institutions is important. Dion knows of these initiatives in Germany: Aachen ... ################ Duncan also has contact with a technical college in Denmark and would love to present our project and some tools to them. Actions Create new wiki redesign proposal with "themed" skin for different pages (@Moult can have a shot at this) Rename page names to use more "How to" terminology to better reflect user needs Assign wiki pages to 1) A software / tool category, 2) a workflow (e.g. how-to page) / information (e.g. directory page) category Register a new Twitter / Mastodon OSArch account to reserve the name, open for volunteers who would like to maintain (reach out to @duncan_nz), also bridge the accounts use https://moa.party/ Start reaching out to Academia to see if there is potential collaboration. Dion has contact/knowledge of contacted so far: Bond & USyd in Australia, Aachen in Germany. Duncan has made contact with Aalborg University in Denmark. Meeting notes by Dion & Duncan

Open Source Ecology October 3rd, 2020

Recording: Peertube YouTube Keynote was from Marcin from Open Source Ecology. You can see Marcins slides from the presentation. Announcement and agenda: https://community.osarch.org/discussion/219/3rd-october-20-00-utc-monthly-meetup There was no discussion after the presentation but lots of interesting questions for Marcin

Blender & Sverchok, September 5th, 2020

Recording: Peertube YouTube The planned presentation didn't work out. So we made a quick agenda ourselves. We were shown some work Bruno was doing recently on a sculpture commission with Blender and Sverchok We talked a bit about the website, read about that in the OSArch website design discussion We also talked about organization and governance, but everything we said is already in the thread Organizational Structure and Governance of OSArch

Topologic August 1st, 2020

Recording: Peertube YouTube

Homemaker July 4th, 2020

Recording: Peertube YouTube Presentation: Homemaker, evolving houses with Perl, with Bruno Postle There was also a quick preview of new FreeCAD BIM WB experimental tools by Carlo

Salome Meca June 6th, 2020

Recording: Peertube YouTube Presentation: Ioannis Christovasilis [Jesusbill @Jesusbill] gave an introduction to Salome Meca and other engineering goodness! Notes We talked about the Mission Statement Follow up: ([User:Duncan] will make a new draft with more attention to ethical consideration adn other small refinements from the discussion thread. We talked briefly about the challenges and goals FreeMVD round-tripping (Ryan, Yorik, Moult). We also discussed whether this should be a future keynote topic. Follow up: up to the FreeMVD people We discussed briefly starting a website with an attractive front page to give people a very quick idea of what we're trying to do. We talked about it maybe focusing on some examples workflows for different audiences. Maybe those workflows are not ready/documentet to present yet in an attractive way. Follow up: there is a general invitation for anyone to do a mock up of how a website front page might look. There was a quick mention about possible collaboration with Measure-It-ARCH & Archipack Blender Add-on. Follow up: Moult, globalcitizen, kevancress, and stephen-l will discuss this.

FreeCAD BIM May 2nd, 2020

Recording: Peertube YouTube Presentation: Yorik presented the current state of FreeCAD BIM Notes, things we discussed a mission statement (see forum thread) finding a real world project to work on roundtripping data (BlenderBIM <> FreeCAD) sample content like Yoriks Barcelona Pavillion

BlenderBIM April 4th, 2020

Recording: Peertube YouTube Moult presented the current state of BlenderBIM