JJ_Nelson shares an initiative in open sourcing the architectural design process in his studio, Studio GIB. He is working on designing a table and open air workshop, with an open source design under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. ...

Wojciech Radaczyński shares: A few days ago there was a release of a open-source, accessible, simple, minimalistic file format for BIM called dotbim (.bim as an extension), that will allow you to store geometry and data with it. The obvious question could be: what difference does it make to the existing work-flows or file formats? ...

Topologic has a new milestone release! One of the biggest hurdles for testing and adopting Topologic has been its relative difficult installation. This was due to the particular method we used to create python bindings for the C++ code. To ease the installation process, we had to completely re-write the python bindings using pybind11. This was a laborious process, and bugs may still exist. However, this new release of Topologic can be installed for Blender with Sverchok just as any other add-on: You download the ZIP file (and you do NOT unzip it), you launch Blender (with Sverchok pre-installed), you go to Preferences -> Add-ons and you install the ZIP file as usual. This release of Topologic is compatible with both Windows and Linux and with python 3.7, 3.8, and 3.9. ...

There is been a while since we last wrote about the launching of IFC.js. Since then, the project has gained traction and has become one of the most exciting Open Source BIM projects. Now, IFC.js is growing and it’s looking for contributions. ...

OpenCAx is a group of open source projects that applied to participate in Google Summer of Code 2021 (GSoC). Led by BRL-CAD, this group includes FreeCAD, IfcOpenShell and OpenSCAD. The application was successful, and this program will enable students to work in AEC open source projects. ...

The Epic MegaGrants programme is a financial grant to support projects doing amazing things with the Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community. We are incredibly honoured to present that the BlenderBIM Add-on has been awarded an Epic MegaGrant. ...

Xeokit is an open source 3D graphics SDK for AEC and BIM development. It is provided by xeolabs which is a company specialized in providing graphics software for web-based BIM, Engineering and Medicine. They have recently released the new xeokit 1.8 version with a lot of rendering improvements. ...

*This post was a contribution from the OSArch member Ayodele Arigbabu, aka @DADA_universe. Godot Engine, the open source game engine is slowly growing to become one of the favorite game engines out there, coming closely on the heels of Unreal Engine and Unity, and its popularity is not just with independent game developers, if a recent job posting by Tesla requiring skills in Godot is anything to go by. ...

One of the most expected releases is finally here. FreeCAD 0.19 has been released with a lot of improvements and new features in all workbenches. The list is long, so let’s go. First, some general highlights. There area a few UI improvements such as the inclusion of more dark themes, new icon themes and few retouches in the navigation cube. Furthermore, an option was added to display a checkbox for every item in the document tree, so it’s easier to use with a touchscreen. ...

After many years of development, on January 2021, COMPAS 1.0: Affine __ Anchor finally saw the light of day. COMPAS is an open source python framework for Architecture, Engineering, Fabrication, and Construction. Its goal is to simplify multidisciplinary collaboration in AEC research, encourage sharing and reuse of research results, and facilitate the transfer of state-of-the-art academic developments into practice. ...