Work is underway on Bonsai Viewer, a dedicated free software IFC viewer for model coordination and review. The gap is straightforward: there is no mature free software equivalent of Revizto, BIMcollab, Solibri, and similar coordination viewers. Bonsai Viewer aims to fill that gap, while also making it easier for others to build their own desktop, tablet, kiosk, on-site screen, or web-based IFC viewer applications on top of IfcOpenShell. ...
Yorik van Havre has announced LinesCAD, a new side project exploring a simpler free software BIM and 2D CAD application. The first public code is a proof-of-concept IFC viewer in a single Python file, using IfcOpenShell, Pivy/Coin3D, and PySide/Qt to open IFC files without FreeCAD’s OpenCASCADE and C++ application stack. ...
FreeCAD and BRL-CAD are both participating in Google Summer of Code 2026. GSoC remains one of the more practical ways for new contributors to enter established free software projects: applicants work with mentors on scoped development projects, while the host communities get focused time on features, refactoring, documentation, testing, and tooling that can otherwise be hard to fund. ...
Bonsai v0.8.5 has been released with 962 new features and fixes. The release is described as a “line in the sand”: a compatibility and consolidation checkpoint driven partly by Blender 5.1 support, the move to Python 3.13, and a lot of structural work preparing for larger changes ahead. ...
Olympus has been open sourced as a toolkit for building and prototyping 3D web applications for architecture, engineering, construction, and operations. The project combines a Three.js-based 3D editor, Monaco code editor, Chart.js dashboards, undo-redo, configurable UI, and an extensible addon system. ...
Bonsai v0.8.4 has been released with 1111 new features and fixes. The release brings Bonsai compatibility with Blender 5.0, which matters because Blender 5.0 is a major platform update and required compatibility work throughout the add-on. ...
Bonsai v0.8.3 has been released with 770 new features and fixes. The release notes describe this as a polish-heavy update, with a lot of work going into bug fixes, usability, optimisation, and smaller improvements across the project. ...
Google Summer of Code is an annual programme that helps students and those new to open source software make their first steps into contributing code to software projects. GSoC Contributors work with an open source organization on a 12+ week programming project under the guidance of mentors. ...
Over the past year, Sigma Dimensions™️ has been releasing free short-format video tutorials on IFC basics. The IFC-101 series contains 10 free episodes taking you from an introduction to the IFC schema up to building a native IFC native application - All with python. ...
In the May/June issues of a leading UK AEC publication, AEC Magazine there was a 16 page special section starting on page 67 all about IFC (sponsored by buildingSMART UK & Ireland). The whole section is all about something we value here at OSArch: OpenBIM, Open Standards & even a mention for the Open Source / Free Software Community. So why is OpenBIM & Open Standards important? ...