A FreeCAD plugin to communicate with BIMbots services - http://bimbots.org/
Warning - the BIMbots service has been retired and this addon is now obsolete
This FreeCAD plugin allows a user to:
- Upload a FreeCAD model or selected parts of a FreeCAD model to a BIMBots instance (usually a BIMServer with external services enabled)
- Perform different services and analyses on their model
- Read said results in FreeCAD (usually in the form of a text report) or a BCF file (not yet supported - see below)
This plugin is written in Python and consists of a single all-in-one Python file along with a companion FreeCAD macro for convenience. It can be used in several ways:
- The main usage is to work within FreeCAD and be simply launched as a macro.
- If you have the BIM Workbench installed, this BIMBots plugin will be automatically detected at start and you will find a BIMBots command under Utils menu.
The BIMBots plugin can also be run directly from the command line terminal, in which case it prints a list of services it was able to reach, or imported as a python module (Python 2 and Python 3 compatible), in which case you have access to several utility functions to retrieve and communicate with BIMbots services. So essentiall this can also be used as a library to build your own BIMBots client.
Check the API documentation page (autogenerated with pdoc) and the FreeCAD GUI documentation.
In FreeCAD, just head to menu Tools -> Addons Manager, locate the BIMBots addon, press the Install button, and restart FreeCAD.
Once installed, you will find a BIMBots entry under menu Macro -> Macros. If you have the BIM Workbench also installed, the BIMBots plugin will be automatically detected at start and you will find a BIMBots command under menu Utils.
Refer to the documentation for complete use instructions.
- Retrive a list of BIMbots services
- Authenticate with any of the services
- Keep authentication credentials in a config file
- Test services (send a minimal test IFC file that is guaranteed to work)
- Send actual IFC files
- Get the results
- All functionality is available from the GUI
- Auto-discover available services
- Add/remove custom servers
- Authenticate with services
- Send model data to any service
- Display JSON or text reports
- Double-click results (JSON results only) to select corresponding objects in the 3D view
- Handle Context-Id (reuse an already sent model slot)
- Handle asynchronous connection (don't wait and freeze the FreeCAD interface while data is being transmitted)
- Implement display of BCF files in FreeCAD (in progess - Part of a GSOC project)
>>> import bimbots
>>> bimbots.get_service_providers()
This returns a dictionary containing the different service providers found (both auto-discovered and manually added via the FreeCAD UI):
[{u'listUrl': u'https://ifcanalysis.bimserver.services/servicelist', u'name': u'ifcanalyses'},
{u'listUrl': u'http://localhost:8080/servicelist', u'name': u'Default localdev BIMserver',
u'description': u'Default localdev BIMserver'}, {u'listUrl': u'http://localhost:8081/servicelist',
u'name': u'2nd localdev BIMserver', u'description': u'2nd localdev BIMserver'},
{u'listUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/servicelist', u'name': u'Default JAR runner',
u'description': u'Default JAR runner'}, {u'listUrl': u'https://thisisanexperimentalserver.com/servicelist',
u'name': u'Experimentalserver.com', u'description': u'Experimental BIMserver'}]
Then, using one of the "listUrl" above:
>>> bimbots.get_services('http://localhost:8082/servicelist')
This returns a list of services offered by the given server (adding the /servicelist is optional):
[{u'inputs': [u'IFC_STEP_2X3TC1'], u'resourceUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/services',
u'description': u'IFC Analytics Service', u'outputs': [u'IFC_ANALYTICS_JSON_1_0'],
u'providerIcon': u'/img/bimserver.png', u'provider': u"Yorik's test BIMserver",
u'oauth': {u'tokenUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/oauth/access',
u'registerUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/oauth/register',
u'authorizationUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/oauth/authorize'},
u'id': 2097206, u'name': u'IFC Analytics Service'},
{u'inputs': [u'IFC_STEP_2X3TC1'], u'resourceUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/services',
u'description': u'BIMserver plugin that provides an analysis of a model and and outputs it into json',
u'outputs': [u'UNSTRUCTURED_UTF8_TEXT_1_0'], u'providerIcon': u'/img/bimserver.png',
u'provider': u"Yorik's test BIMserver",
u'oauth': {u'tokenUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/oauth/access',
u'registerUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/oauth/register',
u'authorizationUrl': u'http://localhost:8082/oauth/authorize'},
u'id': 2162742, u'name': u'Simple Analyses Service'}]
The next step, if you want to use a service, is to authenticate with it. This is done in two steps. Step 1 is done using one of the "registeUrl" above:
>>> bimbots.authenticate_step_1('http://localhost:8082/oauth/register')
This will return a dict with keys that identify our BIMbots plugin on the given server.
>>> bimbots.authenticate_step_2('http://localhost:8082/oauth/authorize', 'freecad', 'Simple Analyses Service')
Client_id and service_name will be returned by the step 1 above. This will pop up a browser window, which will access the given BIMbots server, on which you must have a valid user already logged in. You will land on a page that asks you to confirm. Upon confirmation, you will receive a token and an url. Save them to your config file with:
>>> bimbots.save_authentication('http://localhost:8082/', 2097206, 'Simple Analyses Service', service_url, token)
The first URL is used to bind this service to a given server in the config file. You can use either the server name, as I did above, or the /servicelist URL obtained by the first step above in these instructions. service_id, service_name are obtained in step 1 above, and service_url, token are obtained via the web interface opened in step 2.
After you properly registered the service, you can now try sending it a test file:
send_test_payload('http://localhost:8082/', 2097206)
There are more functions to interact with services. Check the API documentation for the full list of available functions.
