Map Existing E3D Elements to Spatial Entities

Depending on how the E3D Model is structured, and which parts are to be exported to IFC, there may already be E3D elements which can be mapped to Ifc Spatial entities, and the Ifc attributes can either be defined explicitly in the mapping, or by expressions referring to E3D attributes.

Note
That these E3D elements must be included in the list of elements to be exported for the mappings to be processed, and that for an administrative element (for example a site or zone) to be exported it must have at least one member (an empty EQUI).

Example

In AREA02 of the AVEVA sample APS project, it is possible to use existing E3D elements with expressions to name the IfcSite and IfcBuildings appropriately (see example mapping ifc2x3_APS02.xml supplied with E3D Design, typically in the IFCSampleMappings folder %AVEVA_DESIGN_DFLTS%\IFCSampleMappings)

An E3D Site is mapped to an IfcSite, with the name of the IfcSite extracted from the name of the E3D Site by a text expression for the value of the Name property of the AVEVA_EntityParameters property set created for it.

E3D zone elements whose E3D name contains the string ‘BUILDING’ are mapped to IfcBuilding instances with an Ifc name derived from the E3D name by a text expression, and a ContainedIn property set to an expression evaluating to the Ifc name assigned to the IfcSite mapped from the owning E3D Site (property is in the AVEVA_EntityParameters property set).

E3D STRU elements whose E3D name contains the string ‘BUILDING’ are mapped to IfcBuildingStorey instances with an Ifc name derived from the E3D name by a text expression, and a ContainedIn property set to an expression evaluating to the Ifc name assigned to the IfcBuilding mapped from the owning E3D Zone (property is in the AVEVA_EntityParameters property set).

This produces the following corresponding hierarchies when SITE-STRUCTURAL_AREA02 is exported with this mapping (a number of the E3D elements are exported to the SYSTEM_DEFAULT_SITE and the SYSATEM_DEFAULT_BUILDING, as the assumptions made in the mapping file ifc2x3_APS02.xml do not cover all the cases perfectly).