About Adding Customized Extensions

You can create new xml files by adding customized extensions to be available at creation or in edition. For more information, about adding customized extensions, see Model Specialization Management User Guide: Creating and Editing an Extension.

Extensions
Attributes that can be applied on a type. Extensions can be of the following types:
  • Specialization Extension
  • Customer Extension
  • Deployment Extension


When customizing the AEC data model with new customer extensions, you need to respect rules so that they can be accounted for in the BIM Attributes panel and in IFC Import/Export:

  • You must specify Ifc as package prefix
  • Your parent package must be the package containing the DS types you want to extend (for example Bridge Spatial Structure if you need to extend a BridgeDeck
  • Your extension name must contain an identifier related to your company (for example Ifc3DSBridgeDeck). The goal here is to prevent future naming conflict when IFC standards evolve and might propose entities names similar to yours (for example IfcBridgeDeck)
  • Your attributes names must comply with the following naming pattern Ifc<ExtensionName>_<AttributeID>(for example Ifc3DSBridgeDeck_PredefinedType).

Example

Consider the following example where:

  • A non standard IFC property set Pset_FloodWall contains the WaterproofHeight attribute.
  • You can define this property set in Enovia within a package called MyCustomPsets that must be assigned the Ifc prefix.
  • In the Enovia web console, the BIM manager names the attribute: Pset_3DSFloodWall_WaterproofHeight.
  • The prefix of the package (that is Ifc) is added to this name.
  • The complete naming is as follows: IfcPset_3DSFloodWall_WaterproofHeight. This complete naming is to be used for reading the attribute's value in the Knowledge script.

The naming pattern corresponds to: <Complete name of an attribute in Enovia(IfcPset_3DSFloodWall_WaterproofHeight )> = <Prefix (Ifc)>+<Pset/Qto name in IFC (namely Pset_Floodwall)>_<Name of the attribute in IFC (namely Pset_3DSFloodWall)>.

Important: Building and Civil Assemblies handles Pset and Qto differently. As an example, the Pset attributes are exposed as driven parameters in the skeleton representation, whereas the Qto attributes are exposed as driving parameters. When declaring a new customized extension simply add a string attribute named MethodOfMeasurement to make it a Qto.