NIST IFC File Analyzer
A pre-built Windows version of NIST IFC File Analyzer (IFA) is available here.
These are the instructions for building the NIST IFC File Analyzer from the source code. IFA generates a spreadsheet from an IFC file.
Prerequisites
The IFC File Analyzer can only be built and run on Windows computers. Microsoft Excel is required to generate spreadsheets. CSV (comma-separated values) files will be generated if Excel is not installed.
You must install and run the NIST version of the IFC File Analyzer before running your own version.
- Go to the IFC File Analyzer and click on the link to Download the IFC File Analyzer
- Submit the form to get a link to download ifa-n.nn.zip
- Extract IFC-File-Analyzer.exe from the zip file and run it. This will install the IFCsvr toolkit that is used to read IFC files.
Download the IFA files from GitHub to a directory on your computer.
- The name of the directory is not important
- The IFC File Analyzer is written in Tcl
freeWrap wraps the IFA Tcl code to create an executable.
- Download freewrap651.zip from https://sourceforge.net/projects/freewrap/files/freewrap/freeWrap%206.51/. More recent versions of freeWrap will not work with the IFA.
- Extract freewrap.exe and put it in the same directory as the IFA files that were downloaded from GitHub.
Install the ActiveTcl 8.5 32-bit version of Tcl.
- Download the ActiveTcl installer from https://www.activestate.com/products/activetcl/downloads/. You will have to create an ActiveState account.
- The Windows installer file name is: ActiveTcl-8.5.18.0.nnnnnn-win32-ix86-threaded.exe
- IFA can be built only with ActiveTcl 8.5.18 (32-bit). ActiveTcl 8.6.n and 64-bit versions are not supported.
- Run the installer and use the default installation folders
Several Tcl packages from ActiveTcl also need to be installed. Open a command prompt window, change to C:\Tcl\bin, or wherever Tcl was installed, and enter the following three commands:
teacup install tcom
teacup install twapi
teacup install Iwidgets
Build the IFC File Analyzer
First, edit the source code file ifa.tcl and uncomment the lines at the top of the file that start with 'lappend auto_path C:/Tcl/lib/teapot/package/...' Change 'C:/Tcl' if Tcl is installed in a different directory.
Then, open a command prompt window and change to the directory with the IFA Tcl files and freewrap. To create the executable ifa.exe, enter the command:
freewrap -f ifa-files.txt
Optionally, build the IFC File Analyzer command-line version
- Download freewrapTCLSH.zip from https://sourceforge.net/projects/freewrap/files/freewrap/freeWrap%206.51/
- Extract freewrapTCLSH.exe to the directory with the IFA Tcl files
- Edit ifa-files.txt and change the first line 'ifa.tcl' to 'ifa_cl.tcl'
- Edit ifa_cl.tcl similar to ifa.tcl above
- To create ifa_cl.exe, enter the command: freewrapTCLSH -f ifa-files.txt
Differences from the NIST-built version of IFC File Analyzer
Some features are not available in the user-built version including tooltips and unzipping compressed IFC files. Some of the features are restored if the NIST-built version is run first.
Suggested improvements
Replace the Tcl package tcom (COM) with the COM features in twapi. This will allow upgrading to Tcl 8.6.
Replace the home-grown code to generate Excel spreadsheets with CAWT.
Contact
Robert Lipman, robert.lipman@nist.gov, 301-975-3829