Elefront

Elefront was developed by Ramon van der Heijden and is a plug-in focusing on managing model data and interaction with Rhino objects. The plug-in allows users to bake geometry to the Rhino model with the option of specifying attributes, including an unlimited amount of user defined attributes by means of key-value pairs. This way it is possible to treat a 3D Rhino model as a data base, where each object ‘knows’ what it is, what it belongs to, where it should go, what size it is, when it needs to be fabricated, etc. Instead of trying to store geometry in a database, Elefront stores data in a ‘Geometrybase’, thereby turning your Rhino model into a quasi BIM model or as Ramon refers to it, ‘SoftBIM’.

SoftBIM was first coined by UN Studio, of which Ramon use to work at. In their ACADIA 2012 paper, ‘SoftBIM – An open-ended building information model in design practice‘, the authors proposed an integrative, schematic, and open-ended model for dealing with complex…