FAQ

General

A BIMwhat??
An open source Building Information Modelserver….  It enables you to centralize the information of a building. This is handy when a lot op partners are engineering a building together. Read more on the about page.

Is there a demo of the server available?
Yes, there is. Check it out on http://demo.bimserver.org/

How about some more documentation?
Yes please!

During use

I installed the server and now get a loginscreen… now what?
The standard login/password is admin/admin. You can add other users after the first login. Make sure you change the default password for administrator after your first login!

I get errors about stacksize and memory. What is that all about?
Make sure your tomcat server (or other server where you are running the software) has enough memory. We advise a stacksize of 1MB (1024KB) and a heap size of 1600MB. You can set both values using the following JVM parameters: -Xss1m (for the stack size) and -Xmx1600m (for the heap size). There’s an extra parameter to change the permsize limiet:  -XX:MaxPermSize=512m.

I get error 500 messages… Please help!
Same problem as the stacksize and memory from the previous question…

Ok, I uploaded a IFC file, how do is see if  the model is ok?
You can use the free ifc viewer from TNO. Download it at www.ifcbrowser.com (make sure to get a stable version)

During development

I can’t get to the source… what’s wrong?
We use a windows server to host the SVN-server…Yes, that’s wrong and we are sorry about it. But some tricks will do the job for you:  Login using ‘anonymous’ without a password, or ‘guest’ with password ‘guest’. The svn adress is svn://svn.e-bouw.org/bimserver/.  It could be that you have to give the login-credentials more than once! You might think that there is an error because you get the pop-up again and again, but this is ‘normal’. Just give your login again until the box disappears and you’re in!

How do I build a jar or war from the source?
Using an Ant script. Ant can be extended with several modules, when using Ant from within Eclipse, you can add those extra libraries here:
Window | Preferences | Ant | Runtime. Then add the following jar files: BimServer/antlibs/*.jar

Misc

Under what license is the bimserver released? and what does that mean?
The bimserver is released as GNU GPLv3. The BerkeleyDB has it’s own open source license. Also the IFC Engine DLL library and the clash detection DLL have their own closed source licence but ar free (as in beer) to use with the BIMserver.
GPLv3 means you may use the bimserver at your own needs. The only restriction is that you may not build it ínto commercial software.  For more information on licensing mail us at license@bimserver.org.

Which versions of IFC do you support?
Basicly we support all versions of IFC because the server generates the scheme at startup, but the stable version is only tested on IFC 2×3.