Every tool in Inspectra BIM, explained.
This is the complete function reference for the Free viewer and the Audit and Edit modules — what each tool does, what its options actually mean, and where to find it in the window. Pressing F1 in the app brings you here.
Welcome — and how the modules fit together
Inspectra BIM is a Windows desktop viewer for IFC models, point clouds, meshes and LandXML terrain. The base application — the Free viewer — opens all of those, navigates them fast, measures, sections, audits attributes and takes part in issue reviews. Two paid modules extend it: Audit adds issue authoring, filters, clash detection and BI export; Edit adds IFC editing and a full 2D documentation side — drawings, dimensions, layouts, DXF/PDF export.
Everything in this manual is organised the same way: Part I covers the Free viewer, Parts II and III the paid modules. Section headings carry a badge — Free Audit Edit — so you always know which licence a tool needs. The filter above the table of contents narrows the whole manual to one module.
1 · Open your files
IFC, LAS/LAZ/E57/PTX/XYZ clouds, OBJ/PLY meshes, LandXML — or drag & drop the lot at once.
2 · Learn the camera
Left drag orbits, right drag pans, the wheel zooms toward the cursor. F fits everything back in view.
3 · Find any command
Ctrl+K opens the command palette: type a few letters, run the tool — no hunting through tabs.
Licensing — how the modules unlock
Inspectra Free needs a (free) account: sign in once and the licence is stored in the Windows keychain, so the app starts offline afterwards. Paid modules — Audit and Edit — attach to your licence; signing in unlocks their tiles. A locked tile is shown dimmed with a dashed border, and its tooltip tells you which module it needs. Licences are managed on inspectrabim.com.
The ribbon, mapped
The same tabs and tiles as in the application. Click any tile to jump to its description. Tiles drawn with a dashed border belong to a paid module — exactly how the app shows them when your licence doesn't include that module.
The workspace Free
The window is laid out the way most BIM tools are, so nothing here should surprise you. Worth knowing precisely what each area does:
- Brand strip (top). The logo, the menu bar (File, Tools, Settings, Help) and — on the right — the account button: Sign In, or your name and Sign out when you are signed in. Signing in activates your licence and unlocks any paid modules attached to it.
- Ribbon. Tabs of tools: Home, View, Measure, Analysis, Audit, Edit, Drawings, Layout, Point Cloud, Performance. The last-used tab is restored on the next start, so if you live on the Measure tab you land there tomorrow. Tiles belonging to a module your licence does not include are dimmed with a dashed border — the tooltip explains how to unlock them.
- Scene tree (left). Every loaded file and its contents — see Scene tree.
- Properties panel (left, below the tree). Attributes of the selected element.
- 3D view (centre). The model space. A floating quick-tools bar over the view carries Fit to View and the five measurement tools; hide or show it via Tools → Show Model Toolbar.
- Bottom bar. The space switcher (Model, plus every drawing and layout space the scene contains), the drawing snap toggles (End, Mid, Int, Near, Ortho — active in drawing spaces), status messages and an FPS readout.
- Interface language. The whole interface — every tile, dialog and message — is available in English (default) and Polish; switch it under Settings → Language. Applies after a restart.
Opening files — Open vs Append Free
Two entries, two intents.
- Open (Ctrl O; File → Open; the Open tile on Home) opens a file as a new document: the current scene closes first — with a prompt to save unsaved work — and the picked files load fresh. Use it to switch projects, or to return to a saved scene.
- Append (Ctrl Shift O; File → Append Files; the Append tile on Home) adds model files to the current scene — this is how a federation is built: append the architecture, then the structure, then the utilities. It works on an empty scene too. Append takes model formats only; an Inspectra scene (.ins) is a document and always goes through Open.
The Open tile is a split button: its arrow lists the five most recent files — scenes and models you opened and scenes you saved with Save / Save As. Clicking a recent entry opens it fresh (Open semantics).
Drag & drop onto the window: model files are appended; a dropped .ins opens that scene, with the usual save prompt. When one drop mixes both, the scene wins and the other files are ignored.
File → New (Ctrl N) starts an empty scene, asking to save unsaved work first.
| Type | Extensions | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| IFC models | .ifc | IFC 2x3, IFC4, IFC4x3 — including alignment-only files (an axis with no solids loads fine) |
| Point clouds | .las .laz .e57 .ptx .xyz | Decimation dialog on import |
| Meshes | .obj .ply | With vertex colours / textures |
| Terrain + alignments | LandXML .xml | TIN surfaces and alignment axes with chainage |
| Inspectra scenes | .ins | The whole workspace, opened as a document (Open only) — see Scene files |
| BCF issues | .bcf .bcfzip | Via Import BCF on the Home tab |
Several files can be selected at once; they load as a queue, one after another, so a whole federation is one Append. Extracted IFC geometry is cached on disk, which is why the second open of the same file is dramatically faster than the first.
Point-cloud import — the decimation dialog
Clouds arrive with far more points than a review needs. The import dialog shows the point count and lets you keep a percentage of them, with a live estimate of the resulting count so you can see what you are choosing before you commit.
- When more clouds are waiting in the same batch, a checkbox applies the chosen percentage to all of them. It carries the percentage, not the point count — each cloud keeps that share of its own total, so a dense scan and a sparse one both stay sensible. A 20-file batch becomes one decision instead of twenty.
- Large clouds load lazily. The file appears in the tree immediately and streams in behind you; you can start looking around before it has finished.
The scene tree Free
One top-level row per loaded file; IFC files expand into their spatial structure, down to single elements.
- Checkboxes show and hide any file, branch or element. Elements hidden by other tools appear dimmed, so you can tell “I unticked this” from “something else hid it”.
- Search box above the tree filters rows by name. Plain text matches anywhere and ignores case; * and ? wildcards work as you would expect (*.las, STR-??-*). The type dropdown narrows to IFC models, point clouds, meshes, terrain or alignment files, and both conditions combine with AND.
- Multi-select with Ctrl / Shift. The context menu then acts on the whole selection — Hide / Isolate / Show N elements, or Detach N selected files.
- Context menu on a single row: Hide / Isolate / Show, Detach file (unload it from the scene), zoom to element, and — for alignment files — a toggle for their chainage labels in the 3D view.
- Clicking an element selects it in the 3D view, and picking in the 3D view scrolls the tree to it. The link works both ways.
The Properties panel Free
Shows the selected element's identity — class, name, GlobalId — and all of its property sets. This is the same data that feeds labels, audits and BI exports elsewhere in the application, so if a value is missing here it will be missing there too.
Two special cases worth knowing: clicking an alignment axis shows its chainage block (start and end station in km, length, elevation range) instead of a property set; and drawing-section markers show their drawing's parameters — station, depth, side — in editable fields when you have the Edit module.
Scene files (.ins) Free
A scene file stores your whole workspace by reference: which files are loaded (IFC, clouds, meshes, terrain, alignments), plus everything built on top of them — saved views, issues, filters, clash results, drawings and layouts. The model files themselves are not copied into the scene, which is what keeps an .ins small enough to email while the models stay where your project keeps them.
- File → Save Scene (Ctrl S). In Free this saves your contributions to the open .ins — issue replies and status changes. Creating scenes or re-writing them wholesale (Save Scene As…) is an Audit capability.
- Opening a scene prompts to load the referenced files; if paths moved, you re-link them there. Scenes with no IFC at all (only clouds or meshes) are perfectly valid.
- Saving again into the same file is incremental and compacts it as it goes, so a scene you save fifty times does not grow fifty times.
- Home → Check for Updates re-reads referenced IFC files that changed on disk — a newer export of the same file — and reloads only those. Your views, issues and clash results stay.
Ribbon — Home tab Free
File
- Open — a split tile: clicking it opens the file dialog, the arrow lists the five recent files.
- Import BCF — import BCF 2.x topics as issues, with viewpoints, statuses and comment threads included.
- Check for Updates — reload referenced IFC files that changed on disk.
- Clear Scene — unload everything.
Select
- Select — the default mode: click picks an element. Choosing this tile is also how you leave Box Select or a measurement and get back to plain picking.
- Box Select — drag a rectangle; every element with any pixel inside it is selected. Esc or clicking the tile again exits.
- Deselect (Esc) — clear the selection.
Visibility
- Hide (H) — hide the selected element or elements.
- Isolate (I) — hide everything except the selection.
- Show All (A) — bring every hidden element back.
- By Filter — a visibility filter over whole classes: hide entire IFC classes, point clouds or terrain across all loaded models at once. It is deliberately separate from Hide — a class-level switch, not a list of elements — so reloading a model does not lose it.
Ribbon — View tab Free
Camera
- Fit to View (F) — frame the whole scene.
- Align to Surface — a one-shot tool: click a face and the camera looks at it head-on (perpendicular), keeping your zoom level; the clicked point becomes the focus. Use it before measuring on a wall or laying a section — square-on beats eyeballing an angle.
Navigation
- Parallel — toggle CAD-style parallel (orthographic) projection.
- Rotation dropdown — Lock Z (default) is a turntable orbit: the model can never flip upside-down, which is what you want 95% of the time. Free 3D Orbit is the classic trackball and can orbit underneath the model.
Display
Render Style — how IFC surfaces draw. This is a display setting only; nothing about the geometry changes.
Class Colors — paint every element of a chosen IFC class one colour (all IfcBuildingElementProxy red, say) across all models. You get per-class colour rows with enable/disable switches; the colours override materials until you clear them. Handy when a contractor's export dumps half the model into one generic class and you need to see the damage.
Section
The Section dropdown cuts the model open. Every cut is a live view clip — the model itself is never modified.
- Surface — click an IFC face: a cut parallel to it, removing the camera-near side.
- By 2 Points — click two points: a vertical cut along that line. The points need not lie on the model, so you can cut through thin air where the wall you care about isn't.
- Global X / Y / Z — an axis-aligned cut through the model centre (Z gives you the top-down plan cut).
- Box — click a face: a section box appears around that spot and only what is inside stays visible. Drag its face handles to resize it.
- From Alignment — click an alignment axis: a vertical cross-section perpendicular to it, which you then slide along the axis by dragging the handle.
Moving a cut
Drag the violet arrow handle along its direction, or hold Ctrl and scroll. The handle re-anchors itself near your pivot if it leaves the screen, grows as you approach it and shrinks after a few idle seconds so it stays out of your screenshots — its grab area never shrinks, so a small handle is still easy to catch.
Floating pills at the bottom of the view carry Delete Section and, for plane cuts, Flip Section — remove the cut, or keep the other side instead. Sections can also be placed straight from the right-click menu on any face.
Views
- Views — the saved-views panel on the left: double-click restores a view, right-click renames or deletes it.
- Save View — stores the current camera, visibility state and section under a name. All three, not just the camera — which is what makes a saved view a reproducible statement rather than a viewpoint.
- Export / Import — saved views travel as a JSON file you can hand to someone else; on import they re-link to models by file name when needed.
Ribbon — Measure tab Free
All measurement tools snap to the model: element vertices and edges, point-cloud points, and — when a section is active — the cut edges take priority, so you can measure exactly in the cutting plane rather than on some edge behind it. Snap markers only appear while a tool is armed, so they never clutter plain navigation. Measurements stay in the scene until deleted (a button at the bottom right clears them all) and each carries its value as a 3D label.
| Tool | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Distance | Ctrl M | Point-to-point distance with snap, and the ΔX/ΔY/ΔZ components alongside it |
| Coordinates | Ctrl Shift M | Click a point, read its global X/Y/Z |
| Area | Ctrl Shift A | Click the corners of a planar region, Enter (or Finish) to close it |
| Volume | Ctrl Shift V | Click a solid — closed meshes only |
| Volume Sum | — | Click several solids, Enter to finish: the summed volume |
| Alignment | — | Click an alignment axis: chainage (km) and elevation at that point |
| Finish | Enter | Completes a multi-point measurement |
Units dropdown — Metric (m, m², m³) or Imperial (decimal feet). Display only: switching re-labels the measurements you already took, in place.
Ribbon — Analysis tab Free
Attributes Audit
Checks that elements actually carry the property-set properties your project requires. Pick the scope (files, classes — wildcards like IfcWall* are supported), define the required attributes and any value conditions (equals / contains / numeric comparisons), then run it. The result lists every failing element with the reason it failed.
The HTML report is the deliverable: numbered conditions, a column of the condition numbers each element failed, per-file filter dropdowns, and green rows where the count is zero. PASS/FAIL is stated per condition, so the report answers “which requirement is not met” rather than just “something is wrong”.
IDS Creator and IDS Audit
- IDS Creator — author a buildingSMART IDS 1.0 file without leaving the viewer: specifications with applicability (which elements the rule is about) and requirements (what they must satisfy — attributes, properties, classifications), saved as .ids.
- IDS Audit — validate the loaded models against any .ids file and export the report.
Together the two cover both sides of an information-requirements workflow: write the requirement, then check the delivery against it — with the same tool that opened the model.
Quantity Takeoff
Measures the loaded models: volumes, areas, footprints and attribute-based quantities, grouped by class or file, with duplicate-solid protection so twin geometry is not counted twice. Exports to CSV.
Duplicates Check
Finds identical solids standing in the same spot — the classic copy-paste error, and what happens when the same element arrives in two federated files. It highlights them and creates a saved view per overlap case, so every finding is one double-click away instead of a coordinate to hunt down.
Ribbon — Point Cloud tab Free
- Point Size — a live slider over the scene; drag until the cloud reads well at your current zoom.
- Points Color — how clouds are coloured:
- RGB — the cloud's real colours, when the file has them.
- By Class — one flat colour per LAS classification: ground brown, vegetation green, buildings yellow, water light blue, unclassified grey.
- By Height — an elevation ramp from purple (lowest) through blue to cyan (highest).
- Single Colour — one flat colour everywhere; used automatically for clouds without RGB.
- Cloud Color — pick that flat colour (black by default).
- TIN Color — colour and transparency of LandXML terrain meshes.
Ribbon — Performance tab Free
- Cache Mgmt — the disk cache of extracted IFC geometry: its size and location, a button to clear it, and one to open the folder. Clearing costs you nothing except the next load of each model being slow again.
- Stats — current FPS, operation timings and scene statistics.
- Verbose — log every timed operation. Turn it on when benchmarking with support.
- Reset — clear the collected timings before a fresh run.
- Remove Outliers — permanently drop elements placed far away from the model. These are stray artefacts exported at wrong coordinates; they inflate the scene bounds, which wrecks Fit to View and makes navigation feel wrong. The tool shows what it found before removing anything, and Reload Models brings the removed elements back by reloading those files.
- Aliases — keyboard shortcuts, below.
Shortcuts and the Command Palette Free
Aliases
On the Performance tab, or via Tools → Keyboard Shortcuts. Assign a keyboard shortcut to any command in the application — every ribbon tile, menu entry and tool is listed; type into the capture field to record a combination. Shortcut sets are saved as named profiles stored as files: export one to share it with your team, import theirs, delete the ones you stopped using. The active profile applies at startup.
Command Palette
Ctrl K opens one box that does two different jobs.
- Run a command. Type a few letters to fuzzy-search every command and run it, without hunting through tabs. Commands that are currently disabled are filtered out, so what you see is what you can do.
- Query the scene. Type verb criteria… and act on everything that matches.
| Example | What it does |
|---|---|
| hide class:IfcProxy | Hides every proxy element in every loaded model |
| isolate file:STR-01 class:IfcWall | Two criteria, combined with AND |
| color filter:"north wing" #ff8800 | Colours the members of a saved filter |
| select class:IfcDoor | Selects every door |
Verbs: hide, show, isolate, select, color. Criteria: class: (IFC class, the Ifc prefix is optional), file: (a fragment of the file name), filter:"name" (a saved Filter). Several criteria combine with AND. Colours accept #rrggbb or names. A live preview row tells you how many elements the query matches before you press Enter — so a query that would hide half the model announces itself first.
Issues and BCF in Free Free
The Issues panel lives on the Audit tab, but the panel itself is free. It lists the issues stored in the open scene — typically raised by an Audit user and shared with the team as an .ins file. Free users are not spectators here; they can take full part in the review.
- Read every issue: title, tag, status, description, the anchored viewpoint (double-click and the camera flies there) and the comment thread.
- Comment and change status. Writing requires being signed in, because your name is recorded against it. File → Save Scene merges your replies into the .ins, and several people can work on the same scene file — replies are merged, not overwritten.
- Import BCF (Home tab) — bring topics from other tools (BCF 2.x) into the scene as issues.
- Re-run check — right-click a clash-born issue to recompute that clash pair against the models currently loaded. The result is written into the issue log, and clashes that have disappeared are closed automatically with the status auto closed. This is how a Free user proves a fix landed without owning the Audit module.
Issues — authoring Audit
- New Issue — raise an issue anchored to the current camera view. Title, tag and description; the author comes from your sign-in. The current viewpoint (camera plus visibility) is stored with it, so every reader sees exactly what you saw — not a similar angle on the same room. A snapshot image can be attached.
- Issues live in the scene. Save Scene / Save Scene As distributes them with the .ins file, and Free users can reply and change statuses. Clash review can create issues in bulk.
- Export BCF — write the issues to a BCF 2.1 file: viewpoints, statuses, comment threads and optional snapshots. You pick which issues to include. It round-trips with Import BCF in Free, so the exchange works both directions.
Filters Audit
A filter is a saved, parametric element set — “all load-bearing walls from file STR-*” — defined once and reused everywhere: visibility, clash scopes, class remapping (Edit), drawing representation rules (Edit). The key word is parametric: a filter is not a list of GlobalIds frozen at the moment you made it. It re-evaluates against whatever is loaded now, so it survives a new model revision.
- Filters — the panel. Viewing filters is free: apply one to select, hide or isolate its members and see the match counts.
- New Filter — conditions on file name, IFC class, element name or any attribute value, combined with AND/OR. Wildcards supported.
- Auto Filters — generate a whole family of filters from your naming convention: pick fixed character positions in the file name, and one filter is created per unique token — for example discipline codes at positions 4–6. A federation with a consistent naming standard becomes a filter library in one dialog.
Color Sets Audit
Colour the scene by source file and/or saved filter — the coordination view: each discipline in its own colour, or one filter highlighted against a ghosted context. (The Free tier’s Class Colors colours by IFC class; Color Sets works at file and filter level, and its colourings can be saved as views.) The window floats, so the scene stays fully usable while it is open.
- Rows. Each row targets a File or a Filter and carries its own colour and transparency (0 % = solid). The first matching row wins, so put filter rows above file rows to pick their elements out of the file’s colour. Add All Files creates one row per loaded file, each with a distinct palette colour — a one-click discipline colouring; Add All Filters likewise.
- Everything else — what no row claims: Keep original colours, Fade out (with the transparency you choose) or Grey backdrop.
- Apply paints live; Restore Colors — also the corner button in the 3D view — returns to the model colours.
- Save as View… stores the colouring as a colour-only saved view in the Views panel: activating it repaints the scene without moving the camera, and its recipe returns to the Color Sets window for further editing. File rows follow the live models; filter rows are stored as the exact element set they matched when saved. Colour views travel with the scene like any other saved view.
Clash detection Audit
A check runs between two sides. A side is either a model or the elements of a saved filter, which is what makes filters worth building: “structure × HVAC” is a two-click setup once the filters exist.
Running a check
- Hard clash — real penetrations. The penetration-depth tolerance is there so surfaces that merely kiss do not flood your report; set it to the depth you actually care about.
- Clearance — elements closer to each other than a given distance, for maintenance space and insulation gaps.
- Exceptions apply (below). The run is multi-threaded with two progress bars — broad phase and narrow phase — and an ETA, so you know whether to wait or go and get coffee.
- Results are grouped into clash groups by proximity, because twenty hits along one pipe crossing one wall are one problem, not twenty.
Reviewing results
- Clashes — the results panel: groups with status, tags, assignee and per-clash zoom. Opening a clash dims the scene around the two elements so you can actually see the collision; clicking other elements stays possible while you do.
- Statuses: New / Active / Reviewed / Approved / Resolved. Everything is stored in the scene.
- Review Clashes — a triage window to fly through clashes one by one, narrow by filter, file or class, bulk-tag them, set statuses and group them. It creates issues from the clashes you select, so findings enter the normal issue workflow instead of living in a separate silo.
- Clash Report — export the reviewed results, statuses and tags included, to HTML and Excel.
- Clash Exceptions — a library of pairs excluded from checking (selection A × selection B — pipes × their sleeves is the classic). Managed centrally, and every new run respects it, so you do not re-dismiss the same false positives every week.
Settings that affect clash
- Settings → Clash Tags & Assignees — the tag palette (name plus colour) used to classify clashes.
- Settings → Clash Display — how the scene fades when a clash opens: dim opacity, highlight transparency, and whether dimmed elements stay clickable.
Move Model Audit
Translate and rotate a whole loaded IFC model that was exported in the wrong place: numeric ΔX/ΔY/ΔZ plus rotation, or a two-point fit — pick a point on the model, then pick where it belongs.
Three things make this safe to use on someone else's file. It is display-time only, so the IFC on disk is untouched. Scenes keep the original coordinates, so nobody downstream inherits your correction as if it were the truth. And the offset is remembered per file name — when the same discipline sends a newer export with the same faulty origin, it lands correctly on load without you doing anything.
BI Export Audit
Export model data for Power BI, Excel or any BI tool: quantities and audit results as flat tables (CSV / Excel), one row per element with its class, file, property values and computed quantities. Pick the scope and the columns. Re-export after a model update and your dashboard refreshes against the same shape of data.
Scene authoring (Save Scene As) Audit
Audit users create the .ins scenes the rest of the team works in. Save Scene As… writes the full workspace: file references, saved views, issues, filters, clash setups and results, drawings and layouts (Edit).
Free users opening that scene get everything — read-only, except for issue participation, where they can comment, change statuses and re-run clash checks. Re-linking of moved model files is offered when the scene opens.
Editing IFC — the model Edit
- Add Attribute — add a property to every element of a chosen model: pick an existing property set or create a new one, name the attribute, set the value.
- Auto Attributes — rule-driven attribute writing at scale, in two flavours:
- a CSV attribute map — wildcard rules matching elements (by class, by name…) and the attribute values to write for each match;
- computed geometric quantities — volumes, areas and the like measured from the geometry and written into property sets.
- Map Classes — remap elements to different IFC classes while keeping their attributes. Two scopes: by class (every IfcBuildingElementProxy → IfcPipeSegment) or by filter / selection (only the matched elements). If the target class requires schema attributes the source lacks, a guard dialog collects them rather than writing an invalid file. Mappings save as presets for reuse.
- Merge IFC — combine loaded models, or just a filter's elements, into one new model. The result appears in the scene tree as a normal model, ready for further edits and export.
- Delete Elements — permanently remove the selected elements from their models, with a confirmation. In-session until you export.
- Export IFC — write a loaded model back to .ifc: original schema preserved, all session edits included, header refreshed. This is the step that persists Add Attribute, Auto Attributes, Map Classes, Merge and Delete Elements.
Drawings — how the 2D side works Edit
A drawing is a 2D space generated from a cut or a view of the model. The space switcher in the bottom bar moves between Model and every drawing or layout the scene contains — think of it as tabs in a CAD file, except each one stays connected to the 3D model that produced it.
- Drawings are live. The cut re-renders when the model changes — hide elements, reload a newer IFC export, remap colours, and the drawing follows. (Raster underlays freeze if their source file is detached.)
- Section markers in 3D. Each drawing leaves a violet marker in the model space showing where it cuts. Click a marker to select its drawing — its parameters appear in Properties (station, depth, side…) — and drag its endpoints to move the cut. Settings → Hide Section Symbols in 3D hides the markers when you want a clean model view.
- Scale. Every drawing has a working scale in Properties. Annotation sizes — text, arrows, dimension offsets — are paper-scaled: what you set in the annotation standard is the printed size, regardless of the drawing's scale.
- Annotation scale. Every drawing carries an annotation scale (1:100 by default), set in the creation dialog and changeable any time — in Manage Drawings, from the page’s right-click menu (Annotation Scale…) or in the properties of an empty selection. Free text, labels and dimensions are annotative: their styles state millimetres on paper, and the scale converts that to model size — 2.5 mm at 1:100 is 0.25 m in the model, identically on screen, on layouts and in DXF. Zooming never changes the printed size.
- Annotation Area (Drawings → Draw) — a rectangle with its own annotation scale: annotations anchored inside adopt it automatically, for detail regions that print at a different scale than the rest of the sheet. Drawn as a cyan dashed rectangle that never exports; annotations follow live when the area is moved or resized.
- Tool cursor. Whenever a drawing tool is armed — a sketch shape, text, any dimension, a label or a pick — the canvas cursor becomes a crosshair, so it is always clear whether the next click will draw.
- Navigating a drawing: scroll to zoom toward the cursor, middle-drag to pan; right-click opens the drawing context menu (Hide Edge, Select Multiple…).
The snap bar
| Snap | Catches |
|---|---|
| End | Endpoints and vertices |
| Mid | Segment midpoints |
| Int | Line intersections |
| Near | The nearest point on a line — the fallback when nothing better is in range |
| Ortho | Constrains the next point or drag to horizontal / vertical; snaps override it |
Closer-ranked snaps win: End beats Mid beats Int beats Near. So when several candidates sit within range of the cursor, you get the most specific one rather than whichever happened to be nearest by a pixel.
Drawing types — Drawings → Place Section
- 2 Points Section — click two points on the model in 3D: a vertical section along them.
- Top View — click two opposite corners: a plan view of that rectangle. Its Z level (the cut height) is adjustable in Properties.
- Surface Section — click one face: a 50 m wide section parallel to it places itself.
- Alignment Section — click an alignment axis: a cross-section perpendicular to the axis at that station, looking down-station. Flip side in Properties looks back.
- Longitudinal Section — a section that follows the axis between two stations, or the whole alignment via its checkbox. The curved cut curtain is unrolled flat: horizontal axis is chainage, vertical is elevation.
- Alignment Profile — the classic distorted-scale profile (1:100 height on 1:1000 length, say): the unrolled terrain and every curtain crossing along the axis, cut only.
Each type asks for its parameters — name, scale, depth where applicable — when you place it, and everything stays editable afterwards in Properties.
Section Sets
A Section Set, created in Manage Drawings, composes existing sections into one model-space sheet: every member renders at its true position and true size (1:1, no rotation). This is the classic “all cross-sections of the road on one sheet”. Members stay live, and the set exports as one DXF. For export in global coordinates, a top-view member anchors the set.
What a drawing shows Edit
- Cut geometry — bold cut edges with a hatch fill.
- Projection — visible edges beyond the cut, up to the drawing's depth; optionally hidden edges, dashed.
- Terrain — LandXML surfaces draw as a terrain line on sections and profiles.
- Alignments — axes appear with a crossing symbol on sections, and as styled lines on top views.
- Point clouds and meshes — render into a raster underlay behind the vector linework, honouring cloud colour modes, class hides and section clipping. Generation shows a progress bar and the underlay's resolution is selectable. If the source cloud or mesh is later detached from the scene, the last raster freezes so the drawing keeps its context instead of going blank.
- Element visibility and colours follow the model plus the drawing's own rules. The camera does not reset when a drawing re-renders — you keep your place.
- Hide Edge — right-click any single edge on the drawing to hide just that line, with a ghost preview showing exactly what will vanish. Show Edge / Show Edges brings them back. For when one stray line ruins an otherwise clean view.
Sketching, dimensions and labels Edit
Draw
Sketch entities live on the drawing, snap to its geometry and export to DXF on their own layer.
- Line — two points; snaps and Ortho apply.
- Polyline — a chain of segments; right-click ends the chain.
- Circle — centre, then a radius point.
- Rectangle — two opposite corners.
- Point — stamp survey-style points; symbol, colour and size come from Point Display.
- Text — click the anchor and type; styled by the chosen annotation standard.
- Annotation Area — a region with its own annotation scale, so one drawing can carry a detail at a larger scale than the sheet.
- Duplicate Selected — copy the selected sketch entities with a small offset. Select several via right-click → Select Multiple.
- Point Display — the symbol library for sketch points: marker shape, colour, size.
Dimension
Seven types, all snapping to the drawing and styled by the annotation standard:
| Type | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Aligned | Parallel to the measured segment |
| Linear | The horizontal or vertical projection |
| Continuous | Chain dimensions — each click adds one starting at the previous dimension's second extension line, same style and line position; right-click or Esc ends the chain |
| Angular | The angle between two directions |
| Radius | The radius of an arc or circle |
| Elevation | A level mark (Z) on sections and profiles |
| Coordinate | A leader carrying the point's X/Y |
Labels and annotation standards
- Define Labels — label templates: an ordered list of element attributes that feed the label text. The highest available attribute wins, so one template serves mixed content instead of leaving blanks where an attribute is missing.
- Place Label — click the element (that is the arrow point), then the shelf position. The text comes live from the model and follows model updates.
- Annotation Styles… — the shared style library, a CAD-style hierarchy: Text Styles (font family, height in paper millimetres, bold/italic/underline, colour) are referenced by Label styles and Dimension styles, which add their own line colours and — for dimensions — the arrow and extension anatomy, units and decimals. Rename a text style and every referencing style follows; deleting a referenced text style is blocked. Switch a drawing’s standard and everything restyles.
Drawing setup Edit
- Drawing Display Settings — line widths and colours for cut, visible and hidden edges; hidden-edge and annotation visibility; the cut hatch pattern.
- Representation (Representation Rules) — per-drawing display rules keyed by source
file, IFC class (wildcards) or saved filter. The window floats, so the
drawing stays fully usable next to it.
- Each rule expands into a per-band panel: Cut / Visible / Hidden lines each get their own colour, width, line type and Hide — or tick One style for all line bands for a single row. A separate switch hides the cut fill (hatch) while keeping the outline.
- Per band, the topmost rule that sets it wins, and untouched bands fall through to lower rules — one rule can silence the hidden lines and paint the visible ones yellow at the same time.
- A rule that hides all bands behaves like manually hiding those elements: they leave the hidden-line analysis, so they stop occluding what is behind them.
- The ⌖ button on a rule minimizes the window and lets you click an element on the drawing — the rule’s value fills from that element, per the rule’s mode.
- Representation Setups — store the current rules under a name in the scene (.ins): load a setup onto any other drawing of the file, and Export…/Import… one or more setups as a JSON file to share an office standard between users. Manual element hides are deliberately not part of setups.
- The list of manually hidden elements, with Show Selected / Show All, lives at the bottom of the same window.
- Alignment on Drawings — how axes appear: the cut-crossing symbol on sections, colour and line type on top views.
- DXF References — attach external DXF files to the drawing, XREF style: placed at their global coordinates or at a picked insertion point. They are live — the reference re-reads when the file changes on disk. Detach or re-pick at any time.
Managing and exporting drawings Edit
Manage Drawings is the scene's drawing list: open, rename, duplicate (which copies the cut together with its sketch and annotations), delete, and create Section Sets. The table also edits in place: the Ann. scale column, and for longitudinal sections the From / To stations (K+MMM format) and the view depth — commit a value and an open drawing re-renders immediately.
Export
The same dialog serves the Drawings and Layout tabs.
- Layouts → vector PDF at their paper size.
- Drawings → layered model-space DXF: separate layers for cut, hatch, visible, hidden, terrain, alignment, annotations, sketch and underlay. Point-cloud and mesh underlays ride along as a PNG placed as an image reference. Multi-select several items and give them one shared name and number, or each its own.
- Layer mapping — an optional office-standard mapping file (plain text) routes exported geometry to your company layers by element attributes: wildcard keys matched case- and diacritic-insensitively, per-layer colour (ACI or RGB), line type, line-type scale and width, and separate layers per role — cut, visible, hidden, hatch — and for terrain, texts, dimensions and labels. Check file validates the mapping before export, and an optional log written next to the DXF documents how every element mapped.
- Line simplification — exported linework is cleaned with Ramer–Douglas–Peucker. The default 0.00 mm is lossless: only perfectly collinear vertices drop, so the geometry stays mathematically identical. A positive tolerance (model mm) shrinks files further, and connected segments chain into polylines instead of thousands of loose lines. Dimension values are measured before export and never change.
- The export honours Representation Rules and hidden elements — the DXF contains exactly what the drawing shows.
- Global coordinates — top views export at true world X/Y, and vertical sections are laid flat along their cut line, so a surveyor can drop the DXF straight onto the site plan. (Profiles and unrolled long sections have no single world plane, so they always export in sheet coordinates.)
- A Section Set exports as one DXF, anchored by its top-view member when global coordinates are on.
Layouts (paper space) Edit
A layout is a sheet. Place drawings on it at print scale, and 3D views restored from saved views in resizable frames — so a sheet can carry both the section and the axonometric that explains it. Layouts appear in the space switcher next to drawings.
- Table & Frame — sheet furniture: drawing tables (rows × columns with dynamic fields such as scene name, date and scale) and paper border frames. Defined once in a library and applied to any layout; the library exports and imports between files, which is how a title block becomes an office standard rather than a copy-paste.
- Export — the same dialog as on Drawings: layouts to vector PDF at paper size.
Default keyboard shortcuts
Any command can be given a custom shortcut through Aliases. These are what you get out of the box.
| Shortcut | Command | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl O | Open | File menu / Home tab |
| Ctrl W | Clear Scene | File menu / Home tab |
| Ctrl S | Save Scene | File menu |
| Ctrl Shift S | Save Scene As Audit | File menu |
| Ctrl K | Command Palette | Anywhere |
| F | Fit to View | View tab / quick-tools bar |
| Esc | Deselect, or cancel the active tool | 3D view |
| H | Hide selected | Home tab |
| I | Isolate selected | Home tab |
| A | Show All | Home tab |
| Ctrl M | Measure Distance | Measure tab |
| Ctrl Shift M | Measure Coordinates | Measure tab |
| Ctrl Shift A | Measure Area | Measure tab |
| Ctrl Shift V | Measure Volume | Measure tab |
| Enter | Finish a multi-point measurement | Measure tab |
| Ctrl + scroll | Move the active section along its direction | 3D view |
| F1 | Help — opens this manual | Help menu |
File formats
In
IFC (.ifc — 2x3 / 4 / 4x3) · point clouds (.las .laz .e57 .ptx .xyz) · meshes (.obj .ply) · LandXML (.xml — TIN terrain and alignments) · Inspectra scenes (.ins) · BCF (.bcf .bcfzip) · DXF (as drawing references) · IDS (.ids).
Out
Inspectra scenes (.ins) · IFC (Edit) · BCF 2.1 (Audit) · DXF and PDF (Edit) · IDS · HTML / Excel / CSV reports (attribute audit, clash, takeoff, BI) · saved-views JSON · diagnostics .txt.
Where Inspectra keeps its data
| What | Where | Managed from |
|---|---|---|
| Geometry cache, logs, alias profiles | %LOCALAPPDATA%\InspectraBIM | Performance → Cache Mgmt; Help → Open Log Folder |
| Licence | The Windows credential store, plus %APPDATA%\INSPECTRA | Sign in / Sign out |
| Preferences (theme, units, ribbon tab, snap toggles…) | The Windows registry under InspectraBIM | Settings menu |
Beyond the manual
This page describes what every tool does. The step-by-step guides, the video tutorials and the answers to the questions that come up most often live alongside it — and if none of them settle it, the support desk reads every message.
Getting started
3 articles
Viewing & selection
4 articles
Analysis
5 articles
Point clouds & terrain
1 article
Performance & sessions
3 articles
Reference
2 articles
Licensing & account
1 article