Inspectra BIM 0.6.0 – Release notes

Inspectra BIM 0.6.0 — measure inside a section, and keep your models in sync

Version 0.6.0 is a precision-and-workflow release. No new tabs, no new buttons to learn — it fixes the two places where the app used to make you work around it, and makes two everyday operations noticeably faster.

Measuring inside a section actually works now

Cutting a model open and measuring what you exposed is one of the most common review moves there is. Until now it fought back: near an active section the snapping simply went dead, and the measurement ball would occasionally jump somewhere you were not pointing.

Both causes are gone in 0.6.0, and the behaviour is now better than it was before the section existed:

• Cut edges come first. With a section active, the contour the cut itself produced is the highest-priority snap target — first the points where the cut crosses real model edges, then anywhere along the cut line, and only then the regular corners, edges and surfaces. Measuring a duct opening, a wall thickness or a slab edge on the cut face is now a single confident click.
• Hidden geometry can no longer win. A section only hides geometry on screen; the model data behind it is still there, and the old snapping happily locked onto corners on the invisible side. Candidates are now filtered to the visible half of the model — including section boxes, where all six planes apply.
• No more surprise jumps. A cut line several metres away could hijack the snap because the picker’s tolerance scales with scene size, not with pixels. If the line under consideration is not near your cursor, the app now re-picks and gives the geometry behind the opening its say.

Drag the section plane while measuring and the snap follows the fresh contour immediately.

Check for Updates now covers embedded scenes

In 0.5.0, Check for Updates (Home tab) reloaded referenced IFC files that had been re-exported. Scenes saved as standalone — geometry embedded in the .ins, which is what makes them open fast — were out of scope: they had no live files to compare.

Now they are covered. Inspectra remembers the source file each embedded model was built from, together with its state at that moment. When you run Check for Updates, it reports any embedded model whose source IFC has been rebuilt since — including a source that changed before you even opened the scene — and offers to swap it. Confirming drops the embedded copy and loads the fresh IFC in its place, under the same model name, so views, issues and clash results keep pointing at it.

You keep both things at once: scenes that open in seconds, and the ability to pull in a new export without rebuilding the scene from scratch. Once a model has been swapped in, its clash checks (including Rerun clash check on an issue) run against the fresh geometry.

Saving after a model change is much faster

Replacing or removing a model used to force a full rewrite of the scene file: every other model was unpacked and re-compressed even though nothing about it had changed.

0.6.0 rewrites only what changed. Unchanged models are copied straight across, byte for byte — no geometry reprocessing at all — while only the new or replaced model is rebuilt. Removed models finally release their space instead of lingering as dead weight, so .ins files stop growing with every coordination round. On a six-model test scene the save after swapping one model took under a third of a second, and the file got slightly smaller.

The whole write is atomic: the scene is only ever the complete old file or the complete new one, never a half-written file — which matters on shared network drives.

Panning is smooth on heavy models

Orbiting a large federated model was already smooth; panning was not. It stuttered and jumped, because the panning path rendered on every single mouse event and then applied whatever movement had piled up in the meantime as one big leap.

Panning now uses the same technique as orbiting: one camera step and one frame per mouse event, always tracking your actual cursor. Right-button and middle-button dragging both benefit. The point you grabbed stays under the cursor exactly as before — the movement is identical, it just no longer lurches.

Signing in

The sign-in window now answers the questions people actually arrive with: No account? Create one, Forgot your password? Reset it, and No licence yet? See plans — each going straight to the right page instead of a generic account screen. The buttons were tidied up to match.

About Inspectra Audit

Audit — clash detection, coordination and reporting — has completed testing and is awaiting release. It ships inside the application, which is why you can see the Audit tab and its tools, but they stay locked and cannot be used yet. The store opens in a while; the premiere comes with version 1.0.0, and every Audit feature will get its own detailed write-up here before that.

To be notified the moment it goes live, create a free account at inspectrabim.com/account and enable product updates in your dashboard.

Do pobrania

Download Inspectra BIM 0.6.0 from inspectrabim.com/download — the free viewer needs no account. Upgrading over an existing installation keeps your settings and licence.