03-Overview of all objects

The Outliner panel on the top right shows a hierarchy of all the currently loaded physical Objects in your IFC project. These Objects correlate to what you can see in the Viewport panel.

Every Object in the Outliner represents an IFC Element. These Objects have a name with the pattern Class/Name. The class prefix represents the type of object, and the name is the name of the object. Examples of classes you will see are IfcBuilding, or IfcWall. This naming convention makes it easy to quickly spot types of objects.

Objects are organised in a hierarchy. By default, this hierarchy represents a breakdown of spaces, from large spaces such as a site and a building, down to smaller spaces like building storeys and room spaces. The hierarchy will always begin with an IfcProject object. You can click on the triangle to toggle the hierarchy.

Tip

In large projects with deep hierarchies, you can Shift-LMB click the triangle to recursively toggle the hierarchy. You can also click and drag the MMB to pan left and right.

When there are lots of objects, you can type a name in the filter box to quickly identify objects by name or type.

Clicking on an object in the Outliner panel also selects the corresponding object in the Viewport panel. A good strategy to find objects is to then use View > Frame Selected to zoom to it in the Viewport.

The Outliner panel is also great for isolating portions of your project. You can include and exclude portions by clicking on the Tick Icon next to collections of objects in the hierarchy.

Let’s isolate a single building storey. Start by disabling the Tick Icon next to the IfcProject collection. This will hide everything in the project. Then navigate through the hierarchy and enable the Tick Icon next to an IfcBuildingStory.