Tuesday, 23 April 2013

National BIM Library Manufacturer RSS feed

Manufacturers who are members of National BIM Library may now easily display their BIM objects on their own web pages.

Web developers working for manufacturers can use the RSS feed at the URL below:
http://api.nationalbimlibrary.com/syndication/manufacturer/6738/objects/rss

Please note that the ID in bold is the manufacturers unique ID. This can be found from the RIBA Product Selector URL. This is indicated in bold below:
http://www.ribaproductselector.com/kingspan-insulation-ltd/6738/overview.aspx

If support is needed, then a great starting point is the code in the textarea below. A good examples of this in action are given inline within this blog post.

 
Example for the Kingspan Insulation BIM objects:



...and some, little tips to finish on if the above code is being modified:
  1. If there already is a script reference for jquery.min.js on thewebsite the script reference on line 7 can be removed from the example.
  2. Line 12 in the code: $("#scroll").nbl(6738);
    This line needs to be changed to include the correct manufacturer RPS/RIS code.
  3. Line 20 in the code: <div style="width:150px; height:615px;">
    Width and height can be adjusted to suit the manufacturer. Just change the numbers highlighted in yellow.
  4. Line 31 in the code: <a href=http://www.nationalbimlibrary.com/kingspan-insulation...
    This line needs to be changed to include the correct manufacturer NBL URL

And of course, any manufacturer needing support - please get in contact and we can help get it right for your requirements.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Stephen,
    This is great, thanks for flagging it up.
    I can see this would fit well into a sidebar.
    Will users be able to filter by category - for example if there were green roof products they wanted to feature on one page, and hard metal roofing on another?
    Su

    ReplyDelete
  2. Su,

    It would fit nicely into a sidebar - but also the dimensions are completely configurable and the content will adjust to fit. So the web designer can configure to fit best in the page.

    One thing also worth mentioning is that because the data is fed from the National BIM Library database - there will never be any currency problems where the data is different on different sites.

    In terms of configuring a subset of the objects, I really like that idea. Because at a base level it is an RSS feed, the web developer could filter out which products to display as you suggest depending on the context.

    Maybe I'll ask one of our developers to give me some example code I can post.

    S

    ReplyDelete
  3. One other comment Su - this principle is something we have done for years with NBS Plus specification clauses.

    If you Google NBS Plus you'll see tens if not hundreds of examples. A quick three examples from the top ten Google search results below:

    - Flowcrete
    - Smart Systems
    - Armstrong

    ReplyDelete