IngeTrazo: A Home for the Render Farm

For those who don’t know the tool: IngeTrazo is Marco Sumari Tellez’s open-source architectural modeller, combining direct geometry editing, optional BIM metadata and drawing sheets. It is developed around Linux, with Windows and Apple Silicon macOS builds also available.

Usually you render buildings exploding. Occasionally you need to sketch one that houses the render farm – or something else, if you are one of the lucky ones that can afford a house. IngeTrazo covers the architectural modelling end: dimensioned geometry, IFC quantities, drawing sheets and Blender rendering. Keeping the building upright remains somebody else’s professional responsibility.

Geometry first

The drawing tools combine typed dimensions, explicit units, axis locks and geometric inference. Closed contours create faces; Offset handles outlines and edge chains, while Follow Me sweeps profiles along paths. Push/Pull extrudes faces or cuts through to an opposite face. Groups isolate geometry; components share definitions, with Make Unique separating an instance. Editing the wrong shared definition remains an efficient way to redesign every window simultaneously.

In 0.5.7, Bane Andreev’s Windowizer extension generates windows from wall faces, with configurable rows, columns, divisions, frames, mullions and panes. Its IfcWindow groups rebuild on edit; deleting a window closes the opening. The release also adds dashed back edges and scale-grip snapping. Mouse picking in the developer’s very large mirrored-component example remains unfinished.

The material system gives explicit face assignments precedence over inherited group or component materials. Shared material edits propagate to their uses. Per-face planar texture mapping can retain SketchUp pins, and texture transforms follow geometry edits. Front and back materials stay distinct, which is useful when the facade should face the street.

Import is not a round trip

The interchange documentation lists direct SketchUp .skp import through OpenSKP, retaining nested components, materials, textures, layers, scenes, linear dimensions and leader text. The application does not export .skp; outgoing alternatives include COLLADA, OBJ and glTF. Plan that handoff before promising an editable SketchUp delivery. File extensions are poor places for optimism.

CAD import converts layers to tagged groups and blocks to component instances, but omits text and dimensions. The 0.5.6.1 release notes document bundled LibreDWG on Windows, macOS and Flatpak, while older website/manual restrictions persist; DWG compatibility therefore needs checking in the actual package. Those notes also document binary/ASCII STL import and coplanar-face cleanup.

Quantities and drawings

The BIM layer attaches IFC classes to existing geometry, then derives quantities such as net wall areas, slab volumes and door/window counts. CSV tables and IFC 4 quantity sets support downstream estimating, including IngePresupuestos. This is metadata and measurement, not structural certification. A convincing beauty pass is still not a building permit.

The sheet composer places camera or saved-scene views at explicit scales. Dimensions can anchor to model geometry and follow edits; manually moving an endpoint releases its anchor. Export includes vector PDF with physical page dimensions, line weights and section fills. Selected frames export DXF R12 in model metres, separating view, profile and section lines into layers. Update frames before export when automatic rendering is disabled.

Site in, render out

For surveyed context, the WebODM/ODM workflow imports georeferenced textured OBJ at its real elevations. Oversized texture atlases are reduced to the GPU’s supported limit, and the survey is stored in the native .igz document. This provides site geometry to model against rather than an aerial image to squint at.

Rendering uses a separately installed Blender through EEVEE or Cycles. Controls include day/night/overcast lighting, point and spot lights, Kelvin temperature, power, direction and material finishes. View sync refreshes the background render after camera movement stops; model edits reload the scene. The current release fixes render-script visibility across Flatpak and AppImage boundaries. Even virtual daylight has deployment requirements.

The plumbing

The Python/Qt implementation uses PySide6 for the interface and QtOpenGL with GLSL 3.30 Core shaders for the viewport. That describes display rendering, not universal GPU acceleration. Python extensions receive an ExtensionApp interface; mutations should use command history and scene-change notifications. Root geometry uses scene.loose_mesh, while scene.mesh follows the editing context. JSON-safe extension data persists in .igz, and document mutations belong on the UI thread. The API can change during the 0.x series.

https://ingetrazo.com/en/

IngeTrazo remains in 0.x development, with an evolving document format and extension API. Test representative models, imports, exports and required extensions on the intended platforms before production deployment.

Availability

IngeTrazo 0.5.7 is free to download for Windows 10/11 64-bit, Linux x86_64 and Apple Silicon macOS. Linux guidance specifies Ubuntu 22.04 or later; Windows and Mac packages are described as unsigned. The GPL-3.0-or-later licence permits commercial use and covers the application, not users’ models or drawings. Development accepts voluntary donations.