Cost Panel¶

The viewer's Cost panel is a read-only inspector for IFC 5D cost data — IfcCostSchedule, IfcCostItem, IfcCostValue, and the quantities, currency, and product/task assignments attached to them. Open it from the activity bar (grouped under "Inspect").

It reads the same cost graph and decimal evaluation the SDK exposes as bim.cost, so anything the panel shows is reproducible from a script (see Scripting a cost report below) or from the CLI/MCP surfaces.

Spreadsheet-style cost editing is out of scope. Nothing in this panel writes to the model — every action either selects an element in 3D or reads a value.

Layout¶

Left: schedule/item tree. One section per loaded model. Each IfcCostSchedule lists the cost items assigned to it (IfcRelAssignsToControl); nested items (IfcRelNests) appear as children under their parent. Items that belong to no schedule and are not nested under another item still appear, under Unassigned cost items — nothing a model declares is silently dropped from the tree.
Right: detail. Selecting a cost item shows its resolved amount and currency (or, if it could not be evaluated, the evaluator's own diagnostic), its quantities, its owning schedule, and its assigned products/tasks. A Select in 3D action selects every assigned product/task in the viewport and frames the camera on them.

Five states, shown explicitly¶

The panel never collapses "there's a problem" into one generic banner. Each of these is a distinct, visible state:

State	What it means	Where it shows
Empty	The model genuinely has no `IfcCostItem`/`IfcCostSchedule` data.	"No cost data in this model." under that model's section.
Unavailable	The panel could not read cost data for this model (no loaded IFC source bytes — e.g. a GLB-only or point-cloud load). This is a different state from empty: the read never happened, so "no data" would be a false claim.	"Cost data unavailable — load the IFC source to inspect costs."
Unresolved	A value or item exists but the evaluator could not resolve it to a number (a missing `IfcCostValue.AppliedValue`, an invalid number, an unsupported applied-value type, ...).	The detail pane shows "Could not be evaluated from the loaded source" plus the evaluator's diagnostic message — never a blank or a fabricated zero.
Cyclic	The evaluator detected a nesting or value-component cycle (`NESTING_CYCLE`, `VALUE_CYCLE`, `QUANTITY_CYCLE`).	A badge on the model section; the same diagnostic also surfaces in the detail pane for an affected item.
Mixed-currency	The project declares more than one `IfcMonetaryUnit`, or a value's applied currency disagrees with the project's. The panel never sums or averages across currencies, and never silently picks one.	A "Mixed currency" badge on the model section.

Federated sessions¶

With more than one model loaded, each model gets its own labeled tree section — a schedule or item is always shown as belonging to a specific model, never as an anonymous flattened row. Selecting an item's assigned products resolves through the same FederationRegistry every other selection path in the viewer uses, so two models that happen to reuse the same local IFC express-id never get their cost items or assigned products confused with each other.

Scripting a cost report¶

The Cost report (5D) template in the script editor reads bim.cost.data() and bim.cost.evaluateItem() for the loaded model, prints a per-item report (resolved amount, or the diagnostic explaining why it could not be resolved), and exports a CSV. It is read-only, like the panel.

const data = bim.cost.data()
if (!data.HasCostData) {
  console.log('no cost data in this model')
} else {
  for (const item of data.CostItems) {
    const evaluation = bim.cost.evaluateItem(item.ref)
    console.log(
      evaluation.Amount === undefined
        ? `#${item.ref.expressId} ${item.Name} — unresolved`
        : `#${item.ref.expressId} ${item.Name} — ${evaluation.Amount} ${evaluation.Currency ?? ''}`,
    )
  }
}

See the template itself (Cost report (5D) in the script editor's template list) for the full version, including CSV export and mixed-currency/cycle warnings.

Authoring from scripts¶

The panel itself stays read-only — every write goes through bim.store, from a script (SDK or CLI), not through the panel UI. bim.store gains cost-authoring methods alongside the existing element builders (addWall, addColumn, ...): addCostSchedule, addCostItem, addCostValue, addCostQuantity, nestCostItems, assignCostItemsToSchedule, assignToCostItem, setCostItemValues, and removeCostEntity. A value authored this way is visible to bim.cost.data() immediately — before the model is ever exported — and is written into the file the next time bim.export.ifc(undefined, { applyMutations: true }) runs.

MCP's headless backend does not implement these nine methods (its v0.1 convention for every bim.store.add* builder — they throw not supported in MCP v0.1; use entity_create); author cost entities there through the generic entity_create tool instead. bim.cost reads still observe whatever entity_create authors, on MCP as everywhere else.

const schedule = bim.store.addCostSchedule('default', { Name: 'Tender schedule', PredefinedType: 'TENDER' })
const value = bim.store.addCostValue('default', {
  Name: 'Facade rate',
  AppliedValue: { Type: 'IfcMonetaryMeasure', Value: 87.45 },
})
const item = bim.store.addCostItem('default', { Name: 'Facade package', CostValues: [value.expressId] })
bim.store.assignCostItemsToSchedule('default', schedule.expressId, [item.expressId])

// Visible immediately, without exporting:
const data = bim.cost.data('default')
console.log(data.CostItems.find((i) => i.ref.expressId === item.expressId)?.Name)

Deleting a still-referenced IfcCostValue (listed in another item's CostValues, or another value's Components) is refused, naming the referrer, unless { detach: true } is passed — which rewrites those lists first rather than leaving a dangling reference. IFC2X3 models refuse cost authoring outright (a different, incompatible attribute layout); create or load the model as IFC4 or IFC4X3.