All Plan SDS2 Connection Designer

C# service using SDS2 API & named pipes syncs steel connections to Allplan in seconds—foundation of the official Allplan SDS2 Steel Connections add‑on.

Quick Facts

Technologies:

Platform:

Status:

Project URL:

Client:

C#, SDS2 .Net API, IPC

Windows

Proof of Concept

SDS2 & All Plan

Project Title

SDS2‑to‑Allplan Connection Sync – Proof of Concept

Industry

Structural Engineering / BIM Interoperability

Technologies & Tools

C#, SDS2 .NET API, Named‑Pipe IPC, JSON, Windows Service

Client

Allplan  &  SDS2 – joint R&D team exploring seamless steel‑connection workflows between their flagship BIM platforms.

Challenges

Cross‑platform data flow: SDS2 and Allplan store connection geometry in very different schemas.
Real‑time performance: Engineers needed round‑trip feedback in seconds, not manual exports.
Loss‑less detail: Bolts, plates, and hole patterns had to remain 100 % faithful when transferred.
Secure local comms: Corporate environments forbade open ports; IPC was the only option.

Solution

Windows Service Gateway
Built in C#, the service listens on a secure named pipe, parsing JSON requests from an Allplan plug‑in.
Dynamic Model Builder
Leveraging the SDS2 .NET API, the service spins up a headless model session, inserts the requested members, and auto‑applies SDS2’s connection templates.
Detail Extraction
After connections resolve, the service extracts plates, bolts, weld symbols, and metadata, serializing everything back to JSON for Allplan.
Stateless Request‑Response
Each call is atomic—no shared sessions—so multiple designers can hit the gateway concurrently without locking issues.

Results

Round‑trip time: < 12 seconds for a typical AllPlan model selection.
Data fidelity: 100% match between SDS2 output and Allplan import in pilot tests.
Path to product: The PoC’s architecture became the backbone of today’s Allplan SDS2 Steel Connections add‑on, now in commercial use.