IfcOpenShell · aothms · Nov 20, 2015 · Oct 28, 2015 · Oct 28, 2015 · Oct 28, 2015
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+# Dependency and build folders created by the build scripts
+/deps*/
+/build*/
+/install*/
+/win/BuildDepsCache*.txt
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
@@ -1,11 +1,16 @@
 IfcOpenShell 
 ============
-open source (LGPL) software library for working with the IFC file format
+Open source (LGPL) software library for working with the IFC file format.
 
 [http://ifcopenshell.org](http://ifcopenshell.org)  
 [http://academy.ifcopenshell.org](http://academy.ifcopenshell.org)
 
 
+Prerequisites
+=============
+* Git, CMake (2.6 or newer), Visual Studio 2008 or newer (Windows), or GCC (*nix, Clang untested).
+
+
 Dependencies
 ============
 * [Boost](http://www.boost.org/)
@@ -18,32 +23,33 @@ Dependencies
   For IfcConvert to be able to write tessellated Collada (.dae) files
 * [SWIG](http://www.swig.org/), [Python](https://www.python.org/) libraries *optional*  
   For building the IfcOpenShell Python interface and the Blender add-on
-* 3ds max SDK *optional*  
-  For building the 3ds max plug-in
+* 3ds Max SDK *optional*  
+  For building the 3ds Max plug-in
 
 
 Compiling on Windows
 ====================
-Users are advised to use the Visual Studio .sln file in the win/ folder.
-For Windows users a prebuilt Open CASCADE version is available from the
-http://opencascade.org website. Download and install this version and
-provide the paths to the Open CASCADE header and library files to MS
-Visual Studio C++.
+Users are advised to build IfcOpenShell using the CMake file provided in
+the cmake/ folder.
 
-For building the Autodesk 3ds Max plugin, the 3ds Max SDK needs to be
-installed as well as 3ds Max itself. Please provide the include and
-library paths to Visual Studio.
+The preferred way to fetch and build this project's dependencies is to use the build scripts
+in win/ folder. See [win/readme.md] for more information. Instructions in a nutshell
+(assuming Visual Studio x64 environment variables set):
+    > git clone https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell.git
+    > cd oce\win
+    > build-deps.cmd (defaults to using VS 2015 x64 RelWithDebInfo build)
+    > run-cmake.bat (defaults to using VS 2015 x64)
+    > ..\build-vs2015-x64\IfcOpenShell.sln
+You can now build the solution using the RelWithDebInfo configuration (freshly created solution by CMake defaults to Debug).
+Build the INSTALL project to deploy the headers and binaries into a single location if wanted/needed.
 
-For building the IfcPython wrapper, SWIG needs to be installed. Please
-download the latest swigwin version from http://www.swig.org/download.html.
-After extracting the .zip file, please add the extracted folder to the PATH
-environment variable. Python needs to be installed, please provide the
-include and library paths to Visual Studio.
+Alternatively, the old Visual Studio solution and project files requiring manual work can
+be found from the win/sln folder.
 
 
 Compiling on *nix
 =================
-Users are advised to build IfcOpenShell using the cmake file provided in
+Users are advised to build IfcOpenShell using the CMake file provided in
 the cmake/ folder. There might be an Open CASCADE package in your operating
 system's software repository. If not, you will need to compile Open 
 CASCADE yourself. See http://opencascade.org.
@@ -146,3 +152,5 @@ Or:
     >>>
     >>> # Writing IFC-SPF files to disk:
     >>> f.write("out.ifc")
+
+[win/readme.md]: https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/tree/master/win/readme.md "win/readme.md"