Best Material Definition Delivery method from Suppliers into Revit

Luke Johnson

In response to Andy’s musing that “I can’t help thinking though that there must be a better way of delivering Revit materials definitions to Architects,” I would like to direct attention to the method used by Lysaght. I previously posted about it here.

Essentially, you download a .adsklib file that you can then access through the Revit material manager / dialog.

Personally, I have struggled to keep up with the way that material definitions have changed over the past couple of years in Revit.  The sheer number of tabs and inconsistent screen divisions kinda confuses me (I don’t like having this split screen effect with 2 tabs on one side and 3 on the other… :-S )

In any case, currently the .adsklib method is, in my opinion, the quickest and best way for Suppliers to deliver appropriate Material Appearances into Revit – if any suppliers are listening…

In response to:
Shades of Grey: RUBBER CONTENT

Mini computers – Would you like Candy or Pi ?

Luke Johnson

FXI Cotton Candy – approx $199

Quad Core ARM® Mali™-400MP Graphics Processing Unit
– Quad-core ARM Mali-400MP 720p / 1080p OpenGL ES v2.0
– 30M Polygons, 1.2 GPixels / s

Connectivity
Wifi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

Memory
1GB DRAM
Up to 64GB memory local storage (microSD)

Cotton Candy – FXITech

Raspberry Pi – approx $35

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

CPU:     700 MHz ARM1176JZF-S core (ARM11 family)[3]
GPU:     Broadcom VideoCore IV,[45] OpenGL ES 2.0, 1080p30 h.264/MPEG-4 AVC high-profile decoder[3]
Memory (SDRAM):     256 Megabytes (shared with GPU)
Onboard storage:[10]     SD / MMC / SDIO card slot

Image from CNN.com

 
Tiny $35 Raspberry Pi computer causes big stir on launch day – CNN.com

Previous post:
PC on a USB Stick for $25

Revit API Challenge: convert In-place Families to Component Families automatically

Luke Johnson

Here is what we want – you select an in-place family and click ‘Convert to Component Family‘ on the Ribbon.  Through API Wizardry, the following happens without any further user interaction:

  1. The family is edited in place
  2. All objects in the family (including reference planes etc) are selected
  3. A ‘group’ command is triggered
  4. The group is saved (as a file) to a temporary location (it will be an RFA)
  5. This family is loaded back into the project
  6. The family is placed in the correct location (XYZ) in the project
  7. The original in-place family is deleted from the project.

This can all be done manually of course, using the workflow described here.

I’m sure that many users would find this tool helpful, and for some of you advanced Revit API programmers, this utility should be a piece of cake!

Also: if you release this utility for free, just think of the Revit API street cred that would give you.

Finally, if you want to take it to the next level – make a Batch Convert option, that allows the user to ‘pick’ which In-place families (from the current project) that they would like converted, after which the Batch tool goes ahead and does steps 1 to 7 above on each and every in-place family you selected.

Revit users – Five Stages vs 6 Phases vs Hype Cycle

Luke Johnson

The Five Stages are actually different to the 6 Phases of a Revit User (you need to read it if you haven’t before).

I think its interesting that both of these could be roughly mapped to the Gartner Hype Cycle.


Does anyone want to take the time to draw a Five Stages – 6 Phases – Hype Cycle diagram (mapping each element to specific points on the hype cycle)?  I think it would be quite popular in the Revit blogosphere… Go bloggers go

via
The Five Stages of Revit Users | AUGI

Linking Specifications to Revit – Especs or NBS or ??

Luke Johnson

Interesting conversation on Twitter recently – basically Especs and NBS were mentioned as possible methods of linking specifications to Revit.  What method do you use?

Looking into #BIM and #Revit to see how specifications can be directly linked. Via key noting possibly? Anyone had any experiences to date?
@Matt_J_Fox @MarkSchuey You can link you NBS Spec to Revit keynotes using this thenbs.com/support/softwa…


@SteveDeadman @Matt_J_Fox @MarkSchuey Don’t have any experience with it myself, but this looks promising: e-specs.com/especs-revit.h… not free tho!

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Twitter / @Matt_J_Fox: Looking into #BIM and #Rev …

Making Reference Lines Normal

Luke Johnson

BIM Troublemaker proposes a solution that makes Reference Lines normal, at least in the short-term…and he adds a throwdown to Buildz at the end 🙂

I’ll start with my 3d triangle and draw a rectangle on its face. Lookie Dis! They are aligned in the direction i want!

I deleted 2 lines i didn’t need, slapped reference points hosting my extrusion profile on the 2 remaining, and then pulled them to the edges of my triangle…

Read more / via
BIM Troublemaker: Aligning Reference Lines

Sketchup to Revit with Materials

Luke Johnson

EDIT Keep in mind that if you import an SKP directly into Revit, it will create materials for each shading material as “Render Material xx-yy-zz” in the Material Library.  You can check which is which by looking at the colour on the Graphics tab, but you will need to manually map Render Appearances from here.

Also, remember that you can save all related material resources if you go via 3dsMax.
There have been many posts about how you can control Sketchup materials in Revit using Object Styles.  However, this relies on the existence of different layers for each distinct material in the original file.  If you have an SKP file and would like to create the layers you need (without using Sketchup itself), you can use this method:

  1. Import Sketchup SKP file in to 3ds Max Design
  2. Export as FBX file
  3. Use Import command in AutoCAD, choose the FBX file – choose to have a layer for each material (Assign Objects to Layers – By Material)
  4. For some reason, I had to untick the Block option – otherwise the file would not import at all.
  5. Save the DWG file
  6. Import to Revit – you now have granular control over each Material / Layer combination through Object Styles…

Note – this method uses only Autodesk tools, it does not require Sketchup to be installed.  If I remember correctly, you can instruct Sketchup to export different layers for each material when exporting a DWG (?)

If you have an alternative way of doing this, feel free to comment.

Revit to Access to Excel and Back Again

Luke Johnson

I have previously posted about accessing and modifying the Revit Database in a number of posts over the past couple of years, including:
Database and Excel Linking tools for Revit 2012
Exposing the Revit Database (RDB Link method)
Link Excel spreadsheet data into Revit

Now, from revit-pl.typepad.com we get a review of how to use DB Link to get a Revit model into access, then modify and update the database using Excel.

… the task of directing the attitude of these parameters that all poles have become a consistent shape, eg by one by one appropriately “shrunk” towards the top, according to a chart linear function.

First Saving the model into a format read by MS Access ®.
Second Modifying the parameters using the formulas family excelowskich and update the model.

There are a few videos at the original post.

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Morze nowych możliwości. Revit MS Access MS Excel = BIM – My Blog