What Revit Wants

5 More Navisworks and Revit Tips from Twitter

March 20, 2014May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Un-coordinated BIM is like having all the ingredients of a delicious cake and eating each of them separately.
— Luke Johnson (@lukeyjohnson) March 13, 2014

Struggling with imported DWG in Revit -> IFC Tekla BIMsight? Try Revit 2014ur2, IFC Exporter v3.8.0 & BIMsight 1.9.1. pic.twitter.com/JLdS1Ablkq
— Luke Johnson (@lukeyjohnson) February 25, 2014

Importing images into Navisworks: open in Design Review, save as DWFx, then Append or Import the DWF to @Navisworks pic.twitter.com/BjAsTVYcsP
— Luke Johnson (@lukeyjohnson) March 13, 2014

Navisworks version numbers in registry – and crash count [image] pic.twitter.com/bnCBhQrlGA
— Luke Johnson (@lukeyjohnson) February 24, 2014

7-zip can extract a plain IFC from an ifcZIP pic.twitter.com/thHjVVH8Nw
— Luke Johnson (@lukeyjohnson) March 19, 2014

And some news:

Autodesk 2015 release season has begun. Won’t be long until we see Revit 2015 and Navisworks 2015. pic.twitter.com/wkxEM2Fqe6
— Luke Johnson (@lukeyjohnson) March 20, 2014

IFC Import Differences between Revit 2013 and Revit 2014, and one way to get IFC data into Navisworks with Coordinate Translation

March 19, 2014May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

They are significantly better in 2014, example shown below.

Revit 2013 import of an ifcZIP

Import same file to Revit 2014 – better geometry + category definition

Import to Revit 2014, export as ifc 2×3, then Import to Revit 2013 – a better geometry result

(note 2×2 is worse, the forms are faceted / triangulated)

You could also try the ifc2x4 importer for Revit 2013 from Geometry Gym

… which you can download at:
http://geometrygym.wikidot.com/downloads

If you find yourself in a mixed Revit 2013 / Revit 2014 environment, here is one way to get IFC data through Revit 2014 and into Revit 2013 and Navisworks 2013, along with coordinate translation (if the received IFC is not on the project coordinate system).

Another point to consider – you could theoretically get some data through this process (if you have the needed extensions):

Import IFC to Revit 2014
Export SDNF
Import SDNF to Revit 2013

How To Extract or Recreate an individual NWC file from an NWD

March 18, 2014May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Let’s say something went wrong, and you have lost an NWC file that you need – but you don’t have access to the originating application or model. Do you have an NWD file that contains this NWC, preferably a recent one? Then you should be able to re-create that NWC file, which might get you out of trouble in the short-term.

Open the NWD in Navisworks
In the Selection Tree, select the branch that equates to the NWC you want to regenerate
Hide Unselected
Turn off Sectioning (if you want to make sure you get all of the geometry, uncropped)
Export to 3D DWF or 3D DWFx
In another instance of Navisworks, append that DWF. Navis will automaticlly make an NWC file.
Rename the NWC to match the one that you have lost
Append or re-path it back to your main NWF file

You will probably have to notify someone that this NWC is now somewhat orphaned or disconnected from normal workflows – but I’ll leave that side of it up to you 🙂

Lighting for Renders in Revit

March 18, 2014May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Creating lighting families for accurate rendering in Revit is challenging at best. This recent post by Dave Baldacchino is a bit of an exploration of ways you can try to “fix” manufacturer content and improve the resultant rendering. For example:

Original post (the five points at the end of the post are definitely worth keeping in mind, especially for manufacturers creating Revit lighting families):

HOK BIM Solutions: Manufacturer Content – Lighting

2 Hour Presentation on the Legal Aspects of BIM

March 16, 2014May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

From NYCRUG, embedded here:

1403NYCRUG from Alfred Huang on Vimeo.

via email:

Link:

1403NYCRUG on Vimeo

Making an Additional Custom Ribbon Panel in Revit

March 14, 2014May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Many of us are installing lots of Addins into Revit these days. Some addins, like Scan to BIM, create their own complete ribbon panel. This functionality could be re-appropriated into a solution to the “too many addins” problem.

I think it would be great to have a little widget or customization tool that allows an additional addins Ribbon to be created (eg Addins2), so that you can reduce the sometimes very congested “look” of the single Addins panel in Revit.

Jeremy notified me that the samples provide essentially this capability:

and I did get started on something, but I only got this far and don’t really have time to finish the job:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1dGdRkpk2beN3drNTFvemp1QnM/edit?usp=sharing

So if anyone out there wants to look into creating a nice and easy ribbon customization tool, let me know and I will definitely post about it.

Using View Filters on Unconnected Nodes in a Structural Model

March 13, 2014May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Great little post by Gareth Spencer, showing that you can graphically filter unconnected nodes to allow for easier Structural Model validation:

Download PDF at:
http://www.cadlinecommunity.co.uk/Downloads/FileDownload.ashx?FileUrl=/WhitePapers/Autodesk_Revit/Revit_Structure/wp-cad-00194/docs/Cadline_Unconnected_Nodes_Revit.pdf

via
Using Filters To Highlight Unconnected Nodes – WhitePaper – CADline Community

Multi User, Cloud Based Schedule Editing and Linking with Revit just Got Real

March 13, 2014May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

We use Google Drive a lot now, particularly Google Sheets. The power of a shared spreadsheet cannot be underestimated in the AEC world.

Now, imagine if you could directly export data from Revit to a Google Sheet, edit it, and then import the changes directly back to Revit. Imagine if you could share that spreadsheet to other team members who may not know anything about Revit, but who can modify and update schedules with ease? Yep, this just happened with Bimframe Connect… screenshots below.

Export from Revit to Google Drive