Renumbering made easy with the Excitech Revit Toolkit

I have just downloaded and tested the Excitech Revit Toolkit. The toolkit features 2 ‘main’ add-ins for Revit. The first is a coordinate scheduling tool which is very useful for any project where you have a coordinates system and need precise locations of objects or elements – You add the category of elements through the add-ins tab and coordinate parameters are added to the instance properties of the selected elements. You can then view and export your coordinates schedule directly from Revit.

 The second main add-in in the toolkit is a renumbering tool. I have tried out quite a few different renumbering tools in the past, usually focusing on a single category e.g. doors. The Excitech add-in lets you renumber almost any category of elements in your project. The results of the renumbering are also fairly accurate compared to some other tools which I have used in the past. I will quickly guide you through how the tool works:

Download and install the Excitech Revit Toolkit here. Once you have installed the add-in you will have to activate it through your add-ins tab in Revit – This is an automated process where an activation code will be sent to your registered email address. Once you have received your activation code, simply click on the Excitech logo and paste your activation code into the box provided.

Once activated, you are ready to start renumbering some of your elements. For this example I have picked doors as the elements to be renumbered. Navigate back to your add-ins tab and click on the ‘Renumber Elements’ icon. as shown in the image below. You will now see a dialogue box pop up with different categories listed down the side. This is where you will set up your system for renumbering your objects.

Select the ‘doors’ option in the ‘visible categories’ field. Once you are in the doors category you will need to select your default door tags from your project. Do this by click on the ‘Select Vert.’ or ‘Select Hor’ depending on whether you want the elements to be numbered vertically or horizontally. You will now see your doors listed by current tag. You can now assign a new prefix and suffix for your new tags – for this example I have used tags starting at No. 1 – ‘Prefix’ D (for door) and -0 for ‘Suffix’ (ground floor).

As you can see from the above image you can also add objects using the ‘Pick Objects’ button as well as the options mentioned above. It is also possible to use room numbers in your door tags if you are choosing to schedule your doors by your room schedule. If you select the ‘Auto Swap Element Numbers’ option then all new doors you add will be tagged using your new numbering system. Once you are all set up and have previewed your new numbering system, click on ‘OK’ to proceed. You will now see your doors in plan view with updated tags as well as your door schedule updating automatically. 

That was just a simple example of how easy it is to use this add-in toolkit from Excitech. For more information including release notes and download links and a video presentation by Rob Clark click here. Many thanks to all involved with the development of the FREE Excitech Revit Toolkit add-in. Will look forward to putting this tool  to good use in the future.

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IBM Maximo for Revit 2013

Autodesk labs have recently released IBM Maximo integrated for Revit. In short, Maximo is an asset / building lifecycle management process scheduler. The current release, IBM Maximo Asset Management 7.5 is scalable and coded for easy integration into third party programs, such as Revit.

“IBM Maximo Asset Management software provides asset lifecycle and maintenance management for all asset types on a single platform. It is used to help maximize the value of critical business and IT assets over their lifecycles with workflows by enforcing best practices that yield benefits for all types of assets, including transportation, production, delivery, facilities etc”

Maximo is designed for and fully effective post-production of a building. Richly attributed data about building assets that are developed in Revit during the building design and construction phases, can be published directly into Maximo during commissioning or at building “handover”, thus supporting more immediate and effective use of Maximo once the building is occupied.

“The Revit Maximo integration supports the COBie data specification and visualization of model assets inside Maximo, in context with Maximo applications and processes, to foster more efficient work order management and building maintenance activities.The integration consists of an add-in to Revit 2013 products and integrated visualization of Autodesk® BIM 360 TM Glue inside Maximo version 7.1 or newer.”

There is still a limited amount of information about this add-in for Revit and I am looking for companies or individuals who have tried out and have experience with the software. Please get in contact with me if you could share some more information. Peacock Engineering and Asset Partners have suggested they are already using the software but limited information is available publicly.

Tip: Auto Section Box add-in for Revit – Free

I have been playing around with a new add-in for Revit which I saw advertised via a link being shared around on Twitter. Coins Auto-Section Box which is a free Revit add-in available to everyone for free via Autodesk App Exchange. 

This tool is, as the name suggests used to create quick and easy section boxes in Revit 2013. I’m sure you have all experienced a fair bit of time wasting setting up section boxes for individual rooms / areas of your models. Although the natural process in Revit is simple, this tool just speeds the whole process up. 

The idea is very simple > Select all the objects you want to be added to a section box, either in a 3D or plan view and the tool can automatically generate a section box for you. Another option is to specify your own size. As far as I’m aware this part of the app could be developed a little further as it only has 1 input parameter, so if you type “1000” you will get a section box 1000×1000.

Download the app here and be sure to have Revit 2013 closed when you are installing it. Once the application is installed, open up a project and follow the instructions below:

Locate the part of your model where you want a section box created, and highlight all the elements in this area. I have chosen to use a plan view for my section box, but it is also possible to use other views.

On your Revit 2013 ribbon, navigate to add-ins and click on the ‘Auto Section Box’ tool as shown above. You will now see the ‘Section Box Size’ dialogue. Here you can either specify the size of the section box or choose the default setting of ‘Element extents, plus buffer’ This option will give you a section of all the elements you have selected on this level, plus anything located directly above or below on other levels as shown below. 

Now it is of course possible, if required, to filter the model so that the walls etc are not displayed. One thing that I was hoping for would be the ability to automatically filter the section box by level rather than it taking the extents of the building. I realise it is possible to do this if you have set your worksets up in levels but as this is an automatic tool, we need a more ‘automatic way’ to do it.

I then started to play around with the tool to try and get my desired section box where the extents were limited to the floor I was working on. I realised that if you just select all of the structural columns in one room as shown in the image above, it will create a section box around these members as shown below. 

So there was a useful tip to create a simple and effective section box of the internal elements on a single level of your model. Give it a try yourself, it’s free and very easy to use. I think it will be a useful tool when working on projects where you quickly need to see a 3D view of a portion of your building without setting up a custom section. 

 

Vasari add-ins

FEATURED ADD-INS

Source:

 http://labs.blogs.com/ http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/vasari/ 

	Parametric Sliders (NEW UPDATE) The Parameter Sliders add-in provides a graphical interface for flexing parameters defined in loaded and in-place families. This add-in is a Work in Progress (W.I.P.) and is a separate installer that works with Project Vasari 2.1. // download // more
	Parameters from Image The Parameter from Image add-in is a tool for writing data from an image file to a curtain panel by pattern family in a divided surface. This add-in is a Work in Progress (W.I.P.) and is a separate installer that works with Vasari 2.1. // download // more
	Automatically Update Export for Solar Radiation This WIP adds a check box to the Ecotect Solar Radiation tool to allow automatic update of an exported .csv file when analysis results are updated. // download // more
	Dynamo for Vasari Build parametric functionality on top of Vasari with a graphical user interface. Autodesk has extended the open source effort of Ian Keough by adding some additional nodes and packaging it in an installer for Vasari to make it easier to get up and running. We have also provided some sample workflows. // download // more

Revit and all things BIM

Good morning all! Below you will find a list of websites, which offer external solutions for Revit. All of these I have tried out myself and would recommend. I’ll try to keep this post updated as the sites change or new ones are created. If there are any other programs/websites which you would advise, then drop me a line, and I will add it to the list. This list was compiled mainly from the All things BIM blog.

BIM content for Revit

Project Vasari – Mass model, generate detailed energy analysis. Also comes with a wind tunnel analysis tool, and various other tools which will aid in your BEM process. 

RevitCity – downloadable user content, no quality control; free, registration required for downloading content.

SmartBIM – manufacturer-specific content; modeled by SmartBIM, high quality control; free, no registration required.

Autodesk Seek – content aggregated by Autodesk; contains default Revit families as well as manufacturer-specific content, low to moderate quality control; content in a variety of formats, search can filter for specific formats; free, no registration required.

ARCAT – generic and manufacturer-specific content; modeled by ARCAT, high quality control; free, no registration required.

Sweets – manufacturer-specific content, modeled by manufacturers, quality control unknown; various formats, can’t filter by format type; free, registration required for download; much of the 3D content is in SketchUp format.

RevitComponents – manufacturer-specific and general content, mostly modeled by site author; quality control unknown; free, registration not required.

ArcXL – Revit and CAD details (2D); drafted by ArcXL, quality control unknown; free, registration required for download.

RevitForum – downloadable user content, no quality control; free, registration required for downloading content.

BIMstore – manufacturer-specific content; modeled by bimstore, high quality control; free, registration required for downloading content.

Hope you all have a great week!