Creating a Parametric North Marker in Revit

For all our architectural plans we need a North Marker so that anyone reading the drawings have a fair enough idea about all the major directions, movements of the sun & local wind conditions.

In this tutorial for beginner I will try to explain how we can create one such Parametric Family in Revit, nest it in a Titleblock and use it over and over again for all our projects. You will also learn how to control its direction and visibility.(To hide it in drawings containing Elevations, sections, details etc.)

Hope this tutorial help you understand the very basics of the family creation.

Also, will update the video with the link to download the finished North Marker.

(I am sorry, I don’t have a good enough mic so used transcripts. If anyone is interested would share the transcript too)

Generating Revit Toposurface from Text based CAD file

At times I am faced with a scenario where we need to create Revit Topography but surveying CAD drawings simply contains spot elevation as texts rather than points with actual elevation. For example the  file below has MTexts containing the elevation for various location but no contour or point-elevation, all we have are the texts.

We have to create the topography in Revit, either we choose to manually create those hundreds of points (That will definitely take a long-long time) or we can find a better automated way to do this. So, if you want to automate this cumbersome job then follow along and you will learn how to use LISP, DATAEXTRACTION, Excel and Revit to generate topography from such text based files.

Let’s Begin,

1. Clean up the CAD file from all the unwanted data. Keep only the spot-elevation texts somewhere near the origin, check the scale and units to make sure it matches your Revit units. (Or you can place these points w.r.t your Shared Coordinate)

2. If you have +/- signs in your spot level texts you can simply find and replace those in CAD. This will clean it up further and avoid few unnecessary steps. Keep your drawing as clean as possible.

3. Your file might look something like this after clean up.

4. This whole process will work only if your texts are Texts but not MTexts. So if you have MTexts, select everything and explode once. That will convert all MTexts into single line Texts.

5. Now that we have all the Elevation as Texts, the next step would be to convert these texts into Points with Z value using LISP action. For that you need to download the attached lsp file from here. Download, extract and save the TextToPoint.lsp file somewhere accessible.(The code doesn’t belong to me, I found it on internet and altered it to align with my purpose. Thanks the mighty Internet )

6. In CAD run the appload command and browse to the saved location,  load the TextToPoint.lsp file and click load again when prompted. This will load a new command called “Spot_elevation” in your CAD environment.

7. Go to the command line and run the newly loaded command Spot_elevation

8. Then you have to select all the texts that you want to convert into elevated points depending on the values. Select all or the only texts you want to convert.

9. Press enter to finalise the selection and select Value in command line. (This will take the values from texts as Z-coordinate)

10. You are done, all the texts are converted into points with their individual Z-Position.  You can check this by selecting any point and checking its Z position.

From here on you can Save the CAD file and take these points directly in Revit to generate topography. But I prefer taking spot elevations in excel and do some local-level subtraction and then import it in the Revit.

11. We need to extract the data of these points in excel based format so that we can edit, change or update it whenever needed. Also, excel can easily integrate with Dynamo and it’s one more reason to have excel sheet for Topography points.

For that, we will use a very strong feature of CAD….DATAEXTRACTION.

12. Go to the command-line and run the command DATAEXTRACTION. Select “Create A new data extraction(dxe)” and Save the dxe file somewhere.

Click next.

13. In next screen check “Select objects in the current drawing”

Click on selection icon next to it and select all the points. Press enter to finalise the selection.

Click next

14. Make sure Point is checked and click next.

15. In next window unckeck everything on right except geometry. And make sure X, Y, Z positions are checked in left(This is an important feature of CAD, it lists all the available data for your selection and lets you choose what you want to extract)

Click Next.

16. Now you can see the x,y,z values of the points here. Click Next.

17. Check Output file as a CSV and save the file somewhere.

18. Open the file in excel and delete Row 1, Name & Count columns.(Revit reads the csv point files starting from A1, with first three columns representing x,y,z values of a point)

19. Save the file as CSV again.

20.  We are done with excel, Next Fire up the Revit. Go into topography.

21. Specify the point file and open it.

22. When prompted Specify the units of the excel(CAD) file.

23. And you are done. You have your toposurface ready(I added few more extra points to make it look like square plot).

Click finish.

24. You can draw a section(or take spot elevations) to check it worked correctly or not.

Using this process you can convert any text based spot-elevations into Revit Toposurface.

Thanks for following along. In case you have any doubt please do let me know in comments. Sample CAD and excel files can be downloaded from Sample CAD files.

 

Browser organisation for Views – Part 03

Now that you have already done with the nomenclature for the views the next thing would be to setup a Browser Organisation for views, without which all the naming would be in vain and look super messy.

1. Go to the project browser, right click on main View category and select ‘Browser Organisation’

2. From the Browser Organisation pop-up select ‘New’

3. Give it a name and click OK.

4. Leave the Filtering Tab untouched and go to ”Grouping and Sorting’ tab and setup the the various fields as shown below and click OK.

5. You will notice all your Views are organised as below, once you are used to Naming abbreviations you can quickly navigate to any view with precision.

Please share if you found these posts helpful.

BIM – View naming standard

The major difference between CAD based workflow and BIM oriented workflow is the ability of softwares like Revit/ArchiCAD to create Parametric BIM Models. A BIM model is not just a 3D Model, it’s a model that contains almost all the information about the project which can generate Geometry Model,Discipline Specific Model, Energy Analysis Model and a lot more. To access and work on all these within the model, these softwares allow you to create various views like plan, sections, elevations etc.

Even within a small project there can be hundreds of views and imagine browsing through each of them just to find the one you want to work on? It is not really necessary to organise and name the views, Revit has it’s own organisation system that comes OTB. But I personally prefer creating a standard view nomenclature system and integrating it across the office for all the projects to keep things sorted and also helps you to find something precisely in a much more efficient way .

These view nomenclature standards vary from firm to firm so you might agree or disagree with what I am proposing. After trying many different nomenclature, I have finally created something that works almost perfectly for me and I will be sharing that here.

This nomenclature is Phase-View-Purpose-Level-Location-Dependency based where ‘-‘ will indicate transition in categories. Again, we won’t use spaces and thus spaces are replaced by ‘_’ wherever required. So, lets begin.

Following is the overall View nomenclature that I use to name my view. It follows ‘NN-AA-AA-NN_A-AAAA..AAA-A’ nomenclature.

N=Number A= Alphabate

1. Phase: NN

A project can have various phases. And at times you might need to segregate views and objects depending on the Phase. So, the first part of the name is Phase.

example – 01, 02, 03, …..
2. View: AA

By default, Revit provides you with few OTB views namely Floor Plan, Structural Plan, Reflected Ceiling Plan, Area Plan, Elevations, Sections, Callouts, 3D Views etc. And the next part of the name is for that. e.g. 01-SP (Phase 01, structural plan)

3. Intended View Use: AA

Lets say I have a floor plan, a floor plan can be an architectural plan, civil layout plan, brick work layout plan, detail plan, etc. Thus the intended use of the plan further defines it’s purpose. Hence, the next part of the code defines the intended use of the view. If needed you can add a new category here. e.g.  01-SP-DT (Phase 01, structural plan used as Detail Plan)

4. Level and Sub level: Format: NN_A

Lets say my project has 5 major levels, Ground Level(01), Plinth level(02), first floor(03), second floor(04) and Third floor(05). All these levels are visible in all the building sections and elevations, but then there are intermediate levels that are introduced in project after certain details and are not necessarily visible in all views i.e. Water Tank Base level, Mid landing level, Overhead tank base levels etc. So, I name these levels using the level below them i.e if OHT base level is between 02 and 03 level, I number it as 02_A and obviously this part of the name is not applicable to views like elevation, sections etc and thus can be left blank i.e. ’00_0′.

ex. 01-SP-DT-03_A (Phase 01, structural plan used as Detail Plan at level 03 and sub-level A)

05. Location: Format: AAAAA_AAAAA…AA..AAA

For Floor/Ceiling plans location is the floor name, for elevation it’s Front, back, rear etc. For sections it is AA, BB, CC, Entrance_Ramp, Beam_C12X14 and so on. Whereas for 3D view you name it according to it’s location.

e.g. 01-SP-DT-03_A-Staircase_2 (Phase 01, structural plan used as Detail Plan at level 03 and sub-level A, at Staircase_2 )

e.g. 01-SX-BS-00_0-AA (Phase 01, Section used as Building Section AA )

06. Dependency: A

Last category for naming is Dependency and Linkage which you are not going to need unless you are working with a lot of linked files. Some views are dependent on linked files, i.e Coordination layout is dependent on linked Services and Structural model and thus while naming such views we add ‘D’at the end or else we add ‘I’  but if there are not many linked files, you can ignore this category and do the naming without it.

Setting up Folder Structure – First step to BIM

Contrary to what most people think BIM is not only just using software like Revit or ArchiCAD, it’s essence lies in the organised workflow and better coordination during the complete project life-cycle.

Whether working solo or with a small team or a firm with multiple stake holders, one of the first things you should do before starting a project is to set up the folder structure. With time project gets complex, number of files within your design and from consultants increase, and believe me having a well structured sorting system always helps in the long run, avoids confusion and last moment panic.

Thus my first post is about setting up the folder structure. I will explain briefly few top level folders and their purpose, but for detailed understanding you can refer the master-image below and download the attached Sample Folder Structure.

Before we start I strongly recommend not to use spaces, rather use ‘_’ to separate the words. And even if there is only one person working on the project I would recommend enabling the Worksets and Worksharing which keeps file more secure and less prone to getting corrupt.

Please follow the image below to create all the major folders and read the folder description mention underneath for their purpose:

Sample Folder Structure

1. Project Code/Number: Start with a 3 digit code(preferably a serial number) for your project. This code will define your project and top level naming for files, drawings and everything else. ex. 144

2.  BIM Folder: Withing your project folder create a folder with the format “ProjcetCode_BIM_Model”. This folder contains everything related to your BIM Model, whatever goes in or out from the model will be stored here and would consist of 5 sub-folders. ex. 144_BIM_Model

3. Building Model: The first folder in Bim Folder is “01.Building_Model” which contains your BIM model, all things related to creating model, drawings, views etc.

4. Output Folder:  Second folder in BIM folder is “02.Output” which is for your deliverable, drawings, pdf, renders, schedules, analysis and miscellaneous things that your BIM model is capable of producing.

5: Records: The next folder in BIM folder is “03. Record” and contains all the shared files that you share internally with with other teams, externally to the consultants or recieve from your consultants

6. Visualisation Model:
Within BIM Folder “04.Visualization_Model” contains exported part or complete 3D geometry of the BIM model for external render/animation specific software. This also contains working models with all materials and setups for any other 3rd party programs.

7. Tracking Documents: Last but not the least, BIM folder contains “05.Trackers” folder. All the documents to track the project timeline, updates in template, deliverable documents, status of drawing released etc are stored here.

You can follow the next post ‘View Naming Standards‘for naming and segregating Views in Revit.

Download Sample Folder Structure