Managing and automating Revit model health dashboards!

[@ArchAhmadWaheed]

Too much valuable experience condensed in one free video, Wonderful Gavin! Really appreciating your effort & knowledge sharing. 👌👌👌👌

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Glad it was helpful!

[@alvernepaiva3287]

Amazing as always Gavin !

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Cheers!

[@kaizhu6382]

Masterclass. Also, LOL'd hard at the story of the 8 hour print... I just can't even.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

It was an uber facepalm moment! Glad you enjoyed the video.

[@carlosmunoz1041]

Great presentation Gavin and great tips on the topic. Very useful right now with me. I will adopt some of your workflows which are great. Thank you sir.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Thanks! Hope the workflows go well.

[@kiodour]

Thanks for this Masterclass. I see you're having a lot of fun with scripts.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

I sure am!

[@adamhadji5488]

Thanks Gavin, another great work.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Cheers Adam!

[@akselalvarez]

Very nice video! Thanks for sharing,I'll get a look into the files and get back in touch. I'm trying myself to introduce some of these elements in our company as means to make visible to the other folks how important is to work in a clean manner.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Glad to hear it will be put to practical use. Be sure to pass it by everyone and get buy-in first - this is the most important part, and also the most common point of failure in these types of workflows.

[@fernandoluisotero5573]

Buenas, agradezco sus tutoriales, hace tres meses no tenemos el agrado de escucharlo.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

¡Me alegra saber que son útiles!

[@daveotis7016]

Thanks and very usefull like usual! I will use for sure some part of your nice stuff! Suggestion: maybe a tutorial of how to build a tool (script, icon in ribbon atc ..) with pyRevit can be a good idea ;)!

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Good idea indeed! I plan to make some tutorials once I'm a bit better at using it.

[@narkisbubbleboy4584]

Thanks! Looking for the reason the pdfs out of revit 19.2 get stuck in the printing service. the architect took us from 2021 to 2019 and not the latest one.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Typically it'd be a print driver related issue in my experience depending on the method of printing. Try out a few different types (a decent free one is pdf995). Sounds painful being brought back into the past by another consultant, been there before...

[@ambrozote]

It’s great that you are sharing not just the methods but also the files you use. Thank you, Gavin. At the beginning of the video you mention pushing the data to the cloud but you do not expand on the topic. Would this be a theme for a separate video of itself? Nudge nudge ;)

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Unfortunately it's a difficult one for me, I'm mildly across how sql and rest API works but not to the point where I'd put it all out there for scrutiny most likely. With my main client I actually have a developer who luckily manages most of this, so I see a bit here and there but much of it goes way over my head! A simpler approach could possibly be to write to speckle, but there's a fair bit of user cofig to enable that workflow initially.

[@nguyenminhkhoi6830]

Hi Gavin, Do you have the ideal about automatic generation of skirting? My way of doing it is to get the line around the room and created the skirting by railing. But I'm having trouble getting the intersection between railing and door. Can you help me for this? Thanks you so much.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Yes I'm aware of some people using railings. To break it at doors, you could generate a solid at the door by making a line from the location point, generating a rectangle by the width and a nominal depth and rotating by door instance rotation. From there you can do a difference to exclude any curves crossing those rectangles. These could be separated using Group Curves node from Archilab and then used to make multiple railings.

[@thumder3735]

One thing worth mentioning: before setting a parameters value you should check if it is up-to-date, and only set them if it is neccessary, because as you know saving occurs before and after synchronization, so editing the elements after synchronization will make you the borrower of those elements again immediately after sync, thus anyone else tries to sync after you will have element edit conflict running the doc saved hook on pre-sync save. I hope it makes sense :D

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Great point! Yes I'm still figuring out what hook suits worksharing, I suspect a pre-sync event suits best and I like your idea of only updating what has changed. It would mean other uses need to do a reload latest before syncing if they all have the hook running, but I'm thinking it may be best for only the model managed to have their hook active maybe.

[@thumder3735]

Unfortunately everything gets quite sketchy in a workshared environment. I would suggest to check each element if they are editable before trying to edit them (WorksharingUtils Class has some useful static methods), and only try to edit if they are, especially in hooks! Also you better use doc-syncing event in case of workshared files. I would create a generic function that does most of the stuff, and have a doc saved and doc syncing hook as well, and check whether if the current doc is workshared or not, and only call the master function if it is appropriate, else just return.

[@dykodesigns]

Very insightful, recently I had to work from model made by another company to do our structural work. Other companies models are always big and bloated for some reason. File sizes over 100mb make my skin crawl. Some external parties also have a habbit of supplying really big cad files that always need a lot of clean up before they are usable. The off axis problem can creep in when you use a cad file as an underlay to draw your own in place families. I design a lot of bridges with Revit so in place modelling is unavoidable, but using lean, well formed and accurate cad files can help avoid some of these issues, sometimes I redraw them partially to fix them up. I also prefer to create my own loadable families because third party ones sometimes do weird things.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Thanks! I work with architects who often have files over 2GB - it's an absolute sin, and the engineers sometimes refuse to coordinate with their models. Usually they don't split the models which is the cause - hoping to change their mind in future. I blame the cloud for forcing file size off the servers where IT can actually complain about this. In-place is perfectly fine for non-repetitive components, just worrying when it gets copied and used like a loadable definition. Engineers in my experience are good with this, architects not so much.

[@ambrozote]

I can certainly relate to this video. The PEBKAC I knew by the easier to remember picnic. A picnic problem is a “problem in chair not in computer” type of problem. :)

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Ah that's a much better acronym!

[@ArchAhmadWaheed]

6:16 Example of when it goes wrong Unfortunately repeated over and over, everywhere!

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Yep it sure is! Seems to get worse as the years go on...

[@JFASACM]

Hi, Guru! Missing your stuff! Kinda off topic, but is it possible to change the default number of backup files so every new project will be created with this new setting? Also, I have a family I had to alter, but it is loaded in several projects. Any Dynamo magic to update it in those projects without the need of manually opening all of them?

[@AussieBIMGuru]

I'll be back soon hopefully - just very busy with other side projects and consulting. I believe if you use a Revit template it should remember the backups you set on the template itself, but I might be mistaken there. Otherwise copying a project versus using a template is probably the only way I can think of off the top of my head... Dynamo can open models in background and run tasks across them - the Orchid package has nodes which can do these things. Note that the model will still take just as long to open as normal though, it wont save any time there, just saves you manually clicking everything.

[@JFASACM]

@@AussieBIMGuru, great to hear you'll be back! Thanks for the guidance on these issues

[@alimustafa3885]

Hello, could make videos about bim interoperability Revit tools

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Unfortunately i dont make videos these days due to time constraints.

[@_arc]

Hi Gavin, Nice presentation. I don't test the health of my models yet and like the idea of health measurements at save intervals however would it be possible to implement a measure health change between intervals? Then rather than during or after a save just having records, how about before a save measure and add the extra question should health have deteriorated significantly, do you want to save, or undo a specific issue? Regards,

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Yes this would be possible, and could be done by writing a journal file to the user's machine on file open (using pyRevit hooks detecting this event), then on save or pre-synch it could check a journal (if found) and prompt the user of the changes detected in the model state. I am not sure if a synch can be cancelled however, so it might just encourage them to go back and save again afterwards. I have an example of automating a journal writing process in this tutorial (for a different purpose): kzbin.info/www/bejne/aYqplnyGeNemeZY

[@_arc]

@@AussieBIMGuru The idea is to inform a user of the session effect on the model while fresh in the mind and specific change issues can be more easily identified, like the use of a large family or a major warning. Hopefully better for users and companies.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Yes a family can be used and updated, or a popup box could be triggered. I guess the point is you get to be the architect of the system when it comes to pyRevit - it's quite flexible.

[@asfundkhalid5961]

Hi Gavin Crump. I want to ask how we can extract the cost of an element in the revit model using dynamo as there is no parameter with the name of cost in the node of element.Parameters. Can you Kindly assist me in this regard thnx

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Cost is a type parameter, so you will need to get the element's type instead or use the typeorinstance parameter nodes in the Rhythm package.

[@asfundkhalid5961]

@@AussieBIMGuru ok sir surely I will explore it, Just want to tell you that I am doing a research on integrating BIM and blockchain technology, and your content has helped me alot in this regard. Really appreciate your work and keep it up. thnx

[@chandumadgula9424]

Gud one gavin…!! Can you please make a video on external services in revit and How to use the revitapi methods. Thank you

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Thanks! I'll have some videos on pyRevit soon which will touch on the API, however that topic is vast and a KZbin video could barely scrape the surface. I'd recommend looking into packages like Genius Loci or mine (Crumple) which are basically openable in the Python editor where you can see heaps of examples of using the API.

[@mikewashington4188]

Can I overlay real time location data on Revit model? Thanks

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Possibly, but not sure which method you'd use for that. You would need an application to run regularly I think, and a method of retrieving that data in Python or C#.

[@MrSam8Alex]

Hi, Any way I can buy the revit model health dashboards?

[@AussieBIMGuru]

I have a lightweight version for free at courses.bimguru.education, and a full one in the template on that website.

[@MrSam8Alex]

@@AussieBIMGuru Thanks for the quick reply. Would you be able to leave a link for both as I’ve visited the website and couldn’t find them? Even tried the search bar. Thanks in advance.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

@@MrSam8Alex courses.bimguru.education/courses/model-revit-bsp courses.bimguru.education/bundles/revit-template

[@preetamola5376]

Hi man, i am using revit froma month, now i want to learn dynamo grasshopper how to learn them,from where i should start what should i focus more? please advise me!

[@AussieBIMGuru]

This webinar I did should help provide guidance on the subject: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYLXZqugaN57ibM That's a lot to learn after one month. My biggest piece of advice to most people is 'don't rush'. I have a course in dynamo over at courses.bimguru.education which is probably my most complete resource on learning dynamo currently.

[@damirces]

Aussiieeee, really huge work. I am just thinking should we have Healthy model check board on welcoming screen. I am just seeing my team that they just don't care about that when they're opening the model. Would go this dashboard just for Bim team. Really is paradox seeing how much effort and work man should put into this in Revit and on other hand Auto Cad has tool called "Data extract" that does all these things as built in. Revit by default need to have an option like this as built in.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

It's a lot of work, but BIM is complex. Companies forget how much time and effort they put into their CAD setups and aren't willing to do it again with BIM, for some reason the industry expects Autodesk to do it for them this time - it wont happen. Dynamo is essentially the dataextract tool for Revit if you set it up. The closest from there is exporting schedules to csv and opening in excel.

[@damirces]

@@AussieBIMGuru you'e right, BIM is complex but always it's up to us BIM coordinators and managers to bring as simple as possible BIM structure to a regular users. To them which is 95% architects in reality. That's really tough job. Actually to be honest Autodesk should do that with a BIM because BIM is expensive tool and should be improved. To be real if Autodesk did geometry optimization many years ago complex models would be like lower then 200Mb and not 500Mb, 1TB or more. From my experience lower then 200Mb model is operative. Can be even 500Mb but in this case I need to do compress every day maybe to make work easier. What I would suggest, at the beginning of every project do everything in one Revit model (easier because families, view templates etc.) and then split the models into two or three smaller models. Last week I had a issue with Detail Item families which had a lot of detail groups inside the families that made these families tough to use and model was really slower. When I deleted all these detail groups inside everything was ok. So I start tracking the family sizes and I found one Plug-In that calls "Family reporter" which is really handy and operative for our Model health check.

[@AussieBIMGuru]

@@damirces i highly doubt we will see significant improvements to Revit unfortunately - besides Dynamo it has barely changed since BIM360 came out. The only thing that changed significantly was price... I agree model split timing and lean families are important. I'd say its less than 95% architects, many engineers using BIM depending on the region.

[@damirces]

@@AussieBIMGuru I agree. We not gonna see any improvements only if there are "Open letters" every year as it was last year. I understand you completely, it's just my wish to be differently. Anyway thank you very much for the idea and workflow for the Model health check.

[@AnmolKumar-mc4fe]

Is there any Masters in BIM in Australia in University?

[@AussieBIMGuru]

I believe Bond University has a course.

[@AnmolKumar-mc4fe]

@@AussieBIMGuru thank you for your response sir, and how is the scope of BIM over there in Australia?

[@AussieBIMGuru]

@@AnmolKumar-mc4fe it varies from firm to firm, usually still quite drawing focused but larger firms tend to have BIM teams.

[@BIMCONS]

Thanks!

[@AussieBIMGuru]

You're welcome!

[@bozhou794]

为什么不更新了？

[@AussieBIMGuru]

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean. This translated to 'why not update' - I don't understand.