Site Modeling in Revit from a Landscape Architect's Point of View

[@comelordjesus4078]

Perfect timing I saw this video last week but really need it now my studio board is due tomorrow

[@TheRevitKid]

Perfect! So glad it will help! Good luck on your studio board!

[@brenttassell8011]

a really under-utilized part of the process. Nice one

[@ayobamigbadamosi2334]

This is a fantastically well thought out plugin

[@TheRevitKid]

Agreed

[@knairable]

Nice session . (Regarding the family type property preview (in project enviornment), It is always the active family type while saving the family.)

[@TheRevitKid]

Cheers! Good to know … so whatever type is active when you save will be thumbnail! Awesome!

[@ScottValentine]

You did this so early this week! Australia was asleep.

[@TheRevitKid]

It will be at 9PM again next week! Lauren is west coast with a little kiddo! I’ll bend the time for the sake of a toddler ;)

[@eastudio-K]

would interesting to hear Laurens process with Toposolids

[@TheRevitKid]

Agreed!

[@johnerickson2314]

Thanks for the great discussion. I like Revit for architecture compared to AutoCAD but it's always surprising how many things have to be completed with Revit hacks.

[@TheRevitKid]

Yes… that’s the nature of the beast when you’re trying to make one program do it ALL

[@aethelwolfe3539]

The hacks should only be those ones focused on design of the built environment, never project documentation like fake generic annotation call outs and fake generic annotations that look like keynotes. Since people ask for 3D visualization of the whole site, and not having any landscape architects that do Revit where I am at, I feel like I end up doing a lot of their work for translation from 2D CAD.

[@eastudio-K]

Regarding slab to topo is this plug-in better than using the dynamo method?, which is one of the only things I’ve tried with dynamo btw

[@TheRevitKid]

It started as a Dynamo tool and Lauren shared that on her blog. I don't know if its better but it is probably easier and more stable. ;)

[@Luftvargen]

Oh crap! I missed the European-friendly time! Whats the future-plans? Is This ’the new time’ or is it just this once? Interesting show, and great BIM-tip! I was like: ’You can Copy it!?’ 😮

[@TheRevitKid]

Wild, right??

[@АртемМеньщиков-ц3ю]

Thanks!!!

[@TheRevitKid]

You’re welcome!

[@eastudio-K]

Best practice for creating topo from point cloud?

[@TheRevitKid]

Not really many great ways to do that. YOu can make a mesh out of it ... or bring it into a program that will clean it up. I think Civil 3D or Infraworks might be better at doing so.

[@aethylwulfeiii6502]

Easy, you don’t even need dynamo, just xcel spreadsheet, format it so it is only x y x coordinate in the first three columns, then you go to massing and site, file import topography from .csv.

[@yasmeennoshi898]

Thanks for the cool video. How can I access the softscape tree file?

[@TheRevitKid]

I believe it is available on Lauren's blog : landarchbim.com/

[@andycmacp]

Hedges?! How do you create hedges that look nice (ie not dull rectangles) in plan, elevation and in 3D?

[@aethelwolfe3539]

An array planting family, with leaves.

[@darrenpedder3509]

@therevitkid Please can you tone down the music on the Big Bad Bim Tip - it is so loud and we can't hear you talking !

[@TheRevitKid]

Thanks for the feedback! That was my fault, I have TWO instances of the music start by accident. It is a LIVE show after alll! These things will happen! Cheers and thanks for following!

[@catallaxy]

I am not crazy about people who don't know whether they are making a statement or asking a question.

[@TheRevitKid]

🤔🤔….?

[@TheCuriousOrbs]

Why does "out of the box" Revit really need to rely on third-party add-ons to do the heavy lifting that industry needs to be productive and competitive? For example, when was the last time anyone saw significant changes to the standard topo tool set offered? Get your shit together Autodesk, at over $4k/yr for a single seat license, this really isn't good enough.

[@TheRevitKid]

Honestly, in my humble opinion, it's because it is a single program trying to do EVERYTHING. Jack of all trades, master of none... Type of ordeal.

[@JohnSmith-ke1pu]

Revit is the wrong tool for landscape designers, a dedicated tool like Vectorwoks Landmark it’s more intuitive to use Don’t let other trades push you into complicating your workflow

[@joshkar24]

what about even blender or UE4 or UE5? seems like w/ the right setup you could really go nuts w/ the level of detail and iterate on a dime with those packages, then bring the revit model in

[@ScottValentine]

This plugin gets you working as close as you can to making Revit a usable tool for landscape at the moment. There's 2 major hold issues that need to be resolved by Autodesk however and that's hatching and making topography actually work, probably not using mesh.

[@TheRevitKid]

Those tools are great mesh modeling tools for sure... but they are NOT good documenting tools.... The hardest part about landscape architecture is the organic nature of the forms but they also need to be represented 2-dimensional (for now)....

[@ScottValentine]

@@TheRevitKid Like Lauren said, use Model likes or a DWG for the real contours. I haven't gone down this path just yet but I believe in the latest versions of Revit we can filter lines (I think) so my theory at the moment is use filters to colour the 3D lines per height so they can be checked as well. Most people having to document in Revit are doubling up work at the moment using CAD and Revit, far from ideal. I'll hope for some modifications inside revit to make it actually usable so a total switch can be made. Revit is still great for many things in landscape, but some things it's just plain awful. "I just made that sloped organic path 100mm wider".... thanks!!

[@dantheman3022]

Revit is kinda shit for this sort of thing (Site modeling)(especially the stock program). Unfortunately there are not many alternatives.

[@TheRevitKid]

True!!

[@ScottValentine]

In the last 12 months these kind of plugins have made it better. So we can say it's getting there... Slowly

[@aethylwulfeiii6502]

I bet developing BlenderBIM could be a competitive solution. Much more powerful modeling tool than Revit out of the box, and you can make all sorts of parametric trees with geometry nodes out of the box.

[@SUL-KSA]

not clear the steps from beginning, it should be a tutorial about how to use this program and explain all the tools embedded

[@TheRevitKid]

Thanks for tuning in! This live interview was about using Revit as a landscape architect.... It was not meant to be a step by step tutorial of specific programs or plugins. Sorry to disappoint!! ;)

[@eastudio-K]

“Like topography but more useless”

[@kj-uv7zr]

Just a long advertisement for a $500 per year plug-in, I didn't learn anything useful from this. Nice for big firms I guess...

[@TheRevitKid]

I’m sorry you feel that way. I, for one, learned a few things about best practices for roads and sidewalks, an interesting take on using floors for walls, using rooms for planting plans, and more … plus, if you think you’d find value in the addin but don’t have the budget for it, Lauren has all of the major tools as dynamo scripts on her blog 100% for free…

[@kj-uv7zr]

@@TheRevitKid Your guest has done an excellent, even artful job of making revit do something that it wasn't designed for, but I find it hard to believe that an experienced user like yourself learned those things from this conversation. Thanks anyways, I appreciate the effort it takes & the difficulty of putting out good content, this one just missed the mark for me.

[@ScottValentine]

The time it saves you pays for itself in the first day.

[@kj-uv7zr]

@@ScottValentine Respectfully, no, it doesn't. Even if you are paying yourself $100 per hour, that would mean you are wasting 5 hrs a day modeling sitework. Like I said, good for large firms, but maybe not the average user.

[@ScottValentine]

It's for people who have to do landscape architecture in BIM. It's a growing requirement of larger projects where every discipline is required to produce a Revit model.