Articles in Category: Global AEC

Dividing Complex Surfaces into Regular Patterns using Revit

If want to divide a complex surface into a regular pattern, Revit's conceptual modeling environment has features that make it easy to do. 

You can divide a surface into a grid and apply a regular pattern (for example, triangles, rectangles, hexagons, octagons, and so on) that will smartly wrap to the surface's shape. You can then use this pattern to generate curtain panel elements.  

Here's how to do it...

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Using Rhino to Help Transfer Complex Surfaces from Revit to SketchUp

    SketchUp sometimes does a very poor job of reading the DWG or DXF file that Revit exports -- especially if you're transferring complex, curved surfaces. It may omit many edges, which can create random holes in the curved surfaces.

    I tried another strategy -- using Rhino to create an intermediate 3DS version -- and it seems to yield a much better result. 

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Updating a Linked IFC File in Revit

If you're working in ArchiCAD and transfer your model into Revit using the IFC file format, follow these steps to make it easier to incorporate the updates from ArchiCAD into the Revit model.

The key is to open the IFC file, save it as a separate Revit model file, and then link this intermediate Revit model into your main project model. Keeping the IFC data in a separate, linked Revit model will make it easy to update that part of the model as your ArchiCAD model continues to evolve.

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Creating a Toposurface for Your Project Site

You can use SketchUp to import location and topographic data from Google Earth and easily create a toposurface for your project model.  This article details the essential steps...
  • Capture the topographic data from Google Earth
  • Export the topographic data as a DWG file
  • Import the topographic data into Revit
  • Convert the linked DWG file into a toposurface
  • Adjust your view of the toposurface

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