2015-05-18

Sharing Data through Revit, Navisworks, 3ds Max and Tableau



I'm getting a lot of questions lately about a workflow I've created three years ago.
I'll try to answer all..

I was the BIM Manager of Bechtel Enka J.V. and we were building the 650.000 m² Terminal Building of Muscat OMAN. We've used Revit as our BIM authoring tool and heavily utilized Navisworks for soft / hard clash detection and scheduling.

I had highly talented 3d artists but still it was neither easy nor fast enough to update the construction animations as the schedules change.

I've started playing with tools looking for a solution. I've figured out when you link Revit models into 3ds Max, element names contain the Id numbers. So I've exported the timeliner data with the Ids from Navisworks and created animations with maxscript. (Balusters were the only exception and I was getting their data from the adjacent railing.)

As an architect with a very limited coding skill it was hard. There were all that SDK documents but they did mean very little for the average Joe (me). There were great guys blogging and helping like Jeremy Tammik and Saikat Bhattacharya but the problem was getting into coding under the pressure of solving your real world problem. With my award winning persistence I've created my plug-in.

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A year before that:
It was funny how we were talking about all the possibilities BIM brings and yet I couldn't concatenate (join) a few text parameters into one parameter. That's when I've started learning C# and Revit Api. Later I've started getting online lessons from Harry Mattison. Wow I became the master of my craft again!(Not necessarily a master programmer)

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2015 the year of visual coding: DYNAMO
With all the computers around us, I believe everyone should know how to tell them do stuff.
But especially in AEC when you need coding you already need results in a tight schedule. This year Dynamo changed it all for the masses. With a visual coding tool and a great community you start getting results before you start diving in.
Look at Marcello Sgambelluri's blog and you're doing things!

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Update on my tool:
I rarely use the timeliner data in 3ds Max. But I use it for Material Take-Offs.
I extract MTOs from Revit and combine it with the timeliner data.
Watch the video and please tell me what you think..

1 comment:

  1. Hi Mehmet, thank you for the interesting overview. I would love to hear more details on the workflow you created and the tools you are using, especially anything that you implemented yourself using the Revit API. Cheers, Jeremy.

    ReplyDelete