How to handle a brick screen consisting of several Rhino blocks

I modeled a brick screen wall in Rhino that consists of 4 different brick blocks. I’m trying to figure out the best way to bring this into Revit. Would there be a faster way than a Geometry Direct Shape for the entire wall? My issue is, the wall consists of so many bricks, when I sent it to Revit as a Direct Shape, it took forever to process. I’m wondering if creating a family for each type of block would process faster. If I take that route, I’m not exactly sure how to create a component family out of the blocks within Grasshopper. Any advice is much appreciated.

2022.05.18_RhinotoRevit_Forum.3dm (437.9 KB)

No problem. A couple things to note.

You will need to create a Generic Model Template that is Work Plane based (to place the family according to the rotated Rhino plane)

To do this create a new family and check the Work Plane Based option and save to your templates directory. Then rename the .rfa file to a .rft

This definition also requires legacy Elefront 4.3.0

Re_Brick_Family_R22.gh (11.4 KB)

You will also want to stay away from mirroring blocks in Rhino.

@Japhy Thank you. This solution has been working great for looking at various screen compositions.

Question though…if I want to cut the brick screen with a void, is there a way to do that outside the family itself, or would each cut brick need to be its own family?

Hey @TheCyclist ,

Below, you will find how to create a generic void cut family (same Generic Model.rft for the template) and use it to cut your previously created generic model brick families.

BrickScreen_Void

BrickScreen_Void.gh (741.2 KB)

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Thank you Mohamed. When I activate the New Component Family component, the following Element Type Picker component doesn’t pick up the information like it should.

I reset the template path to direct to the correct Generic Model template, but now it’s saying A referenced Revit Category could not be found.

image

What does the red balloon error say?

At first, it said the generic model.rft was not found, but I fixed that. Now it’s saying a Referenced Revit Category could not be found

I got it to this point where the first orange balloon is saying “1. A referenced Revit Category could not be found.” and the second is saying “1. A referenced Revit Level could not be found.”

EDIT: I guess those don’t need to be resolved because I enabled the final component, and it all worked.

You just need to right click on the “C” (category) input and repick the Generic Model category… because the category ID differs from project to project… or to make sure it is always stays the same you can query a category using its name and input it into the C…

Just like picking a category inside the family editor.

You can also check this component and replace with the last one, if you need to delete warning and ignore elements with errors

I created my own void geometry in Rhino, and attempted to plug it into the component family void. But now it’s giving me this window. It’s then saying “1. Cyclical data stream detected, parameter is recursive.”

BrickScreen_Void_revised.gh (21.4 KB)

and after you cancel out of it what’s showing in the type picker below it and what is in the Add component error bubble ?

Element type picker says “1. Cyclical data stream detected, parameter is recursive.” and Add component says “1. Object reference not set to an instance of an object.”

Not sure what is going wrong on your side, Just opened you definition and it computed with no errors on my side…

BrickScreen_Void_revised

It has something to do with my Revit file. When I open it with a fresh, new Revit file, it’s fine.