Revit to Rhino WIP / how to keep family object intact?

There are also other examples workflows on the community video page: https://www.rhino3d.com/inside/revit/beta/community/videos

And Marcello has a reference manual in progress that covers many short workflow ideas: https://www.simplycomplex.org/dynamo-reference-manual

I posted this video yesterday on Rhino to Revit using Directshapes for quick and dirty interop: https://youtu.be/F5sfuR4-UkE

I hope later today to post a video using Families, Forms and Sub-categories as a more refined method to BIM objects.

The third method would be to use Rhino geometry to create Native Revit elements. Curve outline > Floor from Boundary for instance. https://www.rhino3d.com/inside/revit/beta/samples/

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Thanks for those 2 recent videos Scott, they will serve as a fantastic starting point for my firm. I will be sharing these workflows with the team.

Hi Scott, will future releases of Rhino Inside Revit translate Families into Block Instances in Rhino?

You can do that already. Element Geometry into a Define Block component, use the same name, and in Elefrontā€™s component you can define layers of the various family parts if you can sort them as well as add userdata.

Thank you for your reply ,Rickson. I apologize but iā€™m new to Rhino inside. Can you elaborate? What if for example I have a Door Family thatā€™s distributed many times on walls? It seems that I will have to define a block then distribute that defined blocks again to the position of the Imported Element Geometries? Is this correct or is there another way?

here are two door types distributed, made into 2 separate blocks in rhino. Requires Elefront.

Revit Family to Block.gh (14.9 KB)

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Ahhh I see. Thank you for the help Rickson. Things are clearer now. Iā€™m gonna have to study these Revit components more.

So, this is a bit complicated.

@Rickson is correct, using Elefront is great for creating blocks. And that might be the correct way to do this.

Another idea is to use VisualArq to duplicate the BIM objects. Doors, walls etcā€¦

So this is one of the big workfkow issues. Where is the data contained? It is all possible.

Hi Scott, thank you for your response. I indeed tried Ricksonā€™s recommendations and it seems the best way for now.But itā€™s relatively tedious. I hope someday Block-Family conversion will be integrated in RIR.

So, what is the specific situation you are looking to do here,? Why do blocks work for your? Why are they are a problem?

Hi scott, it would be very helpful if there is a direct translation of revit families to rhino blocks/instances. For example, if the family is made up of individual components with unique materials or layers, it would be better once imported into rhino that it maintains these hierarchies.

I can see some of this working. Would it be something like:

  1. Each Revit Type = Rhino Block
  2. Top Level Categories are top level Layers
  3. Sub-categories are sublayers.
  4. Instance Types inserted on the category layers, wrapped inside the Type Block.

Not sure what to do about built-in system families. It is easier to map component.

This would also mean that everything is going to be in a Block in Rhino since technically everything is a Family/Type in Revit?

Perhaps walls donā€™t have be blocks in Rhino, but it was a huge hassle when all the tables and other fixture/furniture pieces were imported as small individual pieces. At that point, itā€™s just not a viable option to use Rhino.Inside.Revit.

Thank you. Is there any tutorial about this?

Using Elefront as @Rickson recommends would allow some categories, say the furnature to be blocked and other elements such as walls or floors to be placed on layers as solids.

That is the fun part of this it can all be adjusted to fit what is needed.

There is a tutorial on bringing objects into Rhino. But not one on the Blocks yet. Blocks are part of the definition above?

If you have a simple file to try, we can take a look. We are all learning about this together:

https://www.rhino3d.com/inside/revit/beta/samples/transfer-revit-to-rhino

Here is a definition I put together:

block-revit.gh (17.2 KB)

It grabs all the Furniture and blocks it into Rhino. It is not perfect and I think there is a problem with baking the blocks, but it does seem to work.

Give it a try and see how it goes, Elefront is required.

It would need work, but it is a start;

image

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The blocks are just like families, so best to isolate 1 of the 4 tables for instance, make a block out of it & Bake.Then place the block at the other 4 family locations like i did in the definition i posted above.

Same works in reverse, if i have blocks placed everywhere, i want 1 of them to make a family, it gets placed at 0,0 , deconstructed and made into a Revit Family, then placed by the Add Location component to the instance planes coming from Rhino/GH.

Scott, I got a really fun idea for an example, give me a couple days to finish some work and iā€™ll post it.

Thank you Scott, what youā€™ve enumerated is precisely what I mean. I think it would benefit a lot of users especially when visualizing and putting materials on the geometry. Also i read the other comments regarding elefront and i did some testing myself. I have found out that when i try to extract each category and assign unique layers to them, sometimes there was a mismatch between the category name and the actual geometry in revit. For example the Glass Panel Category was actually assigned to the Door Frame geometry. I hope to post my script soon so u guys can check if maybe itā€™s not an issue and that i made a mistake in my scripting.

this is a simple (hah) tree graphing issue. Branches must be carefully aligned throughout or quickly go off the rails. This is an aspect of GH that mostly takes time and experience to get a firm grasp of.

Param Viewer is a good component, as well as longest/shortest list. It gets really tricky when branches goes from 1 to a varied amount of items with some nulls, then back to a some variation of the original hierarchy.

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