DynaWorks16 Release

I've sufficiently recovered from RTC Australia, and now planning for RTCNA as well as doing a bunch of work for RTCAsia.

In the mean time I thought I would update DynaWorks to Navisworks 2016 since our license server was updated by IT this week.

So far reasonably smooth sailings, I was planning to do some enhancements, but I am lacking the time at this moment. However the upgrade looks like it has worked fine however if you encounter issues please let me know on Github.

So one bug I found when using it on Dynamo 0.7.6 build is it would only load the FileSettings and ClashDetection menus, however when you search for the commands they would appear, so if you encounter the same issue, I found upgrading to 0.8.0 stable build resolved that for me.

You can get DynaWorks16 from the package Manager.

Upgrading Custom Nodes & Definitions

Now one issue you will run into is upgrading your definitions & custom nodes to work with DynaWorks16. Since they are built on 15 and DynaWorks at the moment is still version specific you have 2 choices.

Rebuild your nodes one by one and save them under DynaWorks16...........or

Follow me to the hacky side of the BIM and get this running really quick.

Now I in no-way guarantee anything about this hack, but it has worked for me so far and it's far easier then rebuilding my nodes.

If it doesn't work for you I'm sorry.

Hack Upgrade Definitions

Ok so find your definition files (.dyn)

Make a copy of the file.

Open in Notepad

Dynamo definition files are xml encoded so they are human readable, now most of the time they are just referring to the nodes they use and where the file is based.

Go to Edit>Replace

Then swap out DynaWorks15 for DynaWorks16 then press save and close the file.

The definition should now work correctly in your project.

Hack Upgrade Custom Nodes

You can also do the same procedure with .dyf files, however I would suggest you create a new custom node in Dynamo, then open the the updates .dyf file and copy/paste the nodes into the new one.

Again be careful with these hacks guys, and if they break just do it the old way.

RTCAUS, RTCNA & RTCAsia!!!!

Hey Guys

Long Hiatus between blogs sorry, between really churning some cool jobs (I'll have some examples in upcoming blog posts.

Also happy to announce that I am presenting at both RTC AUS & RTC NA and have the honor of joining the RTC Committee for the first RTC in Asia. So we've been looking at the ton of talks we got (thanks to everyone we submitted) I thought we'd have about 6 to work with ;) But we ended up with over 100 which makes for some tough choices for a 2 day event.

Also South East Asia is a very different dynamic then Aus, Europe or USA construction economies and more in line with the Middle East, with expat groups doing alot of the technical & construction work requiring the use of BIM authoring software creates a great melting pot and mixing of cultures, as well as different adaption rates compared to the west. So should be some interesting topics for RTC to get such a large mix of people together for one event in Singapore. If you have no idea what I am talking about click here and stay tuned for updates!

Anyway I wanted to give a breakdown of the classes I will be doing at RTC AUS as well as forcing me to start blogging again!!!

Data to the Masses
This class is a 150 minute lab. It will cover how to turn your Desktop into a web server and create an interactive site for anyone internally to view and access custom charts, reports, lists, and other data all extracted directly from a Revit Model. We will use a cool database technology that has been stripped of all the junk that a full SQL Server system comes with, thereby minimizing headache's and getting started time.

After we've developed all the different data sources we will then setup interactive pages that will allow non Revit stakeholders to update equipment schedules, data and other fields and push that straight back into Revit. Very powerful stuff!!! And all the tech we will be using is FREE!!!

Now there will be a couple of basics covered, how to navigate basic HTML and how to write a simple SQL statements, but anyone with decent family formula skills will eat this stuff up!!! But yes I stand by my point you will not have to write 1 line of code :)




DynaWorks
This class should be explanatory, if your not sure refer to my last blog. We will go through from a brand new user perspective on how to access data, clashes and information from our Navisworks files using the Dynamo addin called DynaWorks. See how to extract and import all sorts of information from navisworks directly, no xml reports, or other translations and again the tool is FREE!!!

Definitely worth it if you want Revit/Navisworks to play better together and a great way to get your feet wet with Dynamo.

I have been meaning to update DynaWorks there are a couple of bugs, which I will have to fix and get out before RTC's!!! So this means your DynaWorks might even have less bugs in it!! :D

Builders Works
This one is a presentation on how we create that start from beyond concept models and continue to our construction team and sub-contractors. As a in-house Design, Turnkey Contractor and Operator our models directly effect our value chain and the bottom line be it with price, time or materials/labour. Our models are setup to work directly with our QS's, Planners BoQ requirements. We require full modelling of all temporary works for costing, planning and site egress safety.

This will cover a lot of the work flows we are employing that can be hindered by more conventional consulting/contractor arrangements that people place on the models, data in regards to use, access and liability.

Our supply chains, sub-contractors require different management and information and we will cover how we better control the output on site we get from them.

With a current Hotel only portfolio of over 17 Billion USD and growing by 5 facilities a year atm not including acquisitions, plus our 2000 acres of residential development and retail outlets we certainly have a lot of FM, which is a massive project that is undergoing a large transition over the next few years.

DynaWorks is here!! The Navisworks library for Dynamo

As some of you might be aware I have been working on a Dynamo library for Navisworks, if not then you'll be pleased to learn I have been working on a Dynamo library for Navisworks :)

If you want an idea what the heck it does go HERE to see it in action.

This was actually in an almost production form a couple of months ago, however until very recently you couldn't bring .dll files into Dynamo. When zero touch came out this made it possible, however you missed out on a number of documentation features, Dynamo wouldn't remember the library and so on.

So initially my bad monkeys that I had testing this stuff had to hack apart their Dynamo builds..... This is not a good idea hence why the beta was shared with a couple of people only.

However the Dynamo team started working on it from that point with a couple of others and within 2 months, they have gotten Dynamo to a version where we can share and access such programs without any hacks.

This just goes to show how well opensource can work with an active community and a funded dev team :)

Starting to Customise Dynamo.

If your doing some simple stuff, I would defiantly check out the ZeroTouch  this is a great way to work for simple stuff, however connecting to other api's like Navisworks quickly introduced issues like having all the native Navisworks objects exposed as COMobjects in Dynamo which makes for a bad user experience. So lots of wrapping is required, for those who don't know what that means is instead of dealing with an object called InwOaPathColl it looks like NavisObjectCollection in Dynamo, so much friendlier to understand:)

For those who may not be aware Dynamo is completely opensource which means you can get in there and add your own customisation's to do all sorts of things. Initially my goal was to be able to extract clashing objects, data and views and be able to sync them in Revit. This would allow me work with large Navis projects containing alot of files, and not have to have them all loaded in all the time when clearing up clashing issues.

Now many people own or have Visual Studio Professional, however I do not yet. I have managed to get by with Visual Studio Express and Sharp Develop.

After this setup I was able to clone the Dynamo repo which you can find here or you can download it. initially you just need to start the library and it should build. However I had a couple of issues working with the free version.

At this stage you can create a project and open up the Dynamo project, add yours to theirs and you can start testing in sandbox mode. If you need Revit to debug your nodes, then you will need to plug it a different way which I am not going to cover here :)

From there the only other library you need to include is ProtoInterface and possibly ProtoGeometry if you want to work with the native or Design script engine to convert your objects.
Now Dynamo will suck up all your public classes, methods and so on automatically so your best using the following items to control what shows up in Dynamo.
In Autodesk.DesignScript.Runtime the[IsVisibleInDynamoLibrary(false)] is great at hiding methods although it seems to be buggy with properties with external reference classes and [SupressImportIntoVM] which can hide classes.

One really big advantage of building a separate library is you can run it in DynamoSandbox (if you go to Program Files, Dynamo there is a .exe in there you can run which is the Dynamo Engine) mode or standalone. I have a feeling we will see alot more standalone products using Dynamo in the future not just using Revit, however you can interact with those nodes within Revit Dynamo to achieve what your after which is great.

DynaWorks 15

Due to the way the Navisworks API is setup, atm the moment multiple versions have to be referenced separately. To download head to github and download the zip here. This is due to the fact the Navisworks implementation works in sandbox box (without Revit or Navis). The Autodesk guys have the same issue with Revit, it's just they have the advantage of hiding because you can only see the commands based on the Revit version are you are in. I am sure there is a tricky way to do this but I have not as yet looked.

PS You need Navisworks Simulate or Manage in order to use this library.

Installing the Library

Once you have downloaded the relevant library from here. Once the package manager is fixed you will be able to download the library as a package but until then you need to use Github.

Once you downloaded the files as a zip or individually you need to copy paste the following files (Depending on whether you have 2015 or 2015 Navisworks) to a folder location. It doesn't matter where as long as the following files are available.

• DynaWorks15.dll
• DynaWorks15.xml
• DynaWorks15_DynamoCustomization.xml
• Interop.NavisworksAutomationAPI12.dll
• Interop.NavisworksIntegratedAPI12.dll

Once you have those files simply load the DynaWorks.dll ONLY the rest will all load up.

Once you have this you can get packages from the package Manager or get others yourself.

With all that aside lets get into my Navis Library.

As you can see there are currently 4 main parts to the Navisworks library.

Custom:- Where I put my Custom Nodes
Clash Detection:- Run, get tests, get results, get clashing objects.
FileSettings:- Open a Navis File, append files, Save As.
Objects:- GetNodes, search/query objects, get properties, get values, get attributes
Views:- get view names, camera positions vectors and looking points.


Now I don't want to go through everything so I thought I would point out the major stuff here.

For the moment I have built a number of custom nodes that are doing alot of the hard yards for you, so download them and check them out!! This is done for 2 reasons, first because these nodes save a ton of time in setting up what can be some really basic stuff, and 2 so you can get an understanding of how I have built the system and what elements need to interact with what.


FileSettings > OpenNavisFile
This is starting point of any use of the DynaWorks, it allows the user to open a file.
It has two options, the file path and the whether the session actually opens, this is one of the coolest features in this library as you can actually get data, run clashes and query objects without having to actually open the Navisworks UI. This saves a ton of resources in access and use of the tool.
If you do want to access it just set it to true and you can still navigate, update, save and close the file if you need to.

WARNING: Do not put this node inside a Custom Node, first it will always close the session for some reason after it runs if the node is in a custom node, this is a known issue. Second if you run multiple custom nodes or other options with it embedded it tries to open the file each time, encounters file locks etc......

Accessing Navisworks Objects (Also known as Nodes)

NOTE: Nodes are every single selectable object in a Navisworks Selection tree. Each has it's own attributes and properties, but Navisworks treats each one as a Node Instance with parents or children.

These are different from Nodes in Dynamo, I know it's annoying but to keep ease of use of API, communication with developers and so on, I am not creating new acronyms. 

There are currently a number of ways to use Dynamo to access Navisworks Nodes

First you can run a clash detection, filter through the clashes and return the objects you want. There is a fair bit happening in Clash detection so I suggest you look at the published nodes and also the examples on GitHub.

Second in Objects>NavisNodes>GetFilesInProject this will give you the starting point of the node files in each loaded nwc. You can then use the GetNodeChildren to cycle through the lists.

Last you can use any existing selection sets in Objects>NavisSelection and get a list of selectionsets manipulate and create what you need then use the GetNodesFromSelectionSets.

ClassNames vs ClassUserNames

There are two options here, both are equally valuable, one allows you to select objects by the Navisworks objectname, the second allows you to select objects by the string name data from Revit or other external package.

To know which name you need to select expand the little data readout, the first name of any node is the ClassName and the second is the UserClassName. The same thing goes for attributes.

Accessing Navisworks Attributes

From the nodes you can access the attributes, these are the various Tabs, that you see in the Properties panel. You can return attributes from nodes by using the Objects>NavisAttributes>GetNavisAttributesFromNodesList. This will return all the available attributes for those particular nodes in a list.

Accessing Navisworks Properties

The way the NavisCOMAPI library works when we want properties we have to setup a few things.
There are under Object>NavisPropertyList, the first returns a list of the available properties from the attribute.
These get the Attribute by ClassName or ClassUserName, then you need to identify the property and it will return all values as strings. I may work on numbers and other data in future, but this makes it easy for now.

Navisworks GetData

Second in objects there is GetData and NavisObjects and each has a Get Value. The option in GetData is for getting the properties and values of ANY Navis object so tests, results, the works. The other option is for getting the data from Navisworks property tabs, properties and values.

The query objects add alot of value in finding out what things are and what are in elements so feel free to use that!!

This is a great tool for querying or filtering objects by various attributes and so on!!!
It should work on every type of object in Navisworks.

Do not use this to get Property values, a special methods has to be done hence the once I have above, using this will cause it to crash or crazy behavior.

Navisworks ClashDetection

I am not going to detail all the requirements of the Clash Detection tool, just the setup.

First you need to have setup some clash tests, you can use Dynamo to Run tests and cleanup resolved issues if you want, otherwise you can simple extract the clash data.

To do this get an OpenNavisFile and connect it to ClashDetection>Create>GetClashDetection then under ClashDetection>Actions> you can get the clash tests, then the clash results by each clash or by group.

You can get various data from these XYZ points, views, properties/comments however, if you want to select the objects you must use the GetClashNodes available from the same area. Once you have the nodes you can perform other operations.

NOTE: Here is some great news, if not all your team has Navisworks Manage, they can still open the file and extract all data and clash data with Simulate!!! That way only the team members with manage need it to setup the clashes and so on. Users can access the NWF project to retrieve all the data from Simulate.

You can also run new clash tests, resolve clashing issues and so forth from Simulate!

Hopefully this stays open but who knows!!!

Navisworks Views

Lastly we can get View Data to do this we need to access the Views>GetSavedViews from the list.
You can then cycle through get comments, data camera positions etc...

In future if people want we can look at creating Navisworks views from with Revit, and updating the Navisworks file itself. for now I needed data and clash extraction.

Note: I have created a default and metres conversion. Please note this will only work if the conversion is set to feet, which so far in 2015 I can't seem to change the underlying API units. The reason for the conversion is the dynamo 3D view creation nodes are also in metres and this should save a ton of time.

Getting Started

 Examples on the github repo you can find a number of definitions to get your started, these are commented to show you what the nodes are doing and should work with DynaWorks14 and 15.

If you need both versions of Navisworks then becareful on how you manage them!!!

Examples

The following are some examples of using DynaWorks to do the following.

• RevitClashesElementUpdate - Updates Revit elements comments to say whether something clashes from Navisworks
• RevitClashFamilies - Places Family Instances as Clash Points
• CreateSuitableRevitView - Creates a suitable Revit View of the family.

Final Notes

This has been a big but fun project for me in my spare time, I know there will be bugs, problems and possible feature requests all that information should be put on the GitHub repo here.

Also this is a personal project, so your gonna have to put in the effort to learn it outside of my examples, and this blog.

Also I am not support so I can't guarantee how many issues, queries or problems I will be available fix!

Introducing the Revit Pre-Cast Panel Planner 5000

Hey Guys

I hope you are excited to read this post as I think this post is showcases a lot of cool tech working together. The exercise has taken around 2 weeks with my deadline on Monday of which I have gains skills in excel functions and a recursion in Dynamo.

We have a rather large project (4x42 storey towers, single podium) under construction at the moment that I'm helping out with site co-ordination and 4D planning.

Now to date the the transfer has finished and the first tower is about to go up. The team has decided we will be constructing the tower floors out of precast panels. We will be casting these panels onsite and the first of the construction molds have arrived on site. This is a very large and critical part of the project of which over 9000 panels will be poured and installed. There are 20 molds with various accessories in which over 90 sizes need to be created with cast in sleeves for pipes and all the rest.

Now storing all these on site needs to be managed very carefully it's a day to pour a panel, then it needs to sit for a number of days to set before being installed onsite. So critical management of the pouring schedule and storage is critical to met our installation target dates, as well as be able to react to changes to ensure we are never short.

I was tasked with developing a simulation for our precast manager of the precast site, as well as asked by the precast manager to develop a spreadsheet that would enable him to manage the panels.

So to begin with I developed a spreadsheet that would address the following goals;

• Get the current panel types and numbers required directly from Revit.
• Get the installation tasks and dates directly from Microsoft Project
• Automatically calculate and develop a Just in Time pour/install sequence
• Allow the Pre-cast manager to override the Just in Time and update automatically
• Present all this information showing how busy each mold will be a week
• Show by Type each panel pouring and stacking locations as well as ready or not ready
• Automatically colour highlight errors, problems and issues for easy management.

Needless to say this spreadsheet was a pain in the ass, I actually tried a number of planning and 5D solutions first with little success. Nothing we have is really built to show consumption correctly, or you can do it at macro levels but not at the level we required. Whilst excel manages time quite well and we can obviously do all sorts of functions, my spreadsheet contains no VBA or macros just some fancy functions.

However I managed to complete the schedule and it look quite pretty here is a week by week look at a Panel type, stacking optimizer and set out..

Stacking Schedule
Orange means in storage but not set properly, green is set, installation numbers and setout all below. The entire spreadsheet is complete automated.

Once completed and the precast manager was happy that he could work with the data, I then started to try and figure out how I would actually show a week by week analysis of a pre-cast yard.
First we needed to model the yard with our anticipated requirements.

Firstly we needed a model of the yard layout, so we grabbed all the panels and dumped over the project and made it look pretty like below.

Then I went to Navisworks however the best I could make it do was a bunch of lies butcher the 5D pricing simulate whilst linking the schedule to show the total number of panels and putting an addition or subtraction option. Works great for the logical sequence of total panels poured, pretty useless for a pre-cast yard layout. Building a model that would actually show the proper number of panels, and update them to show whether they are ready or not wasn't going to happen, I then also tried Vico but again these tools are for construction install and complete or install and demolish, not install update remove install update remove etc.... I needed some parametric :)

So I had a good think and the only thing I could think of was Zach Kron's Dynamo solar optimization installer you can find out about it here.

The key thing this was doing was grabbing a Revit object manipulating it and saving/reading data from a file multiple times, which is basically what I wanted to do!!
The key was enabling Revit objects to be updated from each panel types stacking locations as well as show whether panels are ready or not ready. Now the stacking page in excel only shows one panel at a time so in addition to getting the values for a Panel I would then need to iterate through the panel types one at a time and then get the stack numbers and update the values for each stack of the panel types.

This would effectively give me a week by week view of what the precast yard will look like based on the updated Revit data, installation dates, actual to date and the pre-cast managers forecasting all in one. Plus I would be able to tag and print out if required the information!!!!
Live documentation!!

Dynamo to the rescue.... sort of.....

Before doing this exercise I considered myself an ok user of Dynamo, having given a talk at RTCAU recently however this exercise really made flex the legs of this powerful addon :)

First off I need to update my single Panel family into the stack Panel family. This involved making sure all the types were loaded in, an array and empty options where available and it had a value for the stack height. I have a quick API that updates the stack panel instance parameter with the name of the panel nested in for checking against the spreadsheet.

Upside down view showing a nested family with a simple array some formula's to control the visibility.

I started by downloading Dynamo 7.1 and getting stuck into it. I was able to pretty quickly develop something that would read a single stack and update it.

Delving into the world of dynamo recursion..

Next came the really hard part, now for those who don't know what the hell recursion is, basically it's software term for something that can call itself. If your familiar with Fibonacci sequences this is a pretty good example. This allows you to loop your Dynamo node to enable to check each stack 1 at a time rather then make 1 million nodes to counter for each variance.

To say I encountered difficulty would be an understatement, first was the dynamo examples of direct recursion simply don't work, and there's not alot of advertising that they don't work anymore. After a few hours of feeling like an idiot I emailed the Autodesk guys and they told me it's now broken has been for a while and they hope to have it back soon, however there are some clever ways to do it so go and check those out. Due to the lack of nodes, familiarity and examples in 7.1 I ended up ditching it and jumping back to 0.6.3 which had alot more examples including both the Solar Optimizer and nodes I thought I needed for input/out of excel files that were not in 7.1.

So I checked out Zac Kron's (yes Zac again :)) example on Fibonacci sequences and started to pull it all apart, completely rebuilt my 7.1 script in 0.6.3 which was no easy task doing direct translation and discovered that the AND node more works like the OR node (hint just use a formula to solve these problems in 0.6.3).

By this stage I was well into Saturday evening with my deadline and my wife both looming over me, neither extremely happy with my progress, considering I have to present everything at the  coordination meeting on Monday to the team.


So I began Sunday morning with some new energy and armed with the Fibonacci example.
In order to get all the stacks ready for the panel type I need to iterate through all the stack numbers and update the values of each family. So with some push and shove I got this working pretty easily.

Now the hard part, in order to get the panel types to update I actually need to write data from Dynamo to excel with the number of each panel so it updates the excel stacking data and then goes and gets the information. This was also difficult :) in part do to the fact that Dynamo will actually override all the other data on that sheet when it updates a single value so be EXTRA CAREFUL I was actually working on my master spreadsheet when I did this and had to rewrite a bunch of formula's and lost an hour.


The end of the tale is I managed to complete the spreadsheet, Revit Pre-cast Planner 5000 with time to have dinner and write this blog update :). With a focus on using Revit and Dynamo to enhance a number of our planning activities utilizing part of the the 4D that aren't traditional build this or build that. I think it's has the ability to have great impact on construct works and producing live documentation.

The key with this moving forward is we now have a pretty solid tool for planning precast locations on this job and future jobs with precast being more utilized. Whilst some people will use a factory, buying the molds and DIY is cheaper as long as you can find the storage this, and I hope this tool will help our teams in the future optimize our spaces, and casting sequences.

Without further ado I give you Precast Planner 5000 the movie!!!
My first ever YouTube upload.
Don't expect high quality video editing thought :)
Enjoy

ps. Now I have completed it, I will try and build the updated version for 7.1 and see how difficult it would be.

GitHub and RevitAPI as well as RTCNA Wrapup

Hey Guys

I thought I would jump in with a quick post to cover API stuff and RTCNA wrap up for this year.

First off I have put all my source code from my 4 RevitAPI coding labs onto github.
https://github.com/Gytaco/RevitAPI
It's got a bunch of starter code, I plan to get the rest of the handout, powerpoint information up today.

The plan is to get people to sign up, and post their own problems as code on Github and we can all start to work as a team. It's not designed to be ALL of your program or secret tool, but the key snippets that helps build a program up and I know we all could use those to assemble our code from assemblies of underlying stuff.

So get on board it also will help you learn to use Version Control for those who are new to coding, which is always a good idea.


So I was lucky enough to attend RTCNA2014  held in Chicago this year and I have to say wow!!!
Not only did the event sell out and hit the cap for attendees the presentations from Autodesk and users were really really top notch.

Check out Erik's blog for all the pics of which I am in there somewhere:)

Some of the examples simply blew me away with what people are trying to do and how they are getting there, and it's the willingness to share successes and failures with the broader community that is always exciting.

On top of the classes the other best part of any RTC is the networking. The conference is geared towards networking and again this one was awesome, I met a bunch of new friends from the US and the UK bumped into people who are running things with firms we are about to start working with. RTC really helps you make good connections and people you can talk to, and more and more you like going to RTC not only for the presentations but to trade war stories as each person struggles to innovate, collaborate and integrate their people, projects and companies to achieve better outcomes for everyone.

You always come back refreshed and ready to take on another year of slogging through broken Revit files, imported CAD data, PDF markups, paper and other things people secretly do when your not constantly on watch.

This really raised the bar for me and as the number of RTC events grows it becomes harder to figure out which one's you are planning to attend for both friends and content which you only get to see once a year.

For me RTC is the only international BIM technical conference I put my time and effort into. There are others but they simply don't have the culture, expertise and spirit the RTC seems to embody in everybody.

Last but not least there is always some good tech on show and this year did not disappoint with our firm becoming part of the Revizto clan and getting the software for collaboration on our designs.

I hope to see some of you at one or maybe all events next year.

RTCAUS quick review

I have returned from RTC and I am now back at work, nothing like getting off a plane and walking into a 6 hour site co-ordination meeting. :)

I just wanted to do quick recap of RTCAUS2014. For those unaware check out www.rtcevents.com

This year the event was held in Melbourne, which was great to be back into a milder climate, I find each year the quality of the presentations and the knowledge of attendees simply jumps in leaps and bounds.What is even more interesting is much more of the focus is away from BIM Authoring technologies themselves, Although there are a still a great number of BIM software howto's and productivity talks and labs. The bigger focus and the more engaging presentations seem to be those based around workflow, government adoption, and most importantly collaboration.

These are still at the heart of what causes most of our friction in this day and age, and how to address these varies greatly in each companies political climate. But what is nice is to hear how others are doing this and looking at what methods, formats and systems to put in place to attempt to achieve not only the technological issues which are actually quite minor today in the Australian market with users, but how to now get information in front of managers of people, projects and collaboration at that higher level.

I did a talk on Revit API, of which I am doing a repeat at the RTCUS conference aswell. From there I have a couple of people interested in starting a group to share coding bits & pieces. This will appear in the future by the end of June on GitHub for people to download, upload point out solutions and so forth.

The idea of the GitHub will be code snippets for other users that can be copied and placed, it's mean to be very easy to read with lots of comments to allow new API users learn to tinker, break build and ultimately share bits and pieces of how to do things.

For now I'm working on some interesting Dynamo stuff, and preparing for RTCNA I hope to show something on in July maybe and see those attending in 2 weeks in Chicago.

Creating Intelligent Step Down Tags

Well I am now officially blogging from KL, after finishing my role with GHD in Manila.
My new role sees me working as the Company BIM Manager for YTL Corporation with our internal, Owners, Designers, Construction and Operations team to help leverage new technologies like BIM to centralise and streamline information for our stakeholders.

My family is settled and I am working on some exciting stuff, templates, API and already helping co-ordinate some very projects which I hope to show case at some point.

Anyway as always sitting down and start from scratch brings new perspectives with experience and here is a trick that has been around for a few releases but I have never thought of using till this morning.

So a big issue with Architects and Engineers with Revit, is that whilst you can get FFL and SSL it's hard to have step downs as they are relative to the floors they are stepping down from only.

So after planning to create the new step down symbol I thought how to make it intelligent and a thought came to me, Adaptive families.

Since all adaptive components can have multiple points and be faced  based on selection I thought why not create a simple 2 point adaptive component, a shared reporting parameter and a tag.

Here is my mockup.

First create a generic adaptive component, create an additional level by coping the level up, then place a point of each level. I then created a shared parameter that is connected in the Z axis only to the elements like so.
I drew an invisible line that is 3D point based to make selection and manipulating easier in my project.

From there is was a matter of creating a tag and referencing the shared parameter as a label.

After this it is connecting the step down adaptive component to the two faces of the floors and tag the element from which you will get the reporting step down's and it will update automatically when the slabs/finishes/step downs change.

Also if the floors or finishes are removed it will automatically delete the element and tag so be sure to rehost if you need to host to a different element.

I will be at RTC in a few weeks and I hope to see many of you there.