2012 – Year in Review, Part 2

Earlier this month I posted my Editor's Choice Awards for add-ins posted on this blog. Now I'd like to reveal the People's Choice Award winners as determined by total numbers of pageviews on this blog over the past two years. "Industrial" vendors such as Autodesk and Graphisoft are not eligible.

CADtoEarth, the add-in for coordinating Revit with Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, lands in the top spot with an impressive 3,381 pageviews.

LindabRevitTools, the add-in for light gauge steel framing, earns the #2 spot with 2,026 total pageviews.

At #3 is CTC's Revit Excel Link with 1,551 pageviews. Originally marketed as the most affordable link between Revit and Excel, Revit Excel Link is now part of the CTC BIM Project Suite Premium.

Congratulations to the award winners!

Related –
Award winning add-ins
Annual Roundups

Free RemoveEmptyTags Add-in from dp Stuff

On his dp Stuff blog, Dima Chiriacov has release another free Revit add-in: RemoveEmptyTags. This add-in finds and deletes empty tags in the active view or in the entire Revit project (careful with this second option!).

There's more information available on the dp Stuff blog.

Free "Rename View by Matching Elevation Tag with Room" Add-In Source Files

Over on Jeremy Tammick's excellent Revit API blog The Building Coder,  Trevor Taylor of ZGF has provided the source files for a useful real-world productivity tool that matches interior elevation tags with the rooms they fall inside.

"Naming interior elevation views is a major time-burner as there can be thousands of views in a project to rename, and they have to be coordinated when the room numbers or names change. If we don’t tie view names to rooms, we have no hope of ever keeping track of so many views."

There's more information on The Building Coder blog.

In-N-Out Family Parameters from Boost Your BIM

1. Select a folder to export parameter data for all families in that folder
2. This produces a CSV file that can be edited in Excel to set parameter values for each type
3. Import this modified file back into Revit to update the parameter values of the families

Use free for a limited number of families during each export, or purchase a license for $9.99.

There's more information available on the Boost Your BIM blog.

Free Workset Explorer Add-in from dp Stuff

The free WorksetExplorer add-in from dp Stuff allows users to quickly and easily browse worksets in a tree view and select objects by workset, category, family and then type. Every "branch" has a name and the number of elements meeting the criteria in parentheses. This add-in is very useful for cleaning up worksets.

There's more information available on the dp Stuff website.

SOFiSTiK 3D-PDF Export Add-in

3D PDF files are a convenient medium to exchange information between different actors in the Building Information Modeling (BIM) process, since they are commonly used almost everywhere and constitute a multiplatform mean of communication.

SOFiSTiK 3D-PDF Export extends the functionalities of Revit ® through the generation of standard PDF documents with embedded 3D graphics; the files produced by the program can be opened by any PDF reader that supports the PDF 1.6 standard, such as Adobe Reader 7.0 or later. SOFiSTiK 3D-PDF Export uses the geometric definition of the elements in order to create an equivalent representation of the model in U3D format. Descriptive information about the particular Revit® objects is embedded.

Main features:

• Support for all elements which can be visualized as solid in Revit.
• Support for Rebar, Rebar sets, Area reinforcement and Path reinforcement, including all the relevant parameters of these elements as metadata.
• Creation of a U3D file, which can be used to create interactive 3D / 2D PDF documents using a standard PDF editor.
• The U3D file is written using a Boundary representation of the Revit® objects and a high compression through binary encoding. Likewise a fully referenced data structure is implemented, which is reflected in the model tree organization.
• Support for free-form curves and surfaces, by means of the discretization of the elements.
• Generation of predefined views in order to ease the usage and visualization of the model.
• The Quality of the model is controlled by means of two parameters in the settings dialog. They allow to modify the level of detail of standard elements and reinforcement in order to improve either the model appearance or the performance.
• Customizable general format of the PDF file.
• Support for additional JavaScript’s, which can be used to improve user interaction.

The SOFiSTiK 3D-PDF Export add-in is available for US 9.90 on the Autodesk Exchange | Apps website.

TotalStation Point Utilities

Simple, easy to use plug in to import/create layout points in a Revit model and export to various formats for different Robotic Totalstation manufacturers. You can also use this plugin to import point files directly into Revit models using native revit families (included with plug-in).

Includes:

• Plugin to Import/Export files to specific formats for different machines
• Control Point family to assist with placing points manually for exporting or importing.

Tested with the following Manufacturers/formats:

• Trimble/N,E,Z (.txt)
• Sokkia/E,N,Z (.csv)

The TotalStation Point Utilities are avaiable for US 29.99 on the Autodesk Exchange | Apps website.

Free CropViewToSelection Add-in from dp Stuff

Dima Chiriakov has released a free add-in that allows users to create 3D cropped views just by selecting an element or elements of interest. One can also specify the elements using element IDs, which can be handy for troubleshooting. Good stuff!

There's more information available on the dp Stuff website.

Via Luke Johnson's What Revit Wants blog.

2012 – Year in Review, Part 1

Over the couple of years that I've been curating the Revit Add-ons blog, some add-ins have really stood out to me. Over time, many of these have been pushed to the back of this blog as newer add-ins have been released. I'd like to recognize some of these standout add-ins with my Editor's Choice awards.

Autodesk produces some excellent Revit add-ins, especially for maintenance subscribers, but I have focused only on third party applications for the purposes of these awards.

There was never any doubt in my mind as to my favorite add-in, it's Content|Studio. Considering Revit's archaic approach to managing and browsing for families, an entire cottage industry of family browsers and family management has cropped up. Content|Studio is a polished gem of an add-in that not only includes a family browser but also enables content management in a quality controlled environment, and it does so by enabling a workflow that is non-intrusive to content users. Simply sensational. Click through for my original post on Content|Studio.

While in my my mind Content|Studio stands alone, there are many other Revit add-ins deserving of special recognition. Below, broken up between paid (commercial) and free add-ins, are a series of add-ins ranked in the familiar gold, silver and bronze standings.

Paid (Commercial) Add-ins

The Gold Medal winner in the paid category is Kiwi Code's Project Browser. Not only does this add-in include a great family browser, it uniquely makes project browsing easier, more intuitive, and more powerful. Brilliant! Click through for my original post on Kiwi Codes Project Browser.


Revit and Excel interoperability is also a hot category of add-ins, and the gold standard of this data exchange has long been Ideate BIMLink.

I've long thought that a method for visually flexing families would make a great add-in. Harry Mattison's Image-O-Matic is the first and only solution that I know of.



Free Add-ins

All Revit users need a family browser. Smart Browser is a darned good one -- and it's free!

The free COINS Auto-Section Box add-in makes it easy to to analyze areas of particular interest in 3D views, and who doesn't want viewing information in 3D to be easier?

The free Revit Sp.Writer add-in allows users to create, manage and organize their shared parameters in Excel!




What a great group of add-ins. Congratulations to the award winners!

Related –
Award winning add-ins
Annual roundups