Free XYZ Family In & Out Macros for Revit

In my final post of a long evening, I finish up my coverage of Paolo Emilio Serra's Point Revit blog. Paolo has been a busy, busy bee, cranking out some very interesting free macros for the Revit community in only a couple of months.

Paolo has created a couple of XYZ macros, one to export the coordinates of selected single-point families to a CSV file. It can also be used to update the positions of the families in Revit after the CSV file has been modified, so it offers "in & out" functionality.

The second does the same thing except, if I'm reading it right, factors the location of the Survey Base Point into the equation.

Paolo's initial post on this topic, featuring an export macro only, is here.

He added the In & Out functionality here.

Lastly, Paolo added the site consideration here.

What this series of my posts regarding Paolo Emilio Serra's Point Revit blog has reminded me is that I need to get up to date on what Harry Mattison has been doing on his Boost Your BIM blog, and what Jeremy Tammik has been posting about on his The Building Coder blog.

Oi vey...

Free Miter Joint by Picking Macro for Revit

On his Point Revit blog, Paolo Emilio Serra has published a macro that miters joints.

Paolo's initial post is here.

He released an external command to execute the macro here.

Free 3D View Tag Macro for Revit

Over on his Point Revit blog, Paolo Emilio Serra has published a macro that places a family in a 3D top view indicating the positions of cameras in other 3D perspective views, and annotates the family with the Referring view names.

A picture really is worth a thousand words, so check out the video in Paolo's post.

Free Lines Total Chain Length Macro for Revit

On his Point Revit blog, Paolo Emilio Serra has posted a macro that returns the total length for a collection of detail lines, functionality that is not natively available in Revit.

Paolo's original post about the macro is here.

He provided an external command for it here.

For continuing developments, keep an eye on Paolo's posts that are tagged "API".

Free Automatic Floor Maker Macro for Revit

On his Point Revit blog, Paolo Emilio Serra has developed an Automatic Floor Maker macro. It generates the floors from a group of bounding elements.

His initial post on the macro is here.

Paolo provided an update for the Automatic Floor Maker macro here.

He made available an external command for the macro here.

Finally, Paolo provided an update for the Automatic Floor Maker macro that creates floors extended to core boundaries here.

For future developments, keep an eye on Paolo's posts that are tagged "API".

Free View Depth Override Macro for Revit now Supports 3D Views

I first posted about Paolo Emilio Serra's View Depth Override macro back on October 27, 2013 here. Back then it was only for 2D views, and I thought it was pretty darned cool. Since then, Paolo has continued to work on the macro and now has it working in 3D views.

Yes, it's pretty darned cool.

This macro continues to evolve on Paolo's Point Revit blog so here's a link for all articles relating to the View Depth Override macro, including the source code!

Free Analytical Tracer Macro for Revit

From Paolo Emilio Serra's Point Revit blog...

"With this macro, you can export the models for single-line straight structural elements that would otherwise be divided into 3 segments for each beam of the analytical model."

Paolo's original post on his Analytical Tracer macro, with videos, is here. The source code is available for download here.

Dynamo 0.6.2 Released (11/26/13)

What's new in the Dynamo 0.6.2 build:

• New Samples and updated documentation
• Visualization
• Increased speed of display
• Background Preview elements highlight when nodes are selected
• Selection of Solids in background highlights nodes
• Resizable Watch 3d windows
• Point and Curve numbering available in node right click "Show Label"
• Geometric Operations
• More forgiving inputs for Solid Geometry creation
• Solid Primitives: Boxes, Cylinder, Sphere, Torus
• extraction of Data from Revit elements.  Use Get Family Location to get single origin location from regular families and all placement points from panels and adaptive components.
• XYZ and Vector improvements:  Normalize, Dot product, components, polar and spherical coordinates.  Extract Transform Basis for x, y, and z vector components. XYZ by distance offset from origin.
• Curve Plane Intersection
• transform origin node
• plane from reference plane.
• line by start point direction and length
• General User Interface and Navigation improvements
• Drag and Drop dyn files into canvas to open
• Mouse-less navigation
• No limit to the size of canvas
• Preview data bubbles on nodes
• Browser reorganization
• Search Improvements
• Other new nodes and node enhancements
• List handling.  Most nodes now can take lists and lists of lists.  In the past, many nodes needed data to be flattened.  Now nodes will inspect their input and automatically dig deeper into the contents to find the data they need.
  RaaS - Cloud based Daylighting Analysis.  More on this later, but we now how the infrastructure to execute cloud based daylighting analysis, retrieve the data and drive it back into the model.
• Added an interval node to Web Request
• Equal can now compare all data types
• Updates to Arduino. Use delimiter instead of new lines.
• Get Family Location now takes single origin and multi-pick placement families
• Asin, Acos, Atan
• Wall and Floor Creation nodes.  WARNING!  Recreated, not modified on change.
• integer slider
• STL export (from file menu)
• Default values added to many nodes
• Separate nodes for solid boolean operations

There's more information available on Zach Kron's Buildz blog.

Download the latest build of Dynamo here.

Credit: Zach Kron's Buildz blog.

AroCLEAN: Cleanup Revit Backup Files

From AroDEV comes AroCLEAN...

(Translated from the original French by Google Translate.)

"Revit is a wonderful tool to assemble and operate all project information in a single file.

"The advantage of centralizing all the elements of a project is to be able to ensure the consistency of documents built. Revit and it does it very well.

"The disadvantage is the risk of losing everything by the mere loss of a computer file. In this Revit with visceral fear causing it to make multiple backups and additional copies of our Project files RVT & Family FRG.

"If you do not take care this procedure fills and saturates our local and / or servers hard drives.

"AroCLEAN offers to clean these files backups and copies to take care of the free space on your disk storage space recovering without giga bytes.

"Until January 1, 2014 you can download and use for free."

This product appears to be in open Beta.

 There's more information available on the French AroDEV website.

Credit: Luke Johnson's What Revit Wants blog.

OctaneRender Add-in for Revit: Extremely Fast GPU-based Rendering

From otoy comes the OctaneRender add-in for Revit...

"OctaneRender is an extremely fast physically based photorealistic renderer that uses the GPU to create stunningly lifelike images of your scene in near real-time. The OctaneRender for [Revit] plug-in allows real-time interaction with the scene, while at the same time rendering at final quality: you can change the camera, lights, materials, textures and the position of objects in your scene and see the final quality result in near real-time. Because of its incredible speed, quality and ease of use, OctaneRender is an excellent tool for architectural visualization. OctaneRender requires an Nvidia GPU to run. This app is a demo version of the OctaneRender plugin, which is fully functional and has no time limit, but the rendering contains a watermark and the maximum render resolution is limited to 1000x600."

otoy's website claims rendering speeds "up to 50x faster than CPU based unbiased renderers."

There's more information available on the Autodesk Exchange Apps website.

Fuzor Add-in for Revit for Real-time Rendering

Fuzor is a Building Information Modeling (BIM) visual simulation software made for the architecture and construction industry. Powered by our award winning, patent pending multi-core technology, Fuzor synchronizes with Autodesk Revit 2013, 2014 to produce high quality real-time rendering of your projects. Fuzor empowers architects' designs by offering a vivid and realistic simulation at all stages of your design, instantly and effortlessly. Fuzor creates a perfect visual platform for everyone to communicate BIM data and design effectively.

Fuzor Key Features

• Directly work on large Revit files and have them run smoothly with Fuzor
• Streamline your Revit experience by integrating Fuzor into your work flow
• Experience your creations and achieve a sense of scale by walking through them in real-time using a variety of human avatars
• Visualize various BIM studies, including shadows, rain, and natural/artificial lighting
• Work simultaneously with Revit to visualize any modifications and see the effect of your design changes immediately

Fuzor is currently in open Beta. There's more information available on the Kalloc Tech website.

Credit: Steve Stafford's What Revit Wants blog.

Free COINS Auto-section Box Add-in for Revit Gets a Major Update! (December 2013)

The COINS Auto-Section Box tool gives you tremendous speed and agility over managing three-dimensional views when analyzing model areas of particular interest. It allows you to quickly create temporary and permanent views to be used for immediate interrogation of the model or for construction document deliverables. This works by allowing you to focus on the model instead of managing views or a view’s properties.

New features:

• Works with elements in linked files (2014 only).
• Works with grid lines and level lines.
• Picking a single curve-based element (such as a wall, beam, duct, or pipe) will produce a section box aligned with it.
• Picking an elevation marker that has a single view associated with it will create a section box from that view.
• Section boxes are only created from views if only one unique view, view line, or elevation marker is picked - otherwise they are ignored and the section will be created around the other selected elements.
• Allow picking of assemblies.
• Fixed issue where routine would not work if the model contained multiple assemblies with identical view names.
• Improvements when zooming to section box (e.g. when element is invisible in 3D view because of phase).

 

 There's more information available on the Autodesk Exchange Apps website.

Credit: Luke Johnson's What Revit Wants blog.

Free View Duplicator Add-in for Revit

From Hyder Consulting comes the free View Duplicator add-in...

"Duplicate selected views and apply View template and rename the views.

"Standard way of duplicating Working view to Profile Plans, Reinforcement plans or Post tension plans etc is by selecting one view at a time to duplicate and apply template then rename the view to appropriate name.

"This App makes it simple. Select the views to duplicate and pick view template, App will duplicate views, apply template and also rename duplicated views. All three in one click."

The OCSL Family Rename Add-in for Revit

From Oakley CAD Services Ltd comes the OCSL Family Rename add-in...

"OCSL Family Rename Tools is designed to aid the renaming of Autodesk® Revit® component Families and Types within a Autodesk Revit Project or series of Projects to a specific standard.

"The App has two commands. The first allows the export of the Family and Type names to a .Txt file and the second allows the re-import from the .Txt file to rename them. The commands are as follows:"

Family Rename Export

"The Family Rename Export Command opens a form loading Autodesk® Revit® Families and Types from the current project to a dataset where the User can select which ones fields they wish to export to a .TXT file. The path of the .TXT file can be defined before export. The .TXT file can then be modified using either Notepad or Excel to change the New Family or Type names."

The Export Form Provides a List of all the component Families and Types to export to a TXT file

Use Notepad Find and Replace to change New Family Names or New Type Names

Family Rename Import

"The Family Rename Import command allows the reimport of the text file by selecting the .TXT file to open. This loads the Family and Types to a Form where the available Families and Types are shown. This allows the renaming of the selected Autodesk® Revit® Families or associated Types."

Import the Data from the TXT File and Rename the Families and Types

There's more information available on the Autodesk Exchange Apps website.

Free Elk Content Links Add-in for Revit

From Elk Design Technology comes the free Elk Content Links add-in...

"The Elk Content Links plugin was originally intended as an easy way for companies to create links to their Revit® standards from within Revit®.  More broadly, you can create links to any website, intranet, file or folder on the network, or create an email.  The buttons are customized via an XML settings file where buttons can be added, removed, or changed."

Example buttons

Example XML settings file

There's more information available on the Autodesk Exchange Apps website.

Free Elk SRTM Topography Add-in for Revit

I previously posted about the free Elk Toolbox here. Now from Elk Design Tech comes the free Elk SRTM Topography add-in...

"In February 2000, Space Shuttle Endeavour performed a thorough scan of most of the world, recording elevation points at various resolutions.  This elevation information, available as HGT files in 1°x1° tiles, can be used to generate topographies in Autodesk® Revit®."

There's more information available on the Autodesk Exchange Apps website.

The Family Browser Labs Project: Browse Revit Families, System Families, Groups, Drafting Views, and Schedules!

From the Kiwi Codes website...

"The Family Browser Labs Project was started as a testing platform for new features and idea concepts that may be worthwhile adding to the Full Family Browser product. It allows independent modular testing of ideas outside of the commercial Family Browser product without effecting the source code of it.

"Depending on user feedback some of the ideas may be integrated with full Family Browser or it may end up being a stand alone product itself.

"The initial Labs release is concentrating on these issues/ideas:

1. Create a very simple way of finding families in your project or external library, and inserting them into the project.
2. Provide a very powerful fast search engine to find the families that you want, weather that be family name, category, Parameter name or value.
3. Provide an easy way of adding content to your external library (Revit families, drafting views, schedules, system families and groups)

"As time goes on we will be adding and testing other features/ideas.

"To help us out join our testing team by clicking on this link. It is FREE. The only thing we ask of you in return is honest feedback that will help keep Kiwi Codes Family Browser the best Revit Family Browser on the Market.

"We welcome your feedback."