Conveyor – Connect Revit and Rhino

From the Proving Ground website:

Conveyor

Connect your tools together with an enhanced digital workflow.

We believe in using the best tools for the job. Often that means leveraging a variety of software platforms to achieve a goal. Today, Rhino and Revit are two of the most common tools used by architects and builders. Rhino is arguably the best-in-class geometry and computational design platform. Revit is the most widely adopted building information modeling platform. We created Conveyor to be a custom framework that enables these tools to become directly connected  for intelligent digital workflows with minimal overhead.

We use Conveyor to…

• Directly connect Rhino and Revit without the need for intermediary software.
• Translate Rhino data and geometry into true BIM elements with Revit.
• Coordinate changing data and geometry across Rhino and Revit.
• Import complex meshes as useful elements for Revit production.

Rexel Wholesaler Connector – Order Directly from BIM Projects

From the MEPcontent website:

Ordering directly from your BIM project is now possible with the new Rexel Wholesaler Connector app for Revit. With this app you get a direct insight into current price and stock information of the articles in your model. Even better, thanks to a user-friendly export functionality you can place your entire list of items directly in the shopping cart on the Rexel shop. Make your workflow BIM ready! Save time and download the app today.

Tower Generator with Dynamo Studio

From the Architect Machines website:

Tower Generator (D.Studio + Power BI)

By Ryan Cameron

Welcome to the latest machine. Tower Generator.  Download the Architect Machines package and plugin your variables such as length, width, lot size, number of floors and height of floors.  Currently version 2018.2.12 of the package runs two use types: Commercial (lower) and Office (upper).  You will need integer sliders and a few code blocks.  Color parameters are up to you!

Data generated from this automated tool are:

Area per Floor, Total Bldg Height, Exterior surfaces 1, 2, 3, 4 (you decide cardinal directions), auto-complete elevator sizing and count, count of floors, and slenderness ratio as a decimal.

Free SOFiSTiK Infrastructure Extension (SiX) Labs Project for Importing Bridge Models

From the Autodesk App Store:

Infrastructure Extension (Labs)

Using SOFiSTiK Infrastructure Extension (SiX), Revit 3D bridge models can be created out of SOFiSTiK bridge models. This Revit bridge model consists of elements such as superstructure, piers, tendons and can be enhanced with parapets or railings.

Using the current version, only beam-based bridge models can be imported.

Functionalities at a glance

• Creates profile-families (adaptive components) as a basis for the 3D Model. 
• Extrudes these profile-families along the bridge-axis. 
• Both, the profile-families and the bridge axis can be modified using Revit functionality. 
• Creates grid-lines, section views and symbols at relevant points along the stationing. 
• Creates user defined tendons, parapets or railings. 

SOFiSTiK Infrastructure Extension - Labs (free)

3D Repo Announces 3D Diff, The First Real-time BIM Change Detection Web Solution

From the 3D Repo website:

3D Repo Announces First Real-time BIM Change Detection Web Solution 3D Diff

By Jozef Doboš
February 6, 2018

London, 06 February 2018 – BIM technology innovator 3D Repo has announced the release of the first web based, real-time change detection software for 3D construction models.

The cloud based solution provides a fast and reliable way to detect all changes in underlying 3D models, in real time, via an encrypted web browser. The patent pending innovation is a first for the industry as it operates on any 3D models, regardless of their file type, software used to produce them or file size. Called 3D Diff, the 3D Repo solution also allows users to share visualisations with project partners and stakeholders irrespective of location or time-zone.

Dynamo Sheet Creator Basic

From the Architect Machines website:

Sheet Creator 1.2 Basic

By Ryan Cameron

For those of you not lucky enough to have BIM Express tools, there is a safe and easy way to make sheets using a simple script in Dynamo and a very basic Excel document.

Download the Excel File here:  DynamoTest Sheets

Free IFC 2018 v18.3.1

From the Autodesk App Store:

About This Version

Version 18.3.1, 2/26/2018

• General:
• This release focused on some additional UI and IFC4 improvements on export.  These will be covered in more detail in various help documents.
• New Export Functionality:
• Add the ability to import and export custom configuration setups.
• Add the ability to choose the origin of the exported file.  There are 4 options:
• Current shared coordinates origin
• Internal Revit coordinates
• Project Base Point
• Site Surve Point
• A number of COBie improvements, including:
• Including the exchange requirement information in the File Header
• A number of IFC4 Reference View improvements, including:
• Export some profile names with geometry when appropriate
• Fix scaling of triangulation coordinates
• Improve export of beam axis
• Restrict use of many disallowed IFC entities and geometries
• Allow remapping of IFC entity attributes in addition to properties.
• Create more associated type entities for IFC objects.
• Consistent ability to override name, object type and description for all entities
• Export connectors even if they aren't connected to other elements.
• Export parts whose host elements are in linked files, whether "Export Parts as Building Elements" is checked or not.
• Improved creation of IFCBUILDING and IFCSITE entities
• Export Bug Fixes:
• Fix export of some space with empty Occupant fields.
• Fix relative placement of exported IFC links to the host IFC file.
• Fix unexpected error when exporting a floor as an IfcRamp (for IFC2x3 only).
• Fix unexpected error when exporting a site from a 3D view when exporting the active view geometry (for IFC4 RV only).
• Full French localization for a number of previously hard-coded strings
• Improved calculation of some property set parameters.

BIMcollab Launches French, Spanish and German Language Versions

From the announcement:

BIMcollab also available in French, Spanish and German
KUBUS expands global reach and impact

Eindhoven, Netherlands February 26th 2018 - KUBUS, a software company offering BIM solutions for the AEC industry, announced today that BIMcollab, their BCF based cloud solution for BIM issue management, is now available in 4 of the world’s most commonly used languages: French, German, Spanish, as well as English. With this latest update KUBUS brings a scalable, localized solution for issue tracking to BIM projects around the world. BIMcollab users can now easily share, manage and collaborate in their own language. The language can be chosen per space and per user. This allows users to set their preferred languages per project, per user and per connected tool. The interface, the e-mail notifications and the generated reports will be in the team member’s language. With this expansion KUBUS is helping internationally organized teams to optimize their internal project communication.

"As more and more companies across the globe manage their issues in BIMcollab, we want BIM teams to work in the way that's most comfortable and productive for them. In their own native language." says Erik Pijnenburg, CEO of KUBUS.

The Week that was in Revit Add-ons for February 19-25, 2018

Editor's Note: It's been several weeks since we published one of these week-in-review articles. Unfortunately, my time's been consumed by a move and with taking care of a child with the flu. 

On Revit Add-ons, we've been able to keep up with changes on the Autodesk App Store, which is essentially our baseline, but it wasn't until last week that we were able to cover other developments in a meaningful way, though, admittedly, a little skimpily, rendering this series viable again. 

We thank you for your patience and understanding. 

-Tim

The week of February 19, 2018 was a light one here on Revit Add-ons with 8 posts published.

New

Revit

From the Autodesk App Store, we posted about the self-explanatory and free Linked Id Finder,
and the free Microdesk Accelerator, which offers parameter management and MEP 3D drafting tools.

From around the Internet, we posted about Stabiplan Electrical Schematics.

Roundup – For Feb 19-25, 2018, New and Updated Revit Add-ins on the Autodesk App Store

The week of February 19, 2018 was a moderately busy one for Revit-related add-ins on the Autodesk App Store. Three new Revit add-ins were published, another four were updated, and a Navisworks add-in was also updated.

For the new add-ins, (Conduits & Cable Tray)Hangers and the free Linked Id Finder are self-explanatory, and the free Microdesk Accelerator offers tools for parameter management and MEP 3D drafting.

REVIT

New

Linked Id Finder
This add-in will help you to find the ID of a linked element in an Autodesk® Revit® file | Free
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 1.0.1, 2/22/2018 – empty issue fixed

Microdesk Accelerator
Suite of useful tools that help in drafting and BIM management | Free
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 1.0.0, 2/22/2018 – Initial release

(Conduits & Cable Tray) Hangers

From the Autodesk App Store:

This tool is designed to place hangers along the (Cable trays, Conduits) automatically.

The tool will do the following updates:

1. The tool has many hangers’ styles.
2. The tool can place the hangers on the elements ( CABLE TRAYS, and CONDUITS) automatically.
3. The tool can place one hanger only on an element (if needed).
4. The tool can select the hanger upper level automatically
5. The tool will change the hanger size due to the change in element size.
6. The tool will change the hanger offset due to the change in element offset.
7. The user can choose to enter the distance between hangers in mm or inches.
8. The tool can move the hanger to follow the moving elements.
9. This tool can work with sloped elements.
10. The tool can work with slanted elements.
11. The tool can delete the hangers related to the specific element when you delete the element.
12. The tool can place the first hanger and specify the distance between the first hanger and fittings.
13. The tool detects insulation and works with it.

Free Microdesk Accelerator – Parameter Management and MEP 3D Drafting Tools

From the Autodesk App Store:

This toolkit has two sets of tools. Drafting and Parameters.

Drafting is a set of tools that will empower any MEP drafter to do all their drawings from a 3D view. This keeps them in the know about potential coordination issues, stopping any clashes before they even happen.

Parameter tools help you stay in touch with your parameters, automatically summing any numeric parameter value, as well as quickly and easily adding parameters to families that appear in a schedule.

Free Linked Id Finder

From the Autodesk App Store:

This add-in will help you find the ID of linked elements. Then you can send the ID for someone to check the problem, for example, clashing, position, dimension.

Exclusive – Talking with Jamie Roche, CEO of Flux Data Inc, About Their Changes

By Tim Grimm
February 24, 2018

On Thursday, I read a Tweet indicating that Flux.io was ceasing operations.

Flux, a graduate of Google X, the semi-secret research-and-development facility, is an online service for connecting building data, and they've built many innovative apps, including interoperability apps for Revit, 3ds Max, AutoCAD, Rhino, SketchUp, Dynamo, Grasshopper, Excel, and Google Sheets. They also offer a free SDK so people can develop their own apps around Flux's cloud service.

Flux's suite of apps

Initially, I thought the tweet a mistake. Surely a professional, progressive, inexpensive, useful service such as Flux wouldn't simply blink out. I also couldn't find an announcement on Flux's Twitter account or on their website. But, later, tweets from others in the community affirmed the news.

Yesterday I read a tweet indicating that Flux wasn't ceasing operations after all, but would be shuttering their current platform and apps on March 31. At that point, I set out to get more information from the source.

Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of talking with Jamie Roche, CEO of Flux Data Inc. Jamie was gracious enough to clarify that Flux indeed is not folding, that they're still in the fight but are narrowing their focus, and that they will be shuttering their current offerings on March 31.

What's Hot in Revit Add-ons for February 2018

Here on Revit Add-ons, with What's Hot, at about the middle of each month, we take a look back at the preceding month to see which posts published during the month received the most pageviews.

We published 58 posts in January 2018, and received 53,708 pageviews for our efforts.

In our previous What's Hot article, Ryan Cameron of Architect Machines had the top two performing posts with Dynamo Templates and Cost Analysis Dynamo Script, respectively. This time, Ryan again scored the top spot with Dynamo Program Checker QA Review, as well as placing two others in the top 10, Dynamo Building Program Generator and Using Dynamo to Create Room Length and Width Parameters w/Tags, at #6 and 7 respectively. Impressive! We've got to get more of his stuff up this month so his work can go for the three-peat... 😊

Who doesn't like free stuff? (The US government for one, but that's another story...). Free add-ins owned the #2, 3, 4 and 9 spots with Purge CAD, Autodesk Enhanced DWG Exporter for Revit, CTB Link v1.1.0, and rvt2skp v2.0 respectively.

AVAIL v3.5.3

From the AVAIL website:

AVAIL Release News: Project Mode is now Live!

By Chris Fredi
February 6, 2018

Happy 2018 everyone! We’re kicking off this new year with some really great new updates, and some really great news across the board!

First, the newest release of AVAIL, version 3.5.3!

You can now download the latest release of AVAIL Desktop and the AVAIL Content Browser for Revit HERE.

Here’s a summary of what we’ve been working on:

• AVAIL Browser for Revit BETA – Project Mode is now Live and available for Team and Enterprise customers!
• AVAIL International Expansion (Sydney & Pacific Rim)
• Search bar improvements
• Stream availability is close!
• Various bug fixes and performance enhancements

Rhythm for Dynamo v2018.02.19

On his sixtysecondrevit website, John Pierson released a new version of his Rhythm for Dynamo package, v2018.02.19, on February 19. In addition to some nodes housekeeping and retiring some nodes, John added the following nodes:

There's a lot more information available on the sixtysecondrevit website.

Duct Tape for Dynamo – A New MEP-Centric Package

From the Bitbucket website:

Introducing Duct Tape for Dynamo. Duct Tape is a MEP-centric Dynamo package for the whole Revit community.

WHAT'S INSIDE?

MEP ELEMENT NODES

Duct tape exposes functionality of MEP elements that was previously missing. This is an ever-growing package, but we currently have support for Cable Tray creation, Mechanical System queries, and MEP Space queries.

Stabiplan Electrical Schematics

From the MEPcontent website:

You can now easily create schematics for all your Revit electrical systems using the Stabiplan Electrical Schematics app. Simply choose the panel of your Revit system and a comprehensive schematic of it will be generated, containing information about the (sub) panels and all connected elements. Download a free trial of the app now (no credit card required) and get instant access to the full functionality of the app for a one week period.

Roundup – For Feb 12-18, 2018, New and Updated Revit Add-ins on the Autodesk App Store

Apparent false updates notwithstanding, the week of February 12, 2018 was a fairly slow one for Revit-related add-ins on the Autodesk App Store. Five Revit add-ins were updated, one new Navisworks add-in was published, and two others updated.

The new add-in, OneNote for Navisworks, is for taking notes alongside your design.

Also, FilterOK is a new free version of the previously published FilterOK PRO.

REVIT

Updated

FilterOK
This plug-in helps you to find the necessary elements in a model according to certain parameters. The app has a simple and intuitive interface | Free
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 1.0.0, 2/16/2018 – Initial version

Export Link Path To Excel 2016
This tool is designed to export Autodesk® Revit® linked file's paths to Excel | USD 1.99/M
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 1.0.0, 2/16/2018 – Initial Release

Free OneNote for Navisworks

From the Autodesk App Store:

OneNote for Autodesk® Navisworks® app will let you take notes alongside your drawing from within Navisworks and these notes are backed up to the cloud and can be accessed anytime. You can see these notes the next time you open the drawing.

You can also view your notes from your OneDrive account. They should be present in the OneNote_Navisworks notebook.

Taking notes!

Roundup – For Feb 5-11, 2018, New and Updated Revit Add-ins on the Autodesk App Store

The week of February 5, 2018 was a moderately busy one for Revit add-ins on the Autodesk App Store. Two new add-ins were published and another twelve were updated.

For the new add-ins, Open Project Folder is for opening the folder in Windows Explorer where the project file resides, and SectionBoxControl is for rotating, resizing, and moving section boxes with precision.

It was another frustrating week of apparently false updates, with the number of bogus ones outstripping actual updates.

New

Open Project Folder
This application helps you open the location of active project file | Free
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 1.0.1, 2/6/2018 – First Version

SectionBoxControl
Rotate, resize, and move the section box | USD 3.00/Y
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 1.0.0, 2/6/2018 – First Version

MEP Section

From the Autodesk App Store:

Section Plugin for Autodesk® Revit® enables users to draw a section around simple MEP curved objects (like pipes, ducts, cable trays and conduits) easily without any effort just by one click!

During MEP elements modeling, it occurs a lot that you need drawing sections everywhere which could be a tedious task and decreases the productivity.

Aligning a section to an object includes many clicks and selections. You have to watch out eye mistakes that can end picking a wrong direction for your selection.

In addition, resizing section crop region for an object can be time consuming.

It’s now easy with this plugin to just choose the object and all the calculations are done with just one CLICK!

Set the Config

Excel BIM Link

From the Autodesk App Store:

The tool designed to import / export datafrom and to Excel file.

The tool will save a lot of time by transferring the  from Excel and from Autodesk® Revit® to Excel.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/cMo98jAyCxI

Note: Do not edit 'ID' column after exporting the parameters to Excel.

Free Open Project Folder

From the Autodesk App Store:

This tool helps you open the location of active project files.

A quick way to access the project folders you are currently working on.

Just click the "Project Folder" button in the "Add-ins" tab on the ribbon. This will open the location of the active project folder on Windows Explorer.

SectionBoxControl – Rotate, Resize and Move Section Boxes with Precision

From the Autodesk App Store:

This add-in controls the section box for rotation, resize and move.

Section Box is a useful function of Autodesk® Revit® to navigate the model.

Sometimes it can be hard to operate because the handle is too small and you don't know the distance. This add-in controls the section box using a window instead of handling directly.