2018 – Year in Review

Hi folks, this is your faithful editor Tim Grimm here. I usually look forward to these Revit Add-ons year-in-review articles; they're an opportunity to look back at our accomplishment for the year and see what most connected with our readers. This year I approach this piece with some trepidation though. Although we published at least 500 posts for the third year in a row, our post total, 500 even, is down almost 50% from last year's 937. Of course, 500 posts is still quite respectable – we can think of only one Revit blog that posts more, and they use web scrapers (whereas we don't–or haven't so far at least). Still, it feels like a bit of a letdown.

So, what was the cause of the precipitous drop?

Those who know me might describe me as being as honest as the day is long, and about as subtle as a hammer, so I'll just give it to you straight: my personal health issues have been responsible, but I'm working on them.

What coverage suffered? Our "The Week that was in Revit Add-ons," articles didn't run between April 29 and September 24. We also fell behind on our other weekly feature, "New and Updated Revit Add-ins on the Autodesk App Store", often combining several weeks in a single article. We did, however, get back on track with weekly updates in September.

The Week That Was in Revit Add-ons for December 24-30, 2018

Predictably, the week between the Christmas and New Year holidays was a quiet one for Revit add-in related news. In fact, There were no new add-ins published and no new updates on the Autodesk App Store for the week, so we took the opportunity to look around the Internet and to scratch a few items off our to-do list.

New

We posted about Attach It for Revit for attaching "any file" to a Revit model (PDF, DOC, XLS, etc.).

Miscellaneous

We shared a Lumion 9 Review from What Revit Wants.

We updated our roundup of 5-star rated add-ins on the App Store: Critical Mass – 5-Star Rated Add-ins* on the Autodesk App Store for End-of-Year 2018, Now Expanded!

For add-in publishers, conference organizers, Autodesk channel partners, and consultants, we posted about out new Advertising page. Head on over and check it out kids!

Lastly, we posted a couple items about the world of computational design with Goodbye Project Fractal, Hello Project Refinery and Tutorial – Piling with Revit 2019, Dynamo and AutoCAD Civil 3D 2019.

Attach It for Revit – Attach Any File (PDF, DOC, XLS, Etc...)

From the Boost Your BIM website:

With the current version of this tool, PDF files can be converted to images and imported into drafting views. All other file formats can be attached to the Revit file and then viewed in their native viewers but pushing the View button in the Attach It dialog.

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Attach It is brought to you by Boost Your BIM. It's priced at US $9.00.

This add-in is compatible with Revit 2019, 2018, and 2017.

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

Lumion 9 Review

From the What Revit Wants website:

Winning the Job – A Lumion 9 Review

By Michael Clothier
December 21, 2018

I’ve recently had the chance to put the new Lumion 9 through it’s paces.

Why Lumion

At Virtual Built Technology amongst the many BIM services we offer, we also create construction visualisations and animations.

A Demo Reel / Mashup of some recent work…
Over the years we’ve played with many software solutions to get the kind of results our clients are after. Each time we do this kind of work it’s slightly different, either a client will require something different, there’s all sorts of budgets, a client might want to focus on a specific area, and what we can get our hands on in terms of models etc, is always different. In the past we’d model in Revit and Sketchup, federate and visualise in Navisworks or 3DS Max, animate in Navisworks or 3DS Max and then post production in iMovie or Motion and Final Cut. A complex high end animation, might see us jump in and out of several different applications several times over before completion.

However, since Lumion has come along, we’ve been able to significantly increase our output by simplifying the often many different steps we’d need to take. And whilst it isn’t quite a one stop shop, it is definitely made life a lot easier.

Read more on the What Revit Wants website »

Goodbye Project Fractal, Hello Project Refinery

From the Dynamo website:

Introducing Project Refinery

November 12, 2018
By LILLI SMITH

We have learned a great deal from Project Fractal. Initially released in July 2016, there are over 3500 people who have tried their hand at coding their design logic in Dynamo and automating design option creation with Fractal.  Today we are announcing that Project Fractal has evolved into a new beta project called Project Refinery.  Project Refinery not only lets you create design options with many of the same methods that existed in Fractal, but it also allows you to set goals and optimize for those goals.  When you choose to maximize or minimize designated outputs, Refinery will return the best options.  Refinery also solves some of the problems we heard around not being able to run custom nodes including Python nodes.  Refinery runs locally and allows custom code to participate in design option generation.  Refinery will run in Dynamo for Revit or Dynamo Sandbox and includes a node to cache Revit data for use in option generation.   Refinery is still a beta project. There are rough edges, but if you would like to try it out and work with us to advance generative design for AEC we would be thrilled.  You can learn more here:

Tutorial – Piling with Revit 2019, Dynamo and AutoCAD Civil 3D 2019

From the Revit: A Structured Approach blog:

In this tutorial we will look at a simple method to generate piling from a finished ground level to a rock stratum from borehole data. Most of you will now have access to the Autodesk AEC collection but, I often find that people tend to use just one or two tools from this collection which doesn’t return value or efficiency. In this workflow we will utilise Revit 2019, Civil 3D 2019 and Dynamo.

This workflow can also be achieved using Dynamo and Revit to find the intersections between the piling and the surfaces, but this can take quite a while to execute on large datasets, is computationally expensive and will invariably crash the machine.

Continue reading on the Revit: A Structured Approach blog »

Critical Mass – 5-Star Rated Add-ins* on the Autodesk App Store for End-of-Year 2018, Now Expanded!

Peer reviews can help one to decide on apps to use or purchase. Unfortunately, reviews on the Autodesk App Store can be hard to come by. Apps that have thousand of downloads can have just a few reviews. Furthermore, the App Store's sort-by-rating function doesn't take the number of reviews into account.

Listed below for your convenience are the 5-star rated Revit-related add-ins on the App Store with at least four reviews, sorted by number of reviews, highest to lowest. Add-ins are also separated between free and paid.

This is our second biannual listing. This time out, we've added add-ins for the other applications on the App Store that we cover: Navisworks, BIM 360, Advance Steel, and Robot Structural Analysis.

The add-in that gained the most votes since our last listing was Enscape™  with 14 (for 38 total). For free add-ins, TransferSingle received 10 new votes (for 42 total). The add-in debuting with the most votes is DPR Model Slicer with 12.

And remember, reviews are important. Please take a few minutes to share your own experiences with apps on the App Store by submitting reviews!

Revit

Free

COINS Auto-Section Box
Brings fluidity to the Autodesk® Revit® section box when modifying complex areas of a model. Saves seconds when communicating, costly minutes when modeling, and valuable hours throughout a project | Free
★★★★★ (99 reviews ⁺² )

Palladio X BIM WindowsLayout
Arrange windows by a scheme | Free
★★★★★ (61 reviews ⁺⁶ )

The Week That Was in Revit Add-ons for December 17-23, 2018

New

From the Autodesk App Store, we posted about the free CAD Link Opener for opening CAD links in AutoCAD or other applications, the free Chameleon for easy view filter creation, the free LODmanager for assigning and managing LOD parameters and for viewing varying levels of LOD, and rvt2VR for publishing Revit models to virtual reality in 1-click. We also belatedly posted about Control Area Reinforcement for comparing actual area reinforcement versus required reinforcement imported from Robot Structural Analysis.

Updates

From the App Store, we posted about BIM Repeat Remapper v1.1, which is now free. We also belatedly posted about Bird Tools' Tag Alignment Tool v1.4 and Docuflow v2.6.

For additional App Store updates not mentioned here, see our latest roundup.

Roundup – for Dec 17-23, 2018, New and Updated Revit-Related Add-Ins on the Autodesk App Store

The week of December 18, 2018 was a fairly busy one for Revit-related add-ins on the Autodesk App Store. Five new add-ins were published and another ten were updated.

Revit

New

Control area reinforcement
Add-in compares the actual area reinforcement (floors and walls) and required reinforcement obtained in the program Autodesk® Robot® Structural Analysis | USD 10.00
★★☆☆☆ (1 review)
About This Version: Version 4.0.0, 12/21/2018 – New version for checking area reinforcement in Revit.

LODmanager
This app allows users to easily add and manage simple LOD parameters to an Autodesk® Revit® model and also, allows users to analyze levels of LOD in a model by using quick and easy LOD visual filters | Free
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 1.1.0, 12/19/2018 – Initial Public Release

Control Area Reinforcement – Compare Actual Vs. Required Area Reinforcement Imported from Robot Structural Analysis

From the Autodesk App Store:

Add-in compares the actual area reinforcement (floors and walls) and required reinforcement obtained in the program Autodesk® Robot® Structural Analysis.

Verification of the actual reinforcement with this add-in can be performed after importing the required reinforcement from Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis only.

The results of the comparison are available in the form of isopoles or text values.

The red color of isopoles indicates on the parts of the plate where there is not enough reinforcement or the element does not contain area reinforcement.

To analyze the reinforcement of a single element (or elements), you must select the desired element and then start the add-in. You can choose: an element, its analytics or area reinforcement. Then the results will be displayed only for the selected element (s).

Bird Tools' Tag Alignment Tool v1.4

From the Autodesk App Store:

About This Version

Version 1.4, 12/20/2018

• Added looping feature for the leader landing location picking process: the user would keep on picking the desired location of the desired taghead until he/she cancels the command whenever he/she is satisfied with the results.
• Added an experimental feature for a constant landing (distance between the elbow and the leader attachment point) among all tags/text notes.
• Added support for the Imperial Unit System whenever the initial project template would be an imperial one.
• Fixed bugs.

Description

The “Bird Tools Tag Alignment Tool” is an Autodesk® Revit® Add-On that aims to arrange Revit TAGS and TEXT NOTES that have been assigned leaders in a neat form, such that their “landing lines” are straight and that all of their leaders are parallel. It proves to be extremely useful in areas that are overpopulated with tags and text notes and thus helps the user move all the tags contained in the aforementioned area to another tag-free area with a single mouse click.

Docuflow v2.6

From the Autodesk App Store:

About This Version

Version 2.6, 12/18/2018

• New selection method with two gridviews and wider dialog.
• Advanced filename with unlimited possibilities, including sheet and project parameters. 
• Support to sets of Revit sheets for quicker selection.
• Publishing of sheets to a single PDF is now supported, including the possibility of reordering the sheet sequence beforehand.
• Checks Revit build number and prevents Docuflow to run with Revit builds that crash when printing to PDF.
• Bypasses installing the printer drivers if they are already installed.
• Autofit of text in the sheet selection to make all text visible.
• New control to show/hide columns in the sheet selection in the tab Customize.
• Display error if the user has no permissions to use the PDF printer.
• Prevents Docuflow beings installed if Revit is runnning to ensure correct behaviour.
• Supports floating licenses.

Description

Publish all your documents in one operation.
Now it's easy to get high-quality PDF, DWG, IFC and drawing list from the same tool. Just select your sheets and you are good to go. Docuflow makes your drawing issues quick and simple.

Add-In Publishers, Conference Organizers, Autodesk Channel Partners, & Consultants: Check Out Our New Advertising Page!

If you've been curious about advertising on Revit Add-ons but wanted an easier way to discover the available options, check out our brand new Advertising page!

Please know that ads aren't limited to just add-ins; ads for related hardware products, conferences, and consulting services are also welcome!

And don't forget, in addition to Revit, we also cover Navisworks, Dynamo, BIM 360, Advance Steel, and Robot Structural Analysis!

Lastly, if all your products are free, you qualify for a free ad!

rvt2VR – Revit to Virtual Reality in 1-Click

From the Autodesk App Store:

From Autodesk® Revit® to immersive virtual reality in a click. 

Instantly take your Revit projects to 1:1 scale VR in the click of a button. No coding or installations are required. rvt2VR is the easiest and most intuitive way to jump in and explore your 3D model with the incredible sensation of presence – the feeling as though you’re actually there.

Easy Setup: 

- Install the plugin, click the button and explore your model in 1:1 scale VR. It’s that simple.

Fast Loading Time: 

- Works even with large and complex Revit projects.

Comfortable Experience: 

- Engineered for comfort with low latency and high frame-rates to reduce feelings of motion sickness.

Oculus Rift & HTC Vive Compatible: 

- Experience 1:1 scale VR with the best immersive VR headsets on the market.

Free LODmanager – Assign and Manage LOD Parameters and View Varying Levels of LOD

From the Autodesk App Store:

Compared to paper drafting, BIM makes it quick and easy to represent every element of a building in detail. For instance, just a few clicks can add in detailed beam systems showing profile specifications, attachment points, and spacing in all relevant views.

However, the ease of modeling in such detail also opens the door to miscommunication when other parties on a project make assumptions about the accuracy and reliability of the model, which can lead to unnecessary rework and lost time.

The LODmanager Autodesk® Revit® Plugin, developed by IKERD Consulting, helps bring clarity to BIMForum Level of Develeopment (LOD) use in a model by adding LOD parameters to model elements, providing tools to easily modify LOD parameters, and allowing you to visualize varying levels of LOD in a single model.

Free CAD Link Opener – Open CAD Links in AutoCAD

From the Autodesk App Store:

CAD Link Opener is a free Autodesk® Revit® application that adds a DWG link opening functionality that was previously non-existent.

When this command is executed, the user selects the DWG link and it will be opened in a new Autodesk® AutoCAD® (Or any other DWG viewer/editor that the user has associated the DWG filetype with) instance in case it was not already running. Otherwise, the aforementioned file will be opened in the already running instance of the process.

Such a feature proves to be helpful whenever the user needs to edit the currently linked DWG, by automatically opening this file for him/her and thus saving him/her some time and effort.

GIF animation for people with restricted access to YouTube

What’s Hot in Revit Add-ons for December 2018

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

In November 2018, we published 47 posts and received 62,872 pageviews, our second highest tally to date.

Our post on Lumion 9 topped our list for the month. The #2 post was also update-related, Autodesk BIM Interoperability Tools for Revit v7.

Posts related to new products were Guardian at #3, SheetLink at #4, ENGyn, a rare Navisworks-related charting post, at #5, BCF Export, a rare BIM 360-related charting post, at #6, LINKo7 (fittingly enough) at #7, and Drawing List Manager at #8.

Rounding out our list for the month was our thank you to our readers and advertisers.

BIM Repeat Remapper v1.1 – Now Free!

From the Autodesk App Store:

About This Version

Version 1.1, 12/18/2018

• Fixed Bugs
• BIM Repeat Remapper is now FREE!

Description

“BIM Repeat Remapper” is an Autodesk® Revit® Add-On that enables the user to remap the "Repeat Last Command" command to the spacebar and/or the mouse right button.

Free Chameleon – Easy View Filter Creation

From the Autodesk App Store:

Chameleon helps you create view filters by simply selecting a category to filter and an associated parameter.

All the values of the parameter will be used to create the view filters and a legend image file will be created.

The Week That Was in Revit Add-ons for December 10-16, 2018

Revit

New

From the Autodesk App Store, we posted about Macaw Plus, for searching, grouping and editing keynotes.

Navisworks

New

From the App Store, we posted about the self-explanatory Navis To AcadCAD, and TAGGER, for tagging elements in real time.

Updated

Also from the App Store, we posted about Publish to Mobile View for Autodesk® Navisworks® v3.0.0.

Roundup – for Dec 10-16, 2018, New and Updated Revit-Related Add-Ins on the Autodesk App Store

The week of December 10, 2018 was a moderately busy one for Revit-related add-ins on the Autodesk App Store. 4 new add-ins were published (1 for Revit, 2 for Navisworks, and 1 for BIM 360), and 14 were updated (13 for Revit and 1 for Navisworks).

Revit

New

Macaw Plus
An advanced keynote table that allows searching, filtering and editing keynotes within Autodesk® Revit® application | USD 2.00/M
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 0.2, 11/30/2018 – Find invalid keynote entry and prompt error message while reading keynote file.

Updated

NBS
App allows you to browse thousands of high-quality Autodesk® Revit® families and systems on the award-winning NBS National BIM Library and then drag-and-drop selected objects directly into the model | Free
☆☆☆☆☆ (0 reviews)
About This Version: Version 3.4.0, 12/12/2018 – Verify associations bug fix

Publish to Mobile View for Autodesk® Navisworks® v3.0.0

From the Autodesk App Store:

About This Version

Version 3.0.0, 12/3/2018

1. Improved convert speed.
2. Large model convert issue solved.
3. Feature to convert Section box view
4. Detailing level can be controlled now

Description

About the plugin:

The plugin will convert a Navisworks Model to a .epic file and then that .epic file needs to be transferred to a Mobile or Tablet to load and view in Mobile and Tablet devices.

Macaw Plus – Search, Group and Edit Keynotes

From the Autodesk App Store:

Macaw is an Autodesk® Revit® add-in which displays the keynotes within the existing keynote table and allows for searching, grouping and editing keynotes directly within keynote application.

Here is list of Macaw Plus' features :

• Ability to search the keynote table using keywords.
• Create filtered keynotes and save them as grouped to make the browsing of the large tables much easier.
• Allow the user to create keynotes directly from the keynote table.
• Replace existing keynotes in the model with the new ones in the table.
• Add/Remove/Edit keynotes
• Update the existing keynotes within the model after changing the keynote index
• Ability to undo the modification of keynote table
• Backup the keynote file and restore the backups directly from the add-in.
• Renumbering the keynotes using predefined indexing patterns

Navis To Acad

From the Autodesk App Store:

Have you ever been working with the Autodesk® Navisworks® model and had to reference a location in Autodesk® AutoCAD®? Chances are the answer is yes. The normal workflow would be to copy and paste the values from the Measure tools dockable panel one at a time. The Navis to Acad tool allows you to instantly reference points used in the measurement tool into the last active AutoCAD dwg. Simply snap some points using the "Point to Point" measurement tool in Navisworks, then chose to reference the first point, second point, or both points in AutoCAD and spheres will be drawn at those points.

Another feature of this app allows you to instantly apply move transformations to objects in AutoCAD. Once the objects are moved in Navisworks, right click on the still selected objects and select the "Transform->Acad" option. If the objects are found in any open drawing in AutoCAD, the transforms will be applied to them.

Lean4Team – Lean Project Management for BIM 360 Docs

From the Autodesk App Store:

Lean4Team is a project management solution connected to your Autodesk® BIM 360® account. It is designed for the practical implementation of Lean in BIM and Construction teams, with the goal to eliminate waste. It provides a real-time, shared understanding of activity and status, making it the ideal tool to manage BIM projects.

Lean4Team benefits include:

• Advanced team visibility into projects in the pipeline and projects in process — keeping your team organized and focused on priorities
• Finish up on tasks with a lot of people without having to set up meetings for them
• Efficient for users who don't want to be interrupted by project managers — your boss can see the status instead of asking
• Makes it easy to anticipate problems and possibilities and alter your actions according to positive or negative conditions
• Accelerates project delivery for contractors by enabling the office to easily coordinate and connect while empowering the field to anticipate and act
• Increases the reliability of project work plans while providing insight into the root causes that can erode team productivity and project profit
• Helps to move on from a physical Kanban board to an electronic board

TAGGER for Navisworks – Tag Elements in Real Time

From the Autodesk App Store:

Tag the information of any element inside Autodesk® Navisworks® in real time.

With this tool you can visualize the information of elements in Navisworks and create a tag with this information.

Tagger uses the "Quick Properties" information to create smart tags of your model.

Also, you can create SavedViewPoint in just one click. Similar to Autodesk® Revit®, create Tags of any element, in different colors for a better visualization.

Display and Tag Element Data

The Week That Was in Revit Add-ons for Dec 3-9, 2018

The week of December 3, 2018 was a quiet one on Revit Add-ons. On The Autodesk App Store, no new add-ins were published and none were updated. Our best guess: the site administrator was probably on vacation. Expect a flood next week.

We took the opportunity to do some behind the scenes work, such as branding, marketing and sales.

We also took the opportunity to catch up with one of our advertisers, StrucSoft Solutions, by posting about their MWF Post Frame for Revit, as well as their free Dynamo scripts.


Top 10

Top of the Pops

Last week, the following posts spent time in the #1 spot of our 'Trending Top 10 for the Last 7 Days' list. In order, they were:

• The Week That Was in Revit Add-ons for Nov 19 - Dec 2, 2018
• Free GAMUT | MANAGER – The Easiest Way to Manage Your Firm’s BIM Content Library
• Revit 2019 Product Enhancements from Autodesk (Update #19)

Free Unjoin All Framing Dynamo Scripts from StrucSoft Solutions

From the StrucSoft Solutions website:

Dynamo Scripts

Especially handy for floor systems, users can disallow the joins on their beams and framing (by comment or all framing) without having to go into each piece individually. Using Dynamo 2.0.1

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The Unjoin All Framing and Unjoin All Framing by Comment Dynamo scripts are brought to you by StrucSoft Solutions. They're free.

There's more information available on the StrucSoft Solutions website.

Related

Product Roundup – Add-ins from StrucSoft Solutions, Including Some Free