Free Drafted: AI House Generator—Five Complete Editable Model Alternatives w/Documentation “in 45 Seconds”

Overview

Drafted is a free, cloud-assisted Revit add-in for early-stage residential planning. It converts a structured design brief—primarily a room list, optional footprint, and generation settings—into five alternative house-plan concepts in roughly 45 seconds. Unlike an image generator, it returns native, editable Revit geometry, including walls, floors, roofs, doors, windows, and rooms. Its purpose is to accelerate schematic exploration and give designers several BIM-ready starting points rather than produce construction-ready documentation.

How the Revit Workflow Operates

1. Define the boundary. Use Draw Shape to trace a footprint, or omit the footprint and allow Drafted to establish the overall form.
2. Build the program. Add the required spaces, such as bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, living areas, garage, and porches.
3. Generate alternatives. Submit the inputs through the Drafted ribbon. Processing occurs on Drafted’s servers and requires an internet connection.
4. Compare five schemes. Each generation round places five alternatives on the Revit canvas for side-by-side review.
5. Iterate. Revise the footprint, room list, or settings and generate another set if the initial options are unsuitable.
6. Develop the selected option. Continue editing the chosen native Revit elements using normal modeling, coordination, and documentation practices.

Generated Content and Deliverables

• Native model elements: Editable Revit walls, floors, roofs, doors, windows, and rooms rather than a flattened image or imported underlay.
• Multiple design options: Five distinct floor-plan concepts per generation round, supporting rapid comparison of adjacency, circulation, footprint efficiency, and program fit.
• Basic project views and documentation: Each option is reported to include square footage, room count, a 3D view, elevations, area plans, and sheets.
• Account synchronization: Generated work also syncs with the user’s Drafted account at Drafted.ai.
• Continued editability: Teams can adjust the generated geometry, replace content with office-standard families and types, and carry the preferred concept into conventional Revit design development.

Free BIMicon Toolbar — A Suite of Tools

From the Autodesk App Store:

Description

BIMicon Toolbar for Autodesk® Revit® has been designed for professionals in the AEC industry to quickly document and coordinate construction drawings. 

Among the many tools that help with common tasks are:

• Create interior elevation markers by selecting rooms and place the newly created views on sheets. It will completely remove the tedious task of manually placing interior elevation markers and dragging these views onto sheets.
• Duplicate sheets
• Place active view on sheets
• Create floors following room boundaries, allowing to instantly create floor finishes.
• Number family instances sequentially following a selected curve; parking spaces, rooms, or any family instance with a parameter. Never again number them manually one by one!
• Number doors and windows after room numbers. In a few clicks, you will number all doors and windows after a standard naming system. The benefits are a coherent drawing set, and doors and windows can be easily identified in schedules.
• Create an Excel table with all the warnings classified in order of importance. It allows team members to focus on critical warnings that affect the integrity of the documentation and the performance of the model instead of trying to fix all trivial warnings.
• Open a project, workshared or single user, with all selected types of links unloaded. The ability to open a file with Revit file links unloaded can reduce the initial loading time by more than 90%.

There are many more useful tools in the toolbar. Please check the documentation page for more information.

Thanks for looking for better ways to extract value from BIM.

Smart Assemblies New Release May 8, 2017

From the AGACAD website:

Revit add-on – Smart Assemblies – long awaited features in the update

By Valensas Balsevicius
May 08, 2017

Another update of Smart Assemblies is released. Sometimes we encounter small issues which we can be solved by investing some more time or using workarounds, but when that involves everyday procedures, it can make modelling and documenting in Revit quite annoying. I would like to let you know that using this Revit add-on your documentation procedures will be greatly upgraded. In this blog I will mention only the last features implemented in newest release, but to see all the enhancements implemented into Smart Assemblies – see webinars, E-Help files, blogs or request a live online demonstration.

Simplicity Dynamic Reinforcement Details (Updated)

Updated November 11, 2016: The developer changed the name from Simplicity to the more descriptive Simplicity Dynamic Reinforcement Details.

From the Autodesk App Store:

Simplicity Dynamic Reinforcement Details helps you to create drawings of reinforced concrete structures. Enter the 3D reinforcement with Autodesk® Revit® tools, then Simplicity Dynamic Reinforcement Details makes it extremely quick and easy.

• Add reinforcing details dynamically linked to Revit rebar. The details represent the shape of the bars and other main dimensional characteristics
• Add annotations to reinforcement details dynamically linked to the Revit rebar. Annotations are connected to reinforcement details and indicate the main rebar characteristics.
• Create convenient summary tables
• Every detail is dynamically linked to the Revit rebar. Changing the rebar, changes the details, so the design remains consistent. 

Maximum flexibility
Simplicity Dynamic Reinforcement Details can insert both built-in families and external families in the document. A powerful tool creates the reinforcing details needed to represent linked rebar, when appropriate families are not defined in the document.

SOFiSTiK Reinforcement Detailing 2016

From the Autodesk Exchange Apps website...

SOFiSTiK Reinforcement Detailing significantly accelerates the creation of 2D reinforcement sheets out of 3D models in Autodesk® Revit®. The product consists of software and a set of families, which can easily be modified to meet local or company standards. Creation of bar lists, bending schedules and cut lists for wire meshes is included as well.

Functionalities at a glance

• Customizable Content Packs (Tags, Details etc.).
• Rebar marks per project or per sheet.
• Set Marks according additional criteria's like running length, connectors etc.
• Customizable Annotation for all reinforcement elements.
• Group bars to a specific rebar container in order to tag them together.
• Creation of rebar sets with variable segment lengths.
• Split Rebars according to a stock length and a length of splice.
• Several Detailing tools to indicate the rebar layout,- bar ends,- layers, etc.
• Creation of Rebar Shape Details.
• Connect rebar couplers and anchor plates to rebar ends.
• Ignore Openings for rebars while removing an area system.
• Assign Reinforcement Layers in floors, walls and foundation slabs.
• Browse through the marks of rebars and fabric sheets.
• Creation of bent fabrics rows.
• Bending Schedules for rebars and cut lists for wire meshes.
• Export rebar data to CSV - (Excel) and ABS (bending machine).
• Several utility commands for creating, manipulating and visualizing.

SOFiSTiK Reinforcement Detailing is brought to you by SOFiSTiK AG and is priced at USD 549.00. A 30-day free trial is available.

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

Free Knovel Quick Search Add-in: Search for Technical Information from within Revit

From the Autodesk Exchange Apps website...

Knovel Quick Search gives users the ability to search Knovel for best practices, trusted technical references, and material properties data selected from over 100 authoritative sources from within Autodesk® Revit®.

Our plugin allows you to complete a basic search from within Revit, review results with text snippets, and then access Knovel when a result is selected. With the plugin you will have access to all of your current Knovel subscription entitlements.

Knovel is a cloud-based application integrating technical information with analytical and search tools to drive innovation and deliver answers engineers can trust.

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

CBS Room Picture Maker Add-in for Revit

From the Autodesk Exchange Apps website...

The purpose of the CBS Room Picture Maker is to create JPG files of each room in an Autodesk® Revit® project, using a Revit view as a template, so that the graphic style can be as desired.

A standard CodeBook Project database is created during the import process. If doing a one off import, this file can be discarded. However, if retained, it can be used, with CBS RDS Maker, a tool to create Room Data sheets as DOC or PDF files, with the JPG files.

The CodeBook Project database can also be used with the CodeBook Pro software, taking advantage of the full functionality of libraries, templates and synchronization that CodeBook Pro provides.

Process:

1. Synchronize a Project database with the Revit model containing the Revit Rooms.
2. Define which rooms require JPG files.
3. Open the template View in Revit.
4. Run the Create function.

The CBS Room Picture Maker add-in may be downloaded from the Autodesk Exchange Apps website. Cost is USD 29.00.