Free Project VUE Viewing for Navisworks – Import Intergraph Smart / SmartPlant 3D Models

From the It's Alive in the Lab blog...

Project VUE Viewing for Autodesk Navisworks is [a] free technology preview of a Navisworks file reader that helps users import Intergraph Smart / Intergraph SmartPlant 3D models into Navisworks.

There's more information available on the It's Alive in the Lab website.

Credit:

Project VUE Viewing for Navisworks available via Autodesk Labs http://t.co/oUNinRuNDO #autodesklabs

— Autodesk Labs Scott (@scottsh115) July 1, 2015

Dynamo 0.8.1 Released

From the DynamoBIM website...

Happy summer! With the new season, new toys and power-tools for your Dynamo-ing pleasure.  Major improvements with our graphics system allow for more utilization of hardware acceleration, and the introduction of COLOR to the Dynamo interface.  To add a little more sparkle and organization to your graphs, we have also added grouping capabilities.  In the more “down to business” areas, we have made interop with Excel much more robust, with improvements to handling of null  values, ragged lists, and empty cells, as well as more control over how files are written and over-written. Search and browse improvements are huge with in-canvas search and better search term matching. This and much more:

Free Revit Journal Cleaner Version 2

Dante van Wettum has updated his free Revit Journal Cleaner. The application cleans up the file bits and pieces that Revit leaves behind. The latest version includes support for Revit 2016 and may be downloaded by clicking on this link.

Credit: Luke Johnson's What Revit Wants blog.

Free 3D Hologram Creator

From the Autodesk Exchange Apps website...

The Zebra Imaging 3D Hologram Creator extends Autodesk® Revit® native file export capabilities to include OBJ files. The 3D Hologram Creator will export all selected geometry in a 3D view along with any materials used in the scene. This application will allow all Revit users to easily create a visually stunning 3-D holographic print to showcase your design in the best possible light. Gone are the days of expensive, fragile, and bulky solid models that take weeks to produce. With this app you can export your design, prepare your hologram in ZScape Preview and send the project to Zebra Imaging all in a single afternoon. The hologram will then be imaged at the Austin, Texas print center and shipped to you anywhere in the world. Most projects are completed within 5-7 business days of receiving the order.

The free 3D Hologram Creator add-in is brought to you by Zebra Imaging, Inc.

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

Roundup – New and Updated Revit Add-ins on Autodesk Exchange Apps for the Week of 6/21/2015

With no new apps and only three updated, this was one of the quieter weeks I've seen for Revit add-ins on Autodesk Exchange Apps.




UPDATED

FREE ArchVision RPC Entourage Starter Pack
2016 now supported! Download and Drag & Drop RPC Content into Autodesk® AutoCAD, Autodesk® Revit® & Autodesk® 3ds Max. Place, edit & render thousands of RPC People, Trees, Cars & Objects | Free

RoomMass
RoomMass provides a tool for automatically creating: - mass elements (mesh geometry) from 3D room’s objects - mass elements (solid geometry) from extrude 2D room's objects | USD 19.99

Topo Align 2016
Align topography to elements picked in the model | USD 1.99




Related: Other roundups.

Roundup – New and Updated Revit Add-ins on Autodesk Exchange Apps for the Week of 6/14/2015

It was another busy week on Autodesk Exchange Apps with updates of 11 apps and 1 new one.

Other highlights include updates from current Revit Add-ons advertisers ArchVision, RevitWorks, and Xrev, as well as former advertiser PopIcon Software.This week also saw updates to the popular and free HatchKit add-in.

NEW

DoNotPlot
DoNotPlot allows you to pick categories and subcategories that will not plot/print for each Autodesk® Revit® model. This information is stored in the Revit model for all users of the addin | Free


UPDATED

FREE ArchVision RPC Entourage Starter Pack
2016 now supported! Download and Drag & Drop RPC Content into Autodesk® AutoCAD, Autodesk® Revit® & Autodesk® 3ds Max. Place, edit & render thousands of RPC People, Trees, Cars & Objects | Free

Scope Box Synchronizer
Quickly imports and synchronizes Scope Boxes between different projects as well as reorders Scope Boxes in the project | Free

3DPDF Exporter for Revit®
3DPDF Exporter For Autodesk® Revit® exports your model to secured and encrypted 3D PDF file | Trial

Xrev Transmit
Xrev Transmit is the ultimate print, export & transmittal tool for Autodesk® Revit® users. Publish drawing sheets and the model in numerous formats all at the same time, with the settings you need | Trial

Free DoNotPlot Add-in

From the Autodesk Exchange Apps website...

 DoNotPlot allows you to pick categories and subcategories that will not plot/print for each Autodesk® Revit® model.

This addin will store the categories and subcategories you choose into your Revit model. Whenever you or anyone else with this addin installed prints, the categories and subcategories will be turned off and therefore not printed.

The best use of this addin, is to create your own subcategories inside your families and put content on them that you do not want to print but want to be visible in your model. For example: create a subcategory called "DONOTPRINT" and place some content you wish to not print onto that subcategory. Then add the "DONOTPRINT" subcategory to the list in DoNotPlot addin. Then everytime you print, the "DONOTPRINT" subcategory will be turned off during printing.

The free DoNotPlot add-in is brought to you by Troy Gates.

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

Further reading: Other printing-related add-ins.

Using Dynamo to Automate the “I” in BIM (Update 2)

Nearly a decade ago, Rob Snyder of Bentley Systems, when speaking to me about Bentley’s then groundbreaking computational modeling product Generative Components (GC), told me, “I foresee a day when people will deliver computational modeling definitions as add-ins rather than traditional macros or apps.” I think that, with Dynamo, that vision is becoming a reality.

Luke Johnson recently presciently wrote in a post on his What Revit Wants blog that generative modeling tools excel at what their platform applications excel at. For GC+MicroStation and Grasshopper+Rhino, that’s advanced freeform modeling. For Dynamo+Revit, that’s leveraging, managing and documenting the “I,” or information, in "BIM."

I first saw an example of Dynamo being used to manage BIM information when I posted about the BIM Troublemaker using Dynamo to link Revit with Excel. Lately, I’ve noticed a groundswell of other practical applications of Dynamo as evidenced by the following tweets, several of which come from a post on What Revit Wants.

Renumbering in #Revit got you down? This tutorial by @williamwong will cheer you up #DynamoBIM http://t.co/F38yaydetL pic.twitter.com/vXlgENDgSz

— CASE (@case_inc) March 12, 2015

Video Demo of Enscape in Action – Real-Time 3D Rendered Walkthrough for Revit (Updated)

I previously posted about Enscape, the real-time 3D rendered walkthrough add-in for Revit projects. Here's a nice demo video of the application in action.

Updated 6/18/2015 to include an Editor's Choice Award. Congratulations to the folks at Inreal Technologies GmbH!




Pretty slick! And Enscape is priced at just 45.00 USD monthly. Now that's compelling.

A trial version of Enscape can be downloaded from Autodesk Exchange Apps or from the Enscape website.

Credit:

"Shut up and take my money now!" - Real-time rendering for #Revit using #Enscape! http://t.co/EGvfcKB5LJ #awesome

— Jason Howden (@RTVTools) June 17, 2015

Free Excel Export/Import Add-in for Revit

From the BIM One website...

SYNCHRONIZE DATA BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN REVIT AND EXCEL

The Import/export Excel allows you to synchronize data back and forth between Revit and Excel. It also means you can alleviate the data management process by delegating tasks related to the model to team members that don’t use the model. You can export schedules as well as Revit standards to manage them in Excel. Once modified, you import the data back to Revit and your schedules or standards are going to be updated.

• Data management without managing the 3D model
• Better segregation of duties
• Reduced training costs on BIM softwares

The free Excel Export/Import add-in is brought to you by BIM One.

There's more information available on the BIM One website, and on the Autodesk App Store.

Related:
Other Revit/Excel add-ins
Other free add-ins

IMAGINiT Utilities for Revit 2016 Includes 2 New Tools

From the IMAGINiT website...

The Indispensable Time-Savers for Autodesk Revit

IMAGINiT Utilities for Revit 2016 supports only Revit 2016 products. We do also offer versions for Revit 2013, 2014 and 2015. The IMAGINiT Utilities are available in either Standalone or Named-User versions.

NEW in Utilities for Revit 2016*:

Dependent View Copy
Automate the creation of dependent views in your model, based on an example set. This utility handles view naming, crop regions, splits and more.

Adjust Pipe
Pipes in Revit can be finicky – if two segments are out of alignment by a tiny fraction of an inch – they cannot be joined together. This tool provides a wide variety of ways to adjust pipes so that they will trim together, and you can keep on piping.

*These tools only in IMAGINiT Utilities for Revit 2016, which will be available beginning June 19, 2015.

Other tools include:

View Cleanup - Helps reduce file size and reduces the time you need to clean up excessive views from Revit models. It’s especially helpful when working with multiple consultants.

What's Hot in Revit Add-ons for May 2015

From May's Revit Add-ons statistics, it seems that stairs continue to be an area of potential improvement for Revit add-in developers.

The following descriptions are those of the add-in developers.

Stairs Builder
Stairs Builder is an application based on Autodesk® Revit®. It provides powerful capabilities and friendly features for stairs creation with following characteristics:

• Fourteen kinds of the most common stairs are supported.
• Stairs can be created across more than one level. 
• Levels with different intervals are supported for stairs creation with Stairs Builder. 
• Landings and Openings can be created automatically. 
• And more!

Roundup – New and Updated Revit Add-ins on Autodesk Exchange Apps for the Week of 6/7/2015

With a whopping 27 new or updated add-ins, the week of June 7, 2015 was one of the busiest I've seen on Autodesk Exchange Apps in the 8 months that I've been publishing these weekly roundups.



NEW

Scope Box Synchronizer
Quickly imports and synchronizes Scope Boxes between different projects as well as reorders Scope Boxes in the project | Free



UPDATED

Vabi Financial Simulator
Vabi Financial Simulator™ App enables Return on Investment (ROI) calculations, monitors the financial impact of design decisions and supervises achievement of owner and developer financial goals | Trial

CTC SuperDoor Configurator 2016 (Purchase)
SuperDoor Configurator includes both Autodesk® Revit® families and software which provides a wizard interface that guides users through quickly and easily creating quality doors. For Revit 2014-2016 | USD 370.00

CTC SuperDoor Configurator 2016 (Trial)
SuperDoor Configurator includes both Autodesk® Revit® families and software which provides a wizard interface that guides users through quickly and easily creating quality doors. For Revit 2014-2016 | Trial

2D Placer
Autodesk® Revit® addin for placing Detail Items and Annotation Symbols with a modified interface to enhance productivity | Trial

Free Scope Box Synchronizer

From the Autodesk Exchange Apps website...

The application is able to import all or selected Scope Boxes from a linked Autodesk® Revit® project into your project, as well as checking if yours and the linked Scope Boxes are the same - if they are different you're able to Synchronize your Scope Boxes to match those in the linked project. Similar to the built-in Copy/Monitor functionality, but on Scope Boxes.

After importing or synchronizing you also have the possibility to reorder the Scope Boxes either automatically or with drag and drop.

The free Scope Box Synchronizer is brought to you by Omnia Revit.

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

Related: Roundup – Free Scope Box Add-ins from Omnia Revit

Autodesk Results Connect 2016 for Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis

Release Date: 2015-05-11

Results Connect is an application that allows designers and engineers using Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis to seamlessly access data and results with Microsoft® Office® Excel®.

This tool allows, with simple formulas available in Microsoft® Excel®, to obtain information about a structure model defined in your project.

With Results Connect, you can seamlessly access information on your model such as:

• values of forces for all bars,
• values of nodal displacements,
• information concerning section properties.

You can also use formulas and Microsoft Excel tools to create a data table for structural elements from the project, and display these data as line graphs, histograms, and charts.

Log in to Autodesk Account to access this subscription entitlement.