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

I recently lined up a gig to write a monthly article about Revit Add-ons for a magazine. I planned to focus the articles on the hottest posts on Revit Add-ons over the preceding month. Unfortunately, the magazine ceased publication. I like the concept so much though that I'm going to run with it here; every month, a week or so after the end of the month, I'll take a look back at the statistics from the preceding month and summarize in a recap article the posts that had the most pageviews.

Though it's arguably a little stale, I'm starting with February – because I already wrote the article for the now defunct magazine. I'll catch up with March and April in the next few days.

I hope that you enjoy these monthly articles.

Free Award-Winning Color Splasher Gets a Major Update

The Color Splasher is a tool by BIM One that allows rapid understanding of model information. It filters, selects and colors elements based on parameter values to help verify model data integrity and improve visualization of non-graphical data. The newly released Color Splasher V3.0 now lets you select multiple categories and then select a common parameter to those categories, color elements in 2D views, and includes MEP category support.

dp Stuff Utils Add-in for Revit 2015

Dima Chiriacov has released the 2015 versions of his popular dp Stuff Revit add-ins. Previously available as separate, free add-ins, most have been bundled together into one for 2015. The newly branded dp Stuff Utils add-in is priced at USD 8.00 and features 10 commands: ChangeTextCase, CopySelectionIds, RemoveAreasRooms, CropViewToSelection, NumberStuffByDirection, QuickViewAccess, RemoveEmptyTags, UpdateAreaCalcs, the award-winning WorksetExplorer, and ArchiSpeak. Dima has maintained his other Revit add-in, Randomizer, as a separate utility. Randomizer 2015 is priced at USD 4.50.

Beginners Guide to Python in Autodesk Revit

For you do-it-yourselfers out there, Chris Welch has approached a complex topic, programming with Python in Revit, on his Product Spec blogsite and presented it in a fashion that should be widely approachable.

Product Review – ViewSync

ViewSync synchronizes open views with the active view. Zoom to an area in the active view and other open views zoom to the same area automatically. When zooming in plan views, ViewSync not only works across other plan views, but also ceiling plans, 3D views, and elevations!

There are some great potential uses for ViewSync. For coordination purposes, it's a no-brainer; for instance, zoom around in the architectural plan view and have the other discipline plan views update automatically. It's also useful for locating the same areas in 3D views and elevation views as in plan, which can otherwise be tricky and time-consuming.

Randomizer 2015 Revit Add-in

Need to create random appearance in Revit? Randomizer 2015 Revit Addin lets you randomize instance parameters of family instances. Random pattern “trick” is being used very often by designers so hopefully this will save a hassle of mimicking random behavior “by hand”. The way it works – it lets you locate the instance parameter that you want to randomize among the family instances in your document by selecting the Category, then Family and then Type of your objects.

What is Autodesk Dynamo Studio?

From the DynamoBIM blog...

The Dynamo team at Autodesk has been cooking up a piece of software based on the core open source Dynamo technology that rolls it together with some closed source Autodesk stuff (Geometry tools, ability to sign in to cloud services, stuff like that), set to officially launch at the AIA convention in Atlanta [this week]. For some of you, Dynamo Studio might not change a thing about how you use and interact with Dynamo. We are going to continue building and posting the existing Dynamo for Revit installer on DynamoBIM.org and the whole open source toolkit is going to remain unchanged. We’re going to continue to provide the sandbox/standalone environment that many of you are already using.

What will change is that a version of Dynamo with all the geometric tools and package manager access that current Revit users have will be available to people who do not have Revit installed. That is, non-Revit users will now be able to get a “sandbox” version of Dynamo, similar to what many of you have been using already. We are hoping that this will allow us to expand out to a broader group of people and provide a way to streamline delivery of functionality that is harder to send out via Dynamo for Revit. For those of you in education, we hope this can become a more widely accessible teaching tool. For folks in offices, we hope this can be a bridge between non-Revit users and Revit based projects. We hope this enables you to work on Dynamo sketches on the subway, or talk with consultants and collaborators across other platforms like Navis and Rhino, and open up computation to users beyond traditional BIM.

We’d like to hear from you, the Dynamo builders, expanders, and early adopters, about what you think of an “Autodesk Dynamo”, what your thoughts and concerns are. At the same time that we are doing an official Autodesk application, we also have loads of backing within the company to keep the open source core of Dynamo active, and want to increase access to Dynamo as an independent computational platform.

There's more information available on the DynamoBIM blog.

Credit:

Introducing Dynamo Studio for computational design! Learn more at #AIA Booth 1651 Thurs 2:30pm http://t.co/wkSSBvHlSk pic.twitter.com/gAWl5d3KxN

— Autodesk Revit (@AutodeskRevit) May 10, 2015

Free Revit Shared Parameter Viewer

From the Spiderinnet blog site...

Revit shared parameter file is a text file but not so readable.  It has some syntaxes and codes that are not so straightforward such as the group numbers, disciplines, and categories.  To help view Revit shared parameters in a nice window, we created the Revit Shared Parameter Viewer.

There's more information available on the Spiderinnet blog site.

Credit: 

Free Revit Shared Parameter File Viewer: #Spiderinnet has posted a free shared… http://t.co/ovFAhTV5KU #revit

— Luke Johnson (@lukeyjohnson) May 11, 2015

Roundup – New and Updated Revit Add-ins on Autodesk Exchange Apps for the Week of 5/3/2015

UPDATED

RushForth Tools 2016
Save hundreds of hours with productivity tools including synchronizing data with Excel, filtering elements using parameter data, automatically creating elements around space boundaries, and much more! | USD 49.99

WebGL Exporter For Revit®
WebGL Exporter For Autodesk® Revit® exports your model to an HTML file. You can then view your model in the browser without any external application/plugin installation, manipulate the view and share | Trial

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

Remove Duplicate Mark Warnings
This tool is designed to remove duplicate mark warnings from the Autodesk® Revit® files | USD 10.00

Egan Parametric Graphic Scale
This app provides a Parametric Graphic Scale for Autodesk® Revit® that automatically updates each viewport’s view title | Trial

Egan Sheet Matrix
This app automatically renumbers views on sheets to comply with the Drawing Area Coordinate System of the NCS, or according to a custom user-defined matrix | Trial

Egan View Name By Sheet Number
This app allows you to name your views the way you always wanted, but thought it was too hard to maintain. Using “Reference other view,” it displays the views in sheet and detail number order | Trial

Lic-Report Free
Displays who is using network licenses of Autodesk products, including Autodesk® Vault® | Free

Egan Project Startup
This app provides startup utilities for Revit®: Local file maker, previous version alert, icons to display your company’s help file and splash view and place the Central File name on prints | Free

Egan Room Area Tools
This app facilitates room area comparisons, automates and displays occupant load calculations on room and area tags and calculates and displays major room dimensions on room tags | Trial

Align Ducts
Justify the alignment easily of ducts with four alignment options: center, edge, top, and bottom | Trial

Ideate BIMLink 2016 - Trial
Ideate BIMLink lets you pull data from an Autodesk® Revit® file into user-friendly Microsoft Excel and push Excel data into Revit with equal ease | Trial



Related: Other roundups.

Revit Express Tools Now Support Revit 2016! Schedule XL Added to BIM Project Suite!

From the CAD Technology Center press release...



New Features with Revit Express Tools

• BIM Project Suite, BIM Manager Suite and SuperDoor Configurator are all available for Revit 2016.
• Ribbon buttons in each suite can now be grouped under two dropdown buttons for better ribbon management
• The tab on which the ribbon buttons are placed can now be renamed, or the buttons can be hosted on the built-in "Add-Ins" tab

• A "Videos" button has been added in each tool, which opens a playlist of videos created specifically for that tool
• All tools now have "Request Feature" and "Report Bug" as choices on the main pulldown menu and in the "About" dialog

Schedule XL

• Schedule XL, the latest addition to BIM Project Suite, allows you to create schedule views from one or more worksheets in a spreadsheet
• These schedules can then be easily placed onto one or more sheets
• Schedule XL will also maintain a link to the original spreadsheet document and update the schedule(s) if the spreadsheet changes

Upgrade & Download Information

If you're already using a Revit Express Tools suite, you can download the latest version which supports Revit 2016 for that suite by clicking on the "Download Latest Suite Installer" button on the "About" dialog in any one of the tools.

Trial downloads: Premium tools function for 14 days, Free tools function indefinitely.

There's more information available on the CAD Technology Center website.

Electrical Productivity Pack for Revit

From the CAD Technology Center website...

High Quality Electrical BIM Starter Package

Compatible with Revit MEP 2013, 2014 and 2015

*Note - EPP is version specific

New users can be productive with Revit MEP right from the start. This site-license starter pack includes a project template, electrical content, shared parameters file, a user’s guide and a sample project. Utilize the "I" in BIM with the Electrical Productivity Pack for Revit MEP.

The template includes many features such as schedules (light fixture, equipment, cost estimating, etc.), legends, sheets, titleblocks and more. The content utilizes shared parameters and contains actual electrical information. When content is placed the appropriate schedules begin to populate; for example, lighting fixtures have information on lens type, number of lamps, ballast, manufacturer, etc... The template also has a Meter Schedule for documenting LEED projects.

This product contains nearly all of the content needed by electrical engineers to create electrical systems that work within Revit MEP. The Electrical Productivity Pack enables you to pass the flow of electrical data from outside of the building, to the inside and throughout. The included content has consistent parameters that enable accurate data transfer of electrical information between equipment and devices.

Template

The template is setup as a project with worksharing enabled and placeholder links for Autodesk Revit Architecture, Mechanical and Structure models (with links placed on corresponding worksets). Electrical Settings, Load Classification and Demand Factors are preset to NEC requirements. All corresponding tags are loaded.

Healthcare Productivity Pack for Revit

From the CAD Technology Center website...

A Comprehensive pack of healthcare families for Revit

Bypass the hundreds of hours required to create properly configured medical content for Revit. The Healthcare Productivity Pack has all the families you need for designing accurate and intelligent medical systems.

Save Time
Bypass the hundreds of hours required to create properly configured medical content for Revit. The Healthcare Productivity Pack has all the families you need for designing accurate and intelligent medical systems.

• Includes over 400 parametric families
• 32 Typical room configurations
• Shared parameters allow efficient scheduling
• Levels of visibility for quick regeneration time
• Custom parameters for seismic planning
• Shared parametric parameters facilitate efficient space planning and coordination

Revit Compatibility
The Healthcare Productivity Pack works with all versions of Autodesk Revit software from 2011 through the most current version available.

The Healthcare Productivity Pack is brought to you by the CAD Technology Center and is priced at USD 2,995.00 for a site license.

There's more information available on the CAD Technology Center website.

Autodesk Shared Reference Point 2015 for Revit and Civil 3D

From the Autodesk Account website...

Release Date: 2015-04-08

Autodesk® Shared Reference Point 2015 provides functionality to export known points and elevation from AutoCAD® Civil 3D software to an external file, in which Autodesk® Revit® software can import and setup a "Shared Coordinate System." This enables the collaboration of exported RVT, DWG and NWC files back to AutoCAD Civil 3D and to coordinate models in Autodesk® Navisworks® software.

To access this subscription entitlement, log into Autodesk Account website.

Related – Roundup: Revit 2015 Autodesk Subscription Product Enhancements (Updated)

Free Lines To Wall Revit Macro (Updated)

From the ArchSmarter website...

This macro converts Revit model lines to walls. Using the macro dialog box, you can select the line style you want to create the walls from, the starting floor level of the walls, the wall type to use and the wall height.

A couple of things to know about the macro:

The macro can use any model line to create the walls EXCEPT ellipses, partial ellipses and splines.
 If you insert an AutoCAD drawing, you'll need to explode it before you can convert the lines to walls. I'm looking into methods for creating walls from linked files. This would be my preferred method. I'm not a big fan of inserting DWG files into Revit models as it adds all sorts of junk to the file.

The walls are centered on the model line. The location line of the wall is set to "Wall Centerline".

Some future enhancements will include the ability to set the wall's top constraint instead using an unconnected height and allowing you to specify the wall's location line. I'm also looking into using a similar method to create MEP ducts and pipes from 2D lines.

There's more information available on the ArchSmarter website.

To get the free Lines To Wall macro, which is part of the ArchSmarter Toolbox, one must subscribe to ArchSmarter's email updates.

Free Revit Renamer Macro (Updated)

From the ArchSmarter website...

Changing the names of rooms, sheets and views in Revit is easy to automate with macros and the API. Renaming is a two step process. First, you gather all the sheets, views, room tags or whatever you want to rename with a collector. Once you have all the objects, you simply loop through the collection and change each object's name parameter. If you're replacing an old name with a new one, you can use a conditional statement to do the swap. The name parameters differ from object type to object type so you'll need to refer to the API documentation (which you can download here) for the exact parameter name.

In this macro, the building names are changed from from "North 1", "North 2", "South 1" and "South 2" to "B1", "B2", "B3" and "B4" respectively. The macros look at each object's name and replaces "North 1" with "B1", "North 2" with "B2" and so on. You can edit the code to use your own building designations. As you'll see, the code is very straightforward.

There's more information available on the ArchSmarter website.

To get the free Revit Renamer macro, which is part of the ArchSmarter Toolbox, one must subscribe to ArchSmarter's email updates.

Free Delete Unused Views Revit Macro (Updated)

From the ArchSmarter website...

This macro (in Revit 2014 and 2015 versions) deletes all views in the current project that are not on a sheet or are not named with the specified prefix. The macro works with all views, including dependent views. It does not delete legends and schedules.

The macro starts by getting all the views in the current model file. It then loops through the views and checks if the view is placed on a sheet. If the view is not on a sheet, the macro checks if the view name has a particular prefix. In this example, it checks for views beginning with "working". Note that you can edit the code to use any prefix you want - just change the value of the "viewPrefix" variable as shown below.

If the current view does not have the prefix and is not on a sheet, it can be deleted. The macro adds the view to a list of views to delete. Once all the views have been checked, the macro goes through the list of views to delete and removes each one from the model file.

Once all the clean-up is done, the macros displays the list of the views that have been deleted.

There's more information available on the ArchSmarter website.

To get the free Delete Unused Views macro, which is part of the ArchSmarter Toolbox, one must subscribe to ArchSmarter's email updates.

Free Link/Import DWGs from CSV Macro for Revit (Updated)

From the ArchSmarter website...

This Revit macro links or imports multiple DWG files into the current model file. The macro reads a CSV file that contains the full path for the DWG files as well as the floor plan views in which to insert the files.

The macro starts by loading a dialog box prompting you to select the CSV file. You can also specify whether to link or import the DWG files.

Once you've selected the CSV file and clicked the "OK" button, the macro reads the file then loops through the data in each row of the CSV file. It checks if the specified file and specified view exists. If they do, the macro links or imports the file. If either the file or view does not exist, the macro alerts you that the file cannot be linked.

The macro links the files using the black and white color mode and places matches the DWG's origin to the model origin. Insertion units are set to the default value of the model file. All of these settings can be changed by editing the "curOptions" variable in the macro code.

There's more information available on the ArchSmarter website.

To get the free Link/Import DWGs from CSV macro, which is part of the ArchSmarter Toolbox, one must subscribe to ArchSmarter's email updates.

Convert CAD Details to Revit Linework with Free Convert DWG to RVT Lines Macro (Updated)

From the ArchSmarter website...

This macro converts linked and imported CAD files to Revit lines. To run the macro, load macro RVT file then make a view active in the file containing the CAD file you want to convert. Go to Manage > Macro Manager. Select the "Convert DWG to Detail Lines" or "Convert DWG to Model Lines" macro. The macro will prompt you to select  a linked or imported CAD file. The link or import can be in any type of view. Below is a screenshot of an AutoCAD roof detail that's been linked into a Revit drafting view.

The macro prompts you to select a linked or imported DWG file. Once you select the DWG file, the macro will access the geometry in the file and create a new Revit line or arc using that geometry. Once it completes the conversion, the macro will let you know how many elements from the CAD file were converted to Revit elements.

The macro creates either detail lines or model lines, depending on which version you run. The macro creates the lines using the "Thin Lines" line style. You can edit the macro code to use any line style you prefer. Just change the value of the "linestyleName" variable as highlighted below.

Just make sure you specify a line style that exists in the current project file.  The macro checks that the line style exists and will give you an error if it doesn't.

Below is a view of the converted AutoCAD file with the linked file removed.

As you can see, the macro does not convert AutoCAD text to Revit text. The ability to read AutoCAD text is currently not available in the Revit API. When you use the macro to convert your AutoCAD details, you will need to add the text manually. It will convert leaders and dimension strings, but not the text associated with those elements. The same goes for hatch patterns. The macro does not convert them to Revit fill patterns (at least not yet).

There's more information available on the ArchSmarter website.

To get the Sheet and View Maker Macro, which is part of the ArchSmarter Toolbox, one must subscribe to ArchSmarter's email updates.