Timesaving Add-Ons for Fabrication Detailing
Though structural engineering firms have been creating Autodesk® Revit® models for design and construction document purposes for some time now, these models are being pushed further downstream into fabrication and detailing. Revit is being used to create fabrication models and shop drawings for a variety of structural components, such as precast concrete, structural steel, and miscellaneous metals, and cast-in-place concrete (reinforcement shops and lift drawings).
With this increased structural level of detail, Revit is being used more like fabrication software, rather than as the design software that it was originally intended to be. In the last few years Autodesk has built tools into Revit that help with fabrication modeling such as parts and assemblies. Autodesk has also made major enhancements to the rebar modeling and annotation tools in the last few years to enable Revit to be a rebar modeling and shop drawings creation tool. However, while Revit transitions from being a software tool for designers to one that can be used by fabricators, add-ons are available by third-party partners that can greatly enhance the ability to use Revit as a tool for structural engineers and detailers to create fabrication models and shop drawings for structural components.
We use add-ons in Revit to help with repetitive tasks, for data manipulation, and to enhance the functionality of Revit. We tell our staff that if they find themselves doing a task over and over within Revit, we should take a closer look at that task and see if there is an add-on to help us work more efficiently.
In this article, I will present various add-ons that can be used for structural detailing and fabrication modeling. Rather than give a how-to on these tools, which can be found on YouTube and within documentation from the tool developers, I will identify various add-ons that can be used for the different structural materials and describe their capabilities and limitations.
Control Your Data with Spreadsheet Links
Revit is great at creating model elements, their associated data, and then creating construction documents. However, it’s lacking when you need to manipulate and work with large amounts of data, and that can be a real challenge from an efficiency and quality control standpoint.
One of the most powerful and yet simplest add-ons is a good spreadsheet link. Numerous third-party software vendors offer spreadsheet links, and these are usually very reasonably priced, or thrown into a suite of add-ons. The two bi-directional spreadsheet links that I have come across are CTC’s Spreadsheet Link and Ideate’s BIMLink. CTC’s Spreadsheet Link comes as part of its BIM Project Suite, which is reasonably priced, can be used as a network license, and has other useful tools included (see Fab Sheets later in this article). Because of this, as well as its robustness and ease of use, CTC’s Spreadsheet Link is our preferred tool.
Sometimes within Revit it is difficult to access the data you need—potentially across element categories—and to easily create calculations on that data. Spreadsheet Link gives a user direct access to the multitude of data within a Revit model and allows the user to manipulate that data in an Excel environment, modify or add to the data, and then push that new data back into the model. We use this mainly to combine and make calculations with data from elements of different categories, as well as make more complex calculations in an Excel environment than we could within Revit schedules. We have also found this Spreadsheet Link very useful to modify or add data to views and sheets in bulk. In addition, it allows non-Revit users a means to work with the data in a Revit model.
When you open Spreadsheet Link, you see all categories of elements within your model, and it can also show you types and schedules within your model. When you select one of the categories, it populates all available parameters for that category. You then select the desired parameters and can also filter and sort what data goes into the spreadsheet based on these parameters, as well as project phases. While you do this, a spreadsheet is being populated with your selections. In that spreadsheet you can add project parameters, shared parameters, and manipulate the data with typical Excel formulas. In addition, you can copy and paste data or formulas from an external spreadsheet into this data spreadsheet or vice-versa. When you are ready, you “apply” this spreadsheet to your model, and your model elements are updated with the new values that you have created or modified.
Figure 1: CTC’s Spreadsheet Link
Once you start using a spreadsheet link, it may open your mind to numerous uses that will help enhance your workflow and increase your productivity. In addition, it may allow you to do things with Revit model data that you didn’t think were previously possible, due to limitation on how you can work with that data within Revit. Every firm’s needs and workflows are different, but having a spreadsheet link in your toolbox (and knowing how to use it) can benefit every firm. The cost is low and the learning curve isn’t very steep, so it is a worthwhile investment in capital and training to get users familiar with the abilities of a spreadsheet link.
Autodesk Reinforcement Extension – A Good Start
When using Revit to create a rebar model and shop drawings from that model, about half the battle is modeling the rebar, while the other half is creating views, sheets, and annotation. Revit’s tools to model rebar for walls and floors are great, but all other elements can be pretty tedious. However, a great free add-on to help with rebar modeling (available through your Autodesk Subscription Center) is Autodesk Revit Extensions. Within this is the “reinforcement” module, which has tools to automatically create rebar for a variety of structural elements.
Figure 2: Autodesk Reinforcement Extensions
Though this extension wouldn’t typically be used for many of the categories that it has available, such as anything relevant to slabs and walls, there are a few very useful modules. The elements for which we use this tool as a starting point for modeling rebar are drilled piers, pier caps, columns, and sometimes beams. The tool has some limitations, such as the bar not recognizing the correct bend shape and creating a new custom shape each time. Another limitation is that it does not allow you to select multiple instances of an element (such as a drilled pier) and reinforce them with the same setting unless they are exactly the same. There is the option to save the reinforcement settings, and then use them again for another element, but we have found this to be glitchy. However, the options and settings within the reinforcement module for each element type are robust enough that it is worthwhile to use them as a starting place to reinforce an element, and then copy and modify it to the next similar element.
Figure 3: Column rebar extension settings
SOFiSTiK Reinforcement Detailing
A great add-on for modeling rebar and creating shop drawings is SOFiSTiK’s reinforcing detailing tool. This tool was available for the last couple of years for free, but continuing development has made it more robust and now it is available as a reasonably priced add-on. Over the past several years, SOFiSTiK has had tools that kept it a step ahead of the reinforcement tools that were available from Revit out of the box.
The real strengths of this tool lie in the annotation, creation of views and sheets, and the control of the data within the rebar model. However, with regard to tools that help with the modeling of rebar, the automatic splicing of rebar to stock length makes this tool worthwhile by itself! Other useful rebar modeling tools are “split rebar set” and “explode rebar set,” which really help when wanting to break rebar sets for changes in pour break geometry.
SOFiSTiK has some useful tools such as enhanced bar tagging options, the ability to set bar marks automatically per sheet, assign reinforcement layers, and some customizable rebar annotation. It has the ability to take a repetitive group of bars (such as ‘6 - #8 x 14-‘0” Top’ bars at a column), and hide all but one and tag that bar set. Though this is a great tool, we don’t currently use this add-on as part of our rebar modeling and shop drawing workflow. With the release of Revit 2015 and tools such as partitions, automatic bar numbering, and multi-rebar annotation, we feel like Revit has nearly caught up to the abilities of SOFiSTiK in many areas. SOFiSTiK still has superior tools for drawing creation, but we believe the style of the views and drawings that are created are too specific to European standards instead of U.S. standards.
Figure 4: SOFiSTiK Tools
Fab Sheets for Concrete Lift Drawings
Revit is a great tool for creating concrete lift drawings for concrete subcontractors or general contractors who self-perform concrete work. Revit is strongly suited for the modeling aspect of concrete work, but is not very efficient at the creation of views, annotation, and sheets. Luckily for us, CTC created a tool called Fab Sheets to help solve this problem and includes it with its BIM Project Suite.
Fab Sheets allows the user to graphically assign pour sequence number to concrete elements and group them such as “wall pours” and “footing pours.” It then creates a 3D view with these pours color-coded for a great visualization of pour sequence. More importantly, it gives the user the ability to create a plan view, 3D view, elevation views, and section views for each of these pours. Each view type can be created from a user-defined view template. There is also a “sequence graphics override” option that allows the user to change the line styles for the current pour, the preceding pour, and the following pour. This is extremely useful and saves a lot of tedious tasks within our lift drawing workflow.
Though we find this tool very useful, there are a couple of drawbacks. The first is that the tool works by creating a section box around each pour that doesn’t work quite right, and must be adjusted by the user. The second is that the setting for preceding pour and following pour visibilities only address line styles, and we typically change the surface patterns and halftone the elements.
Figure 5: Fab Sheets settings
tools4revit Quick Dimensions
Another add-on that we use with concrete lift drawings is tools4revit’s Quick Dimensions tool. Annotation of lift drawings entails placing numerous strings of dimensions in plan and elevations views, and can be a very repetitive task. For instance, in plan for a wall, there may be three dimension strings: out-to-out of concrete, concrete faces to gridlines, and all concrete faces. Quick Dimensions allows the user to set dimensioning preferences (such as dimension style, order of dimension strings, distance of strings from element), and then automatically create these dimension strings. This is a useful tool, but is difficult to get to work consistently the way you would expect.
IDAT GmbH Precast Concrete Detailing
For precast concrete, the only add-on that we have come across is from IDAT GmbH and is called Revit Precast. Like SOFiSTiK, this was created for the European marketplace and is set up accordingly. I have not personally used this software, but if I were a precast detailer I would at the very least test it and see if its functionality could fit with my workflow.
There are two versions of the software. The engineering version automatically segments pieces (such as walls and floors) into assemblies. It also has reinforcement generation functionality and has functionality to use the model data to aid in estimation. The factory version has the ability to automatically create shop drawings and piece drawings, and even has some functionality to tie into production machines for these precast pieces.
Making Structural Steel Detailing Possible in Revit
Generally speaking, Revit is not the right tool for structural steel detailing for most jobs. Steel detailing is a complex task, best suited for software made specifically for it. With Autodesk’s acquisition of Advance Steel, there is now a robust steel detailing package in Autodesk’s toolbox. However, with some customization, Revit is capable of detailing structural steel on a small project and also is capable of detailing miscellaneous metals.
A good Revit modeler can customize connection element families and structural framing members in order to model structural steel to the level of detail required for shop drawing production. However, the modeling is only half the battle, and the creation of the piece drawings in Revit can be a very tedious undertaking. Typical steel detailing software has functionality to automatically create piece drawings for “main” parts and create the necessary dimension strings, schedules, and some annotation. None of this is possible out of the box with Revit. However, there is an add-on from AGA CAD call Smart Assemblies that helps to solve this problem.
Smart Assemblies automatically generates dimensions within assembly views base on pre-defined rules. It will also create sheets for these assemblies and place views and schedules on these sheets in a uniform manner based on a template that the user defines. In addition to some automatic dimensioning, this tool essentially automates the task typically used when creating assembly view and sheet. This powerful tool was described in depth in the June 2014 issue of AUGIWORLD.
Create Your Own Add-On with Dynamo
As an AUGIWORLD reader, you are probably pretty good at keeping up with the industry and the software, and have at least heard of Dynamo. But in case you are not familiar, Dynamo is a “free, open source graphical programming add-in for Autodesk Revit for computational design.”
What does this mean? It means that it is a piece of software used for visual programming that plugs directly into Revit. Visual programming means that instead of writing lines and lines of code, a user can link together “nodes” that are connected together in a logical way to perform operations on data. For instance, one node may find all elements of a certain type within Revit, another node may then find the values of a parameter of those elements. Another node may perform some math function on that parameter and then send it back into the model.
This can be extremely powerful, but because of the graphical nature, it is approachable to a non-programmer like myself. After getting over the initial learning curve (which is steep), it is entirely possible to essentially create your own add-on through Dynamo to take care of whatever repetitive task you or your users are experiencing. In addition there is a Dynamo community online that is very helpful and even shares blocks of nodes.
Figure 6: Dynamo visual programming
Don’t Forget to Browse the Exchange Apps!
Of course, you can get these add-ons that I discussed by visiting the websites of these third-party vendors. However, don’t forget to check out the Autodesk Exchange Apps website on a regular basis. You can easily get to this by clicking on the blue and grey ‘X’ in the top right corner of Revit. In addition to numerous free apps, a lot of paid apps offer a free trial. What do you have to lose? Start browsing, downloading, and testing, and find ways to use add-ons to enhance your workflow!
