Geodesic Dome

[Arnel Aguel]

Geodesic dome from sketch up > DWG > Revit Family > Revit Curtain system. Took 5 minutes. Great suggestion! I didnt put any of the stl in, but i imagine using the pick tool would work just as fast as teh curtain system...

Can the model in sketch up be changed into 5 sides for each face? I guess it's the same scenario with max/viz where the the default geodesic dome has three sides and editing it to have as many sides as you want is still a pain in the ***.

[twiceroadsfool]

Im not sure, im not an avid Sketcup User. BUT, the Revit model is easily updated when you reload in to the family, and "remake" the geometry from the mass. I did a test with scaling the sketcup dome in the family, then reloading the family and remaking the curtain systems. Seemed to work just fine.

[AP23]

is it me or is it fugly that sketchup can model this much more easily than revit? I mean a lot can be done with those four options and Phill is a jedi with that, but a fifth modeling tool, well it's just about time.

Wow, this is a very dangerous statement to make here on this forum. It is like talking about someones mother. I have been burned and buried talking about the poor modelling tools in Revit. The improvement of modeling tools are the absolute last priority at the factory. This very very contradicting idea of a so called architectural tool is justified because most Revit user don't need these tool. The "we only have clients that want square boxed buildings" or "stararchitects have their own tools" is what keeps the priority low. Anything out of the ordinary is extremely difficult or in most cases impossible to model in Revit, but I never that the factory people considered a dome shaped roof anything special or even stachitecture like.

[Steve_Stafford]

...Wow, this is a very dangerous statement to make here on this forum. It is like talking about someones mother. I have been burned and buried talking about the poor modelling tools in Revit...

What I personally object to is how you say what you say. The broad sweeping generalizations you toss out, like it is dangerous to say something here. If I disagree with you am I not allowed to say so?

In my opinion the only reason people take you on here is because this is the ONLY thing you say here. Do you reply with help when someone is asking for it? No you just harp on the fact that what they want to do is hard to do with Revit.

Do you really think that, take me for example, I am so blindly in love with Revit that I don't want more modelling features in Revit? Please... Revit isn't perfect and there are things that are hard to model that other software makes easy. But those other software don't do what Revit does easily either as you well know. Keep on flogging the horse if you must....

[twiceroadsfool]

Wow, this is a very dangerous statement to make here on this forum. It is like talking about someones mother. I have been burned and buried talking about the poor modelling tools in Revit. The improvement of modeling tools are the absolute last priority at the factory. This very very contradicting idea of a so called architectural tool is justified because most Revit user don't need these tool. The "we only have clients that want square boxed buildings" or "stararchitects have their own tools" is what keeps the priority low. Anything out of the ordinary is extremely difficult or in most cases impossible to model in Revit, but I never that the factory people considered a dome shaped roof anything special or even stachitecture like.

Im curious what one tool you use for your architecture that has been able to accomplish all of these difficult and fascinating architectural elements. Im guessing, by your thick sarcasm and complete distaste for the factory development of Revit), that you use ONE tool for all your needs, and that it happens to meet every single one of your expectations?

You certainly got my attention now. Which program is it? Id love to know, because id love to use it. I dont think too highly of myself, but ive had the fortune (or misforturn, if you must) to work with a lot of different platforms before i finally stayed with Revit. I drew in AutoCAD for years, then i drew/modeled with Vectorworks, then ArchiCAD, with a short stay in Gehry technologies Digital Project, and now im here with Revit.

I know there are also those programs that free form model incredibly, and are also capable of producing stunning documentation... Is it one of those? Form-Z? Rhino? Oh wait... They do half of that, but not the documentation.

Shoot, im running out of ideas of what you could be using. Which ONE solution does it better thats made you so sour about Revit and the development team?

/sarcasm

At the end of the day, i dont really care if i get a loft tool in the next release of Revit. This platform has allowed us to push forward in a lot of different areas that architecture was extremely dificient in for quite some time. Our documentation has gotten easier to coordinate and check for errors, the amount of live information we can carry and manage has gone up, while the difficulty of said management has gone down... And at the end of the day, we can stay put together final deliverable products that are what they should be: Beautiful buildings.

Your PRIMARY concern is that generating a generic shape by which to start the model that will become your building... Is difficult? Good grief.

[cosmickingpin]

Well, I am not sure I agree with Andrew's context myself. Many Revit users have been asking for model improvements for a long time. Andrew seems to have grown up some since his 3 posters in 1 days. But Andrew's sole purpose here seems to be to build as much buzz about other software platforms as he can and then hide it behind some rhetoric about how Revit could be better. If I am unfair to you Andrew, I apologize.

Having said this, the answers to Revit grips from corporate HQ seem to mainly be "other AutoDesk Products."
Want Better Modeling- Get Inventor or Max
Want Better Rendering: Buy Viz
I forget who it was but at AU when they had the Building industry Q&A we were told that Viz will never, ever be built into Revit.
The only thing I see as a corporate step forward is that they seem to have overcome their confusing stand on ADT vs Revit.
I think its Shite we haven't seen an additional modeling feature in Revit- ever. the only story I have ever gotten from ADesk is the line about other products that do have them, that's shite too.

What I personally object to is how you say what you say. The broad sweeping generalizations you toss out, like it is dangerous to say something here. If I disagree with you am I not allowed to say so?

In my opinion the only reason people take you on here is because this is the ONLY thing you say here. Do you reply with help when someone is asking for it? No you just harp on the fact that what they want to do is hard to do with Revit.

Do you really think that, take me for example, I am so blindly in love with Revit that I don't want more modelling features in Revit? Please... Revit isn't perfect and there are things that are hard to model that other software makes easy. But those other software don't do what Revit does easily either as you well know. Keep on flogging the horse if you must....

[AP23]

The firm I work for had 70 Revit seat, but only upgraded 20 when 3 projects failed miserably. The cause of the failure was more due to high expectations from the partners. Now we use Revit only on small residential projects and small to mid-sized commercial projects with a simple clean geometrical shape and that works very well for us. We had very good results with Revit and we will continue to use Revit on these types of projects. Everything else is done in Rhino and AutoCAD.

Like I said before, Revit is a great product that suites a particular segment of the market. Considering what we pay for a seat, I personally would like to see it expand a little bit more.

Coming back to the discussion, I was quite surprised that domes are not considered as mainstream, (the market that Revit targets), thus makes the creation of a dome in Revit difficult. However, this doesn't make Revit a bad product

[dbaldacchino]

Dear Andrewpage23,

Before I will start to even care about getting more modelling features, I want workflow things fixed, like groups, room tags that follow rooms, managing revisions as snapshots of sheet views, etc. These are the most manpower-draining things we face on a daily basis. We do great work, but I've never seen a dome like that on one of our projects, and I'm sure that we can resort to 2D for certain things if they're difficult to model in Revit at this time. After all we've been doing that for hundreds of years. And we're not a small company by the way....we have about $40M in annual billings. Revit's documentation features are the main reason we're transitioning to it, so we can waste less time documenting, be more accurate and solve more issues in the office rather than the jobsite, and spend more time designing delightful and economical faciities for our clients. We want to dedicate more time to designing the building (finishes, resolving different material junctions, etc.) rather than get caught up in manual coordination and drafting.

Please don't come around here typing lame statements like you do. We welcome criticism but it helps if you're constructive. Please don't let me add you to my ignore list; I wan to keep it empty.

[sbrown]

Domes are easy in revit, there is an OOTB family for them, its the geodesic dome that is a tough one.

[AP23]

Dear Andrewpage23,

Before I will start to even care about getting more modelling features, I want workflow things fixed, like groups, room tags that follow rooms, managing revisions as snapshots of sheet views, etc. These are the most manpower-draining things we face on a daily basis. We do great work, but I've never seen a dome like that on one of our projects, and I'm sure that we can resort to 2D for certain things if they're difficult to model in Revit at this time. After all we've been doing that for hundreds of years. And we're not a small company by the way....we have about $40M in annual billings. Revit's documentation features are the main reason we're transitioning to it, so we can waste less time documenting, be more accurate and solve more issues in the office rather than the jobsite, and spend more time designing delightful and economical faciities for our clients. We want to dedicate more time to designing the building (finishes, resolving different material junctions, etc.) rather than get caught up in manual coordination and drafting.

We all are on the same boat here. We started using Revit for the same reason. The only difference is that in some cases we spend more time documenting in Revit than the traditional way. That is why at the beginning of each project we make a decision which software suites that particular project best.