Coloring a Model by Construction Task

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

Hello.

I have a model in Revit of curtainwall. One of my PM's wants to automatically color the model by certain criteria, such as: installation methods, weight, fabrication timing, etc. These curtainwalls will need to be recolored as criteria changes. My goal is to make this easy for him to accomplish, easily changeable, lightweight enough for a laptop, and can be exported in 3D easily for other non-technical team members to view (I'm thinking Autodesk Design Review).

He would also like to get quantities of each curtainwall unit as the changing criteria applies to it. I'm thinking he can do this best by a spreadsheet in Excel based on some parameters I add to the units in Revit.

Would NW Timeliner be the best option for him to accomplish this? It does not need to be animated necessarily. I'm thinking timeliner becuase it can use Excel.

Would a different Autodesk program be better?

Thank you.

[dhurtubise]

What's your authoring software? If it's Revit why not do it in Revit with filters? Im guessing you already have the information about all those criteria?
If not you can use Apperance Profiler in Navisworks and do the take off using the Quantification workbook

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

Thanks for your reply.

My auhtoring software is Revit. I do know about filters and schedules but how do I change the material based on a value in the schedule? For instance: I can filter by my field SEQUENCE, which contains my Crane Number, and get all the units that will be set by Crane #1. Easy. But now I want to set the material (or would i want to use the Paint command?) according to the crane value would I use a calculated value containing an IF statement?

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

So far my Revit schedule looks like this (see schedule) and my formula that isn't working looks is this...

IF (Material: Name = SEQUENCE = HANDSET, Material: Name Glass - Bright Green, Material: Name Glass)

so in plain English what I'd like to accomplish is "if the unit is set by the Handset method then color it with green glass if not then just leave it the way it is".

Then a new question comes up... how do I color each sequence a new color and leave all the other sequences their colors rather than turning them all back to the default Glass??

Maybe the Appearance Profiler in NW would be better to accomplish all this?

I appreciate the help!

[dhurtubise]

Why do you need to overwrite the material? The surface pattern should be enough.
And for each sequence you have a view 9or a set of views)

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

The PM wants to create a quick visual for our field people and needs to colorize for each setting method. It will be viewed most likely using Design Review or some other .dwf viewer, not Revit. That is the purpose for my question.

[Hockley91]

How about using navisworks. Just save some viewpoints and make sure the editing parameters are switched on for hide and override appearance. They you can create some saved viewpoints with items turned on/off and colorized to work with your procedures. Each saved view will retain the colors and whatever you want to keep on and off. Plus, the PM and super don't have to figure out how to use Revit. Keeping them in Navisworks would be better as it's much more simple to navigate and they only have to select the saved viewpoints to see what you want them to see.

I color and hide stuff all the time for our estimators. Just a thought...

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

I think this is the way to go. If I have a curtain panel that changes setting methods (parameter) (from one selection set to the next) will it change automatically or do i have to do it manually?

I new to Navisworks.

[tamas]

You can use View Filters in Revit and override visual style of the matching elements. As I understand you do not want to actually modify the material of the elements, only the appearance in a particular view. That is best accomplished by View Filters.

So far my Revit schedule looks like this (see schedule) and my formula that isn't working looks is this...

IF (Material: Name = SEQUENCE = HANDSET, Material: Name Glass - Bright Green, Material: Name Glass)

so in plain English what I'd like to accomplish is "if the unit is set by the Handset method then color it with green glass if not then just leave it the way it is".

Then a new question comes up... how do I color each sequence a new color and leave all the other sequences their colors rather than turning them all back to the default Glass??

Maybe the Appearance Profiler in NW would be better to accomplish all this?

I appreciate the help!

[WYSIWYG-BIM]

Thanks everyone for your input. I decided that for our non-technical field people that Rhino is an easier way. Once I export my Revit model to Rhino then it will be a manual process for them to pick each unit and apply color according to its setting method, that will take a bit of time however it requires much less set up and training time on the front end of things.