export to STL format

[bud]

anyone doing or know of a way to export a Revit model to STL format for rapid prototyping??

currently i am exproting to autocad and then to STL.

it would be great to skip one step

thanks in advance

[hand471037]

As far as I know you would still have to have some intermediary program change the revit export into a STL. There are stand alone converters out there that would take a DXF and turn it into an STL, you could set one of them up as an auto-converter (so that you simply save your DXF out to a specified folder and it's auot-converted into an STL). However using AutoCAD for this allows you to have finer control over the process. I'm still using AutoCAD at times as an 'converter' to get info from Revit into Radiance format for rendering. I hope that the next version of Revit has more export options, for I too am very interested in exporting all that wonderful model information out of Revit into other forms!

[beegee]

anyone doing or know of a way to export a Revit model to STL format for rapid prototyping??

Can you expand on " rapid protyping". Are you doing sterolithography ?

[bud]

[quote:d257b92602="bud"]anyone doing or know of a way to export a Revit model to STL format for rapid prototyping??

Can you expand on " rapid protyping". Are you doing sterolithography ?[/quote:d257b92602]

yes we are using sterolithography to create models of homes that we draw for clients.

[beegee]

Very interesting. I posted a topic on this under Hardware - HERE (www.zoogdesign.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1150)

You may like to post some comments there. For instance, do you find clients respond better to the model than to say, an animation or a good rendering ? What about the time factor .. how long is it taking to make a typical model of a house ? How much detail is going in to the model ? Is the (high) equipment capital cost of the machine , being recouped ?

Sorry, I don't mean to swamp you with questions, just interested.

[bud]

go to www.simpad.com and you can see one example of a model we have done. we are doing our 6th one now.

i started this thread because we are starting to get alot of requestes for these models and are trying to find a faster way to get from Revit to finished model. Currently i would say it would take about 2 weeks from start to finish.

the cost is the biggest stumbling block for clients wanting these models as apposed to renderings etc. but we like the fact that we can use Revit to create rendering, walk thrus, 3dmodels and conventional drawings for our clients.

[beegee]

That's a really well detailed model in the animation. Much better quality than I would have expected.

In terms of cost to the client, does it work out to be a whole lot more than a really good rendering ? ( 1.5X, 2.0x ? )

Very impressive work. Thanks for sharing.