Development Plan/Elevation

[Craig_L]

I have a wall for a water treatment plant that is circular, and I need to produce a developed elevation for reinforcement, and also to show the layout of the penetrations on the wall.
How does revit handle developments?
I have no idea if revit can even do this, I have a feeling I am going to have to spit this out to CAD.
Is this something severely lacking in Revit or is there a function I have no idea about to handle this?

[damon.sidel]

You can't unroll an elevation in Revit. That's true. Two thoughts:
1. Can't you get a complete picture with a plan and a regular elevation? Plan gives you horizontal, arc, and angle dimensions, elevation (not developed/unrolled) gives you heights.
2. That said, if you really want to create an developed elevation, why not do it in Revit as drafted lines? Save yourself from the logistics of going to ACAD and back to Revit.

Personally, I'd try to go with #1.

[Craig_L]

Unfortunately for reinforcement, plan 1 doesnt work.
Where I am, we calculate the reinforcement for scheduling, so without an "unrolled" / developed elevation, its just not possible.
Secondly, there are penetrations in the wall, there are also other walls intersecting, and slabs intersecting at different heights.
And worse still, a slab with a fall on it, that traverses this wall at some point, and a strip footing/thickening for a grated drain that intersects also at a bizarre angle...good times.

I've gone with option two, its not that hard to develop a circle, the problem really is the penetrations, and the slabs and other walls that intersect it, complicating the development significantly and lastly, if my peno's change, or other walls intersecting move, or slabs change...Im left with manually updating this elevation - which defeats the purpose of revit IMO.

I had a good look around the revit interface, and no, I saw nothing that would let me "unroll" an elevation. Quite annoying really.

[damon.sidel]

Unfortunately for reinforcement, plan 1 doesnt work.

For my own education, would you be willing to post one of your reinforcement drawings? Either this one or another one that has similar complications? I'd be interested to see what issues require a developed elevation.


Im left with manually updating this elevation - which defeats the purpose of revit IMO.

It does defeat the purpose of Revit--but at least it's only one drawing. If you were working in ACAD and made a change, you'd have to manually update ALL affected drawings. We always hope that Revit or whatever software we are using will do everything the way we want, but sometimes we're stuck with just drawing it.

[Craig_L]

For my own education, would you be willing to post one of your reinforcement drawings? Either this one or another one that has similar complications? I'd be interested to see what issues require a developed elevation.

It's not that the drawings are that different, its that we use a program called CADARM that calculates and schedules the bars.
It's semi-automatic, ie. you put in the values of the bars dimensions (length of all segments and shape of the bar) and then choose the laying sequence, and extents of the bar.
This program then at the end spits out a list of the reo, with dimensioned depictions of each different bar type, a tonnage of reo etc etc.
CADARM is attached to autocad, so I need a developed 2d representation.
And yes I know Revit can handle reo, what it cant do is give us the same list the industry uses here, so until I figure out how to link it to excel and an output lisp I'm stuck with exporting to CAD and finishing reo in CADARM. At least in CADARM I can use my exported views as XREFs and update them from revit if anything changes in there. I would prefer a more customisable output option in Revit but that just doesn't exist.
As for the development, some of them can be quite complicated I'm lucky that this one is relatively simple in comparison, but this does seem to be something lacking from Revit at this stage.
Honestly, developed elevations or plans are not something I have had to do in many years, so its a small problem, but lacking none-the-less.

[damon.sidel]

Very interesting. It seems like finding a replacement for CADARM that works directly with Revit would be the best solution--at least in the ideal, I'm sure you've invested time and money into CADARM.

Somebody was asking a completely different question the other day that involved collaborating using rooms between trades. One solution I found was a free Revit Add-in that creates a link to Excel or even Google Docs: http://revitaddons.blogspot.com/2013/10/free-schedules-importerexporter-add-in.html. If you can pull the information from a Revit schedule to Excel, could you manipulate it there into what you need?

Just trying to see if there are solutions beyond what you are currently using. I agree that developed elevations would be a great feature in Revit. We like them for purely descriptive reasons at our firm and occasionally insist on them even when not necessary.

[Craig_L]

Yes, I have considered this option. I can definately schedule the reo once modelled in revit, and then output to excel. I think the problem once here is also just the final documentation, and the format that "they" want.

I have just started implementing revit here, and whilst doing so I am also working on the first revit project. Whilst this is advancing the base templates I created before starting up, it lacks anything much more than a skeleton system. I am also just time poor, I don't have time allocated for implementation, its just something thats happening as part of the documentation process of this first project. I think you and I both realise how unrealistic that is, but that seems to be the perception of management....nuff said there. Also, I just don't have the time to mess around with something else and still hit the deadline with reliable scheduled reo values and depictions.

The thing is, revit can output a list, we can put a "key or legend" as to what value A, value B, value C represents etc but the individualised depiction of each bar is something I can not achieve straight out of revit into a list in a half second (as it does in CADARM). What I guess I am trying to say here, is that it could be done through revit, but they would have to change the way they documented it - which I doubt will happen at least not yet.

CADARM is working quite well really, its quite simplistic but it is very fast and efficient for documenting and scheduling the reo.
I am simply exporting my elevations and plans out to CAD and using them straight into the reo scheduling program thats really no drama although again - I prefer to handle as much as I can in revit rather than exporting, but I am limited with my options.

I think ultimately...it would be possible to have an excel spreadsheet import to CAD and have those values output a list that looks the same...but I am no excel expert, and my lisp writing is pretty limited also. Its definately beyond my capabilites, at this point anyways....sadly.

[damon.sidel]

Sounds like a big challenge, so good luck.

Many people on this site I think would agree that it takes a few--five maybe?--projects in Revit before you really start to work out the kinks. So keeping parts of your workflow from before I think is quite understandable. For your next project, or when you have some spare time (like that ever happens), I'd just imagine you'd want to shift completely away from thinking about ACAD as an intermediary. I bet you could get a pretty robust Add-in for Revit that would do everything CADARM does.

Just found this: http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/RVT/en/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3asofistikreinforcementdetailing2014%3aen

I'm not suggesting you try to implement it on your current project, but I'm sure there are already other solutions for Revit. That said, none of them may do a developed elevation, so there you go.

Good luck!

[Craig_L]

Thanks, that link actually seems to produce similar enough drawings that I could convince them of it.
I will have to mess around with this once I get some time, thanks for that.

I have actually implemented revit at a few different places now. At the moment, ACAD needs to be an intermediary for the reason noted above, plus also because I am the only one capable of using revit until I get some time allocated to train some others in the office. So for now, I am able to export elevations to CAD and have someone else reinforce them while I keep working in the model. Until we get some others some training, its actually not much of an option.