shadows on elevations

[davidwlight]

I'm sure that this has been asked before, but without rendering, what is the quickest way to put shadows on elevations. I've been told that this is automated in archicad, but you have to manually do it in revit. :cry: We have invested in a number of seats of revit, but my directors keeps asking for this functionality. Any ideas would be welcomed.....

[PeterJ]

There is no shadowcast in Revit unless you use the rendering tools.

The cheapest option may be to spend £300/$500 on Sketchup and export the model to that!

[davidwlight]

Cheers for that Pete.... I've tried another work around, which I think Beegee posted last year. Rendered out the elevation; overlayed the wire framed elevation over the render & approx. traced the shadows using the region fill tool. You get a reasonable result. I've also emailed Revit support asking isf this could be added to the wishlist. Lets see if they can get it in V7.

[aaronrumple]

...we are putting shadows on elevations as I speak. We do a quick rendering of the shadows. Drop it in photoshop and "magic wand" then out by themselves - color doesn't matter as we just filter out the shadows as an object and then adjust the contrast/color in photoshop.

From here there are a couple of options. Use Illustrator to combine exported linework and shadows. Or use AutoCAD linework and import a Tiff into AutoCAD.

Does involve a couple of steps outside of Revit, but so far has proven pretty quick and the images look quite good.

I tried using Sketchup, but found that it just couldn't keep up on the larger models I wated to export.

[PeterJ]

Can you post an example, please, Aaron

[aaronrumple]

...sure. I'm out of upload space here, but I've got some posted @ ftp://ftp.kai-ae.com/ARCH/Revit/

This is for an SD phase of work for 255 units of housing. I'm showing a shadow image we take from Revit to photoshop and then a merged linework/shadow. No retouching or cleanup has been done to the final image. We've have quite a few different building types to do, so we needed something that we could do quickly.

[beegee]

From here there are a couple of options. Use Illustrator to combine exported linework and shadows. Or use AutoCAD linework and import a Tiff into AutoCAD.
.

So, to clarify Aaron, once you have separated the shadows in PS, you export them as a tiff to Illustrator, where you combine them with an export of the building hidden line elevation out of Revit ?

Sounds like a bit of work.

I'm looking into SketchUp to do this as well as give the hand-drawn quality to sketches.
Have you nay details on the max size of the Revit file before SkechUp chokes ?

[Vincent Valentijn]

Have you nay details on the max size of the Revit file before SkechUp chokes ?

I've put some big files into Sketchup, I'd estimate that for my configuration (P4 2Ghz/512Mb/GeForceMX300) the maximum workable filesize of a 3D dxf is about 25 to 30Mb's.
On that size it still edits and generates shadows reasonably quick in hidden view... on rendermode it's too sluggish though.

[robmorfin]

Tracing Region Fills,
Render-Photoshop-Illustrator-Revit again,
Render-Photoshop-Tiff-AutoCAD-Revit again,

Sending from Revit to Archicad seems to be the fastest way to get the shaded Elevations, Do Revit Developers want us to do that, or are we getting that option sometime soon??

[gregcashen]

Do you mean Sketchup? It seems unlikely that there will be specific support for Archicad-Revit file compatibility before there is support for ADT, MAX, VIZ, etc. I would see Sketchup interoperability supported before Archicad...could be wrong though.

[robmorfin]

sending from Revit to Archicad means exporting as DWG and that model once in archicad is treated as any other 3D software, as 3D objects, not as intelligent objects, but no program as today is able to do that, but we are talking here about shades in the elevations.

[PeterJ]

David

I was in your London offices only yesterday.

[kafka]

Does it work fine? Have you ever tried it?
What do you do once you'reached the shadow in Archicad? Export again..which format?

Thank You,

Giulio