Importing .sat reveals into Revit.

[AP23]

Is it possible to import geometry from Rhino (or other software) and turn it into voids. I'm trying to create reveals (similar to the images) with different profile sizes that sweeps along a spline path in Rhino and then importing it as an in place void wall family.

[dhurtubise]

Not sure if you can do that, i've never tried, but you should be able to import the whole wall

[Andre Baros]

Ditto, I would import that whole layer of the skin. Use a revit backup wall and imported families for the last layer of the skin.

BTW is the panel photo from the shop floor showing a polyiso insulation panel that was cut to form or is that some sort of cast resin? Are you fabbing directly from the Rhino .sat file? The aesthetic seams a bit forced, but the process is quite interesting.

[twiceroadsfool]

I know ive imported sat files in mass families, and then wall-by-faced them... I suppose that is what i would do if the profile changes over the course of the reveals... If its just the shape of the reveals that you want to make, id do it in a wall hosted family, made entirely of voids. But it looks like the profiles change as they go around...

[hand471037]

BTW is the panel photo from the shop floor showing a polyiso insulation panel that was cut to form or is that some sort of cast resin? Are you fabbing directly from the Rhino .sat file? The aesthetic seams a bit forced, but the process is quite interesting.

Rhino actually has a rather nice and cheap CAM plugin available made by MECSOFT. I haven't used it, 'cause we don't use Rhino, but a lot of folks with CNC rigs like mine do. So if those panels were modeled in Rhino one could directly output the files to cut them. Just FYI.

However, with that said, there are many CAM applications that can take .SAT files directly for toolpathing. So if the .SAT files were generated via Rhino or Revit, it wouldn't matter to the CAM application. You can also export your Revit files as solids to bring them into Max or any other 3D application, and then turn around and export them out as .STL files, which a lot of CAM software deals with pretty nicely.

Also some things such as these panels could be generated via 2D means as well. You'd take a clean elevation view of the model, get a 'flat' DXF of that panel, and then pull that into the CAM software. If all you want is a V groove, the CAM software can figure out the depth from the bit angle and the distance between the two vectors you pick as the edges of your groove. It's actually a very fast way to do some complex forms without having to even get into 3D milling, which can take way longer than '2 and a half D' milling, depending on your rig and your CAM software.

And... to get back to the point, I don't know of any way to import in solids from one application and make them into Voids within Revit. You could have reference geometry that you're importing that you could Pick to generate the Sketches for the Voids, but it wouldn't be automatic. I think you'd be better off making the outer skin in Rhino, and then making the 'flat' boring wall behind a normal Revit wall. However that many different solids in there might slow things down. Don't know if 2008 is better at that, last time I tried to use a lot of solids in Revit was with 9.1 and while it worked you had to be cafeful.

[AP23]

Importing the whole wall seems to work reasonable, but performance decreases drastically. This isn't a big problem because the wall can be turned off and replaced with a system wall for the time being.

[twiceroadsfool]

Importing the whole wall seems to work reasonable, but performance decreases drastically. This isn't a big problem because the wall can be turned off and replaced with a system wall for the time being.

Thats a side effect ive noticed as well. We were working on a skin for a building that was sort of "random" in its variations down the line, and i found it was much easier to make the entire building skin as a Curve Network in Rhino.

The failure was probably my fault, as i shouldve kept the poly count down a lot more than i did... But i told my computer to import it, and 4 hours later with the white screen, i just cancelled it, lol....

[Andre Baros]

The reason I asked about the process is that just because-we-can doesn't mean we do. The paths created by the architectural model may not have satisfied the fab shop, or the fab shop may have used a different method and used the architectural Rhino model into a "shop drawing" model which they fabbed from. We did a similar project recently (though MUCH smaller) and ended up giving our files to millworkers who were able to cnc forms for the production of resin panels because the resin panel manufacturer didn't have a clue what to do with our files. The millworkers handled the conversion from positive to negative forms and adjusted all of the tolerances for assembly.

This is very interesting but not exactly a cut and dry process for all cases.

[AP23]

the nice thing about this architectural firm is that they have pdf on their website with a summary of the whole design to fabrication process. Unfortunately this projects just have images so i have no idea how they really made it.

What makes this design so interesting is that it's a low income housing project. Now, we all know that the budget on these projects are extremely low. Nonetheless, this firm managed to create a contemporary facade that catches the eyes

[hand471037]

One thing that we've been doing sometimes is not putting everything into the BIM.

For example, decorative bits don't need to be fully modeled and imported into Revit. We model those in a different software. So sometimes we'll put in placeholders in Revit for those items, and just use flat extrusions with model lines drawn on the surface of them to approximate the look of those items, then export those forms to Blender where they are modeled into more complex forms. Since the 'base' of these items came from Revit we can trust that where it meets the rest of the project (it's attachment point) is dimensionally perfect (as long as we didn't edit that in Blender) so that when they are made via CNC it will mount where it needs to go, but the surface of it can be as complex as we can make it.

It's not ideal, esp. for things like whole wall panels that need to seamlessly fit together. It works well for decorative bits where you don't need to worry about it being dimensionally perfect (except for where it might meet up with the rest of the project).

[Steve_Stafford]

Seems to me that this is just doable within Revit with voids and sweeps and various profiles. This image isn't an equal to those posted earlier naturally but then I only spent 10 minutes on it. Nothing wrong with using other software to get things done...but sometimes the rhetoric is louder than the truth.

[captainbunsaver]

Steve;
Is that built solely in Revit, or did you import it? If you did it in Revit, how did you get the swirly reveals?


TC

[twiceroadsfool]

For reveals that arent straight, i personally tend to use wall hosted families, that have nothing but voids in them...

EDIT: Im not sure its applicable to the origina posters form, becuase i think ir ead that the profiles were varying as they proceeded around the "swirl," which would mean it would have to be a pretty complex form in Revit, or imported from a program with a loft tool...