Adventures in 3ds Max and Revit Massing

[Tafka]

kk so it took me all of 5 mins to model it as I knew just about how to model it in max, although it did resort to triangulating my geometry (I know it likes planar faces but I did convert them to "virtually" planar faces in max to create the quadrilateral faces. I think that the scrip is very cool and definitely will be of immense use.

I guess then you can take the model conceptually from max to revit through remodelling, however you do lose the clean model from max in the process and then you are limited to how you model in ACAD... I really have shifted from acad to max for modelling due to it being far more intuitive and flexible (parametric and all).

If you look at how ArchiCAD is working with sketchup and Cinema 4D this is how max and revit should be operating together so that data is shared and users of both can produce more than the sum of their parts. All you are really looking bare minimum is to add an export script to max and at most ideal a file link so that your mass model could be parametrically controlled in max and linked and automatically updated in revit.

This is really why Fosters and Gehry have their own specialist modelling groups etc as they bridge the gap between what industry software can do and the designer's intent (it means if the softawre wont do it then they will "make" it do it. But then we are talking about Bentley and the interoperability alliance who want to make packages freely exchange information.

[Phil Read]

Hey guys -

Don't make it more complex than it needs to be. I don't like importing big chunks from other modeling apps because it can result in big chunks of unmanageable stuff in Revit.

Here's another option.

1) Create form in Max/Rhino/Whatever
2) Determine likely horizontal or vertical construction module (3 meters/10 meters/etc).
3) Slice the model up according to the module
4) Export **just the slices** to DWG. Not the face. Just the edges of the slices. So you'll have a series of edges that would outline the whole shape from top to bottom.
5) Import the slices and then use these as guides to pick lines for creating the top and bottom blends.

Now you'll have a meaningful, pre-rational building for - rather than a bunch of triangulated spidery web things.

Think about it. If you do this, you can create ***any*** form in Revit. It's just a series of slices.

-Phil

[cosmickingpin]

Not the kind of solution you get a birthday cake for. It was avoiding a remodel in revit which was (I think) the whole point and allowing for a free flow of ideas from concept to realization. Shame to see revit fall short like this.

[jkrager]

Edit: I have worked with a design architect who modeled in Sketchup, I took his sketchup model and through cad was able to generate multi-object style solid model components (walls, doors) with various sectional material properties (hatch pattrens and colors), that rendered out and detailed out great. Perhaps Rhino and sketchup are what we should be using to supplement our Revit modeling.

I was just going to mention that sketchy program. I just finished a quick model in Sketchup that I imported to MAX via dwg. Turned out pretty nice, though I had to reapply the materials. I would think that going the other way would be just as easy - Max to Sketch to Revit. I haven't tried it, but from what I hear Revit seems to enjoy Sketchup's faces. Nowadays, I only use my lingering Max liscence for rendering.

[Phil Read]

Not the kind of solution you get a birthday cake for. It was avoiding a remodel in revit which was (I think) the whole point and allowing for a free flow of ideas from concept to realization. Shame to see revit fall short like this.

When a fellow student started a design critique with, "well, this isn't really what I had in mind...." the blood was already in the water and the professors could smell it like sharks.

The "free flow of ideas from concept to realization" never happens. Not in Film, Music, Law, Engineering, Life, Art, Dating, Work, Marriage, Solar Power, Kids, Medicine, School, Politics, Religion, Whatever. So let's stop dreaming about the day we'll be able to dance and wave our hands in the air and will perfect buildings into our computers. It's impossible to turn ideas into Buildings any more than you can turn feelings into decisions. If Revit could do this it wouldn't be called Revit. It be called HappyArchitectHolodeckCADv1.0 and it'd be free, never crash and when you used it birds would chirp happy tunes while children in the distance flew magic kites and wore peppermint gumdrop smiles...

More specifically: if Max/SketchUp/etc.understood the intent of what you were modeling, I suspect the translation to Revit would be far more rational. But this isn't the case. Those tools produce generic geometry. But geometry alone isn't enough; you have to be able to embed intent. Creating morphic forms is an interesting exercise in design iteration. But making blobs isn't the same thing as making decisions about construction (or constructibility). Blobs don't have the same rules as buildings.

So explore pure form making in whatever tool suits you (even a pencil). Once the intent of the design is understood starting in Revit isn't falling short. It means you're ready to add meaning to your design. It's not automatic or perfect. If it were I suspect we'll just get ugly buildings fast.

-P

[SkiSouth]

wow. I think I'm gonna pull a chair and watch this one.....

[Tafka]

The whole idea of the building maker is to rationalise a building from a conceptual model therefore your design intent is the massing model that you have created in max etc. You want revit rationalise this rather than to have to change it before it goes into revit.

We are not talking about converting feelings into decisions, rather to use tools to bridge the gap between the design and the systems like revit and ACAD. Of course free flows of ideas do not happen from concept to realization and it would be naive to suggest otherwise. It is the software not prohibiting the flow of a conceptual model (created with parametric controls) to the system that you use for documenting a building that is the real issue. It is through the rationalisation and documentation that is the testing of both the concept and the designer's skill.

Whilst blobs may not have the same rules as buildings, are we saying that cubes or massing objects do? I think not therefore it is at the point of the massing object that the design is still (if you think of design as purely linear) conceptual.

In addition I think that if it was possible to get buildings closer to the ones we have in our heads then in fact they would not be ugly as often it is through the realisation process that our ideas get watered down, lost and fragmented. A program which can help us regain control of this is definitetly a plus for us.

When a fellow student started a design critique with, "well, this isn't really what I had in mind...." the blood was already in the water and the professors could smell it like sharks.

The "free flow of ideas from concept to realization" never happens. Not in Film, Music, Law, Engineering, Life, Art, Dating, Work, Marriage, Solar Power, Kids, Medicine, School, Politics, Religion, Whatever. So let's stop dreaming about the day we'll be able to dance and wave our hands in the air and will perfect buildings into our computers. It's impossible to turn ideas into Buildings any more than you can turn feelings into decisions. If Revit could do this it wouldn't be called Revit. It be called HappyArchitectHolodeckCADv1.0 and it'd be free, never crash and when you used it birds would chirp happy tunes while children in the distance flew magic kites and wore peppermint gumdrop smiles...

More specifically: if Max/SketchUp/etc.understood the intent of what you were modeling, I suspect the translation to Revit would be far more rational. But this isn't the case. Those tools produce generic geometry. But geometry alone isn't enough; you have to be able to embed intent. Creating morphic forms is an interesting exercise in design iteration. But making blobs isn't the same thing as making decisions about construction (or constructibility). Blobs don't have the same rules as buildings.

So explore pure form making in whatever tool suits you (even a pencil). Once the intent of the design is understood starting in Revit isn't falling short. It means you're ready to add meaning to your design. It's not automatic or perfect. If it were I suspect we'll just get ugly buildings fast.

-P

[cosmickingpin]

Esoteric Bu llshit asside, I was talking specifically about the massing tool as it relates to this specific problem, of creating a "form" in another software, importing it into a mass family, then applying architectural elements as the mass features allows, without re-modeling that "form" into revit objects, which is somewhat silly and seems a gaint waste of time. See I work for living, and each step you add is money, and if all conceptual modeling has to be recreated with revit sweeps and blends, well that sorta makes the massing feature useless by creating additional steps. I am talking about keeping Revit competitive in the marketplace, and playing nice with the other programs is key, especially when the two programs are 1. owned by the same company, and 2. Revit can't create complex poly-morphic shapes itself. So not only won't it create them, but we are extremely limited about the source of form generation to begin with, which pretty much leaves us all screwed if you ask me.
I appreciated the cleverness of your sugestion, however it really doesn't solve the key problem.
I am a revit user and I am demending better modeling tools, and a lot of us are. As for all that I. Ching Shiit you're selling, you can save that for freshman girls at school there.

The "free flow of ideas from concept to realization"
-P

[Tafka]

Agreed fundamentally what you need are better modelling facilities in Revit massing. I was hoping that because of 3dsMax being under the autodesk umbrealla more technically more officially than previously, it should not complain about modelled objects in max not importing.

It is like autocad and max or autocad and revit not opening each others dwgs.

[Phil Read]

1. This geometry could be created natively in Revit.
2. The wireframe geometry is not clean; the edges don't all meet. While it looks like mirrored form, they actually overlap. Look closely at the seam between the center elements.
3. How would you propose Revit resolve the intent of unintended form?

This is my key point. If the geometry isn't created with the appropriate intent, it'll be difficult to associate the appropriate meaning.

PS. Here's the mass from using the above described method. Total time 12 minutes.

-P