Helping a Beginner (REVIT): Door categories, Receiving Doors and Windows, Revit Language

Hello Community,

I am using Speckle with my students and we are facing some problems when receiving data in Revit. Let me first explain what we are doing:
We are working with basic architecture models that each student can modify (create branches) and make commits. For example: Adding a window to a wall.

I have some hypothesis but I would like to confirm.

1 - Doors and windows are correctly sent. We can see them in the Speckle data and in the visualization.
When we receive the whole model, however, windows and doors are not shown.

For example: Stream Example

My Hypothesis: Students are using the Portuguese version of Revit. I replicated it in mine which is in English and it worked well. Is that correct? Should we use the English version?

2 - I can’t find the doors category. Am I missing something?

3 - When I add a Window to a branch, I would expect the other contributor to receive it in the correct location. However, it does not appear.
My Hypothesis: I need to send the window AND the wall together, not only the new window. When I did this way, it worked well. Is that correct?

Stream Link

I guess that would cover our initial issues. I tried to search for similar issues but couldn’t find them.
Thanks in advance!

edit: After reading some topics I noticed that using the same template solves many issues

2 Likes

Hey @Rodrigo !

Welcome to the forum and thanks for helping us make Spekcle better :slight_smile:

1 - Would you be able to share with us the Revit file so we can debug it?
2 - I checked and the Door category is actually missing! I’ve just added it and will be included in the next release. This might be partially the reason of problem 1 too.
3 - Yes, that’s correct. Revit windows are hosted elements and should be sent with their walls if you’re receiving them back in Revit. If you receive them in another software (like Rhino) I think their location should be accurate. Let us know if we should investigate further.
4 - Yes, if sending Revit <> Revit it’s very important that the same template file is used on both ends so the family names and other things can be properly matched.

Any other questions don’t hesitate to ask!

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Hi @teocomi, thank you for the reply.
That helped a lot already. I’ll get the files with the students and upload them here.
I’ll have more tests this week. I’ll let you know if any other issue occurs.
Thanks in advance

Hi community and @teocomi
So, some updates of our testing.
This is the model I’m using. It is very basic for debugging purposes only. So, sorry for the design :joy:

Micro_base.rvt (4.1 MB)

After setting the same template and sending walls with doors and windows the workflow is better.

Some questions:

1 - I sent the windows of my model as a commit. I wanted to get the data in excel. It worked quite well. However, some columns are named as if the windows had Door properties. See image below.
Maybe this is correct but I wanted to confirm. It may also be linked to that issue of the Door category missing.

2 - When I receive my model back in RVT, The roof (extrusion based) is misplaced. I noticed that it somehow changes the extrusion inital lenght to a negative value (-6780 instead of +6780).

3 - Is there a property of the wall that keeps it attached to the roof?

4 - Some students reported that they are receiving the model differently. For example, one student receives the model with the ceiling and the other without it. Not sure why and if this is related to different Revit versions (2021 and 2022)

Please, let me know if I should keep using this post to raise some questions or if there is a better alternative, e.g. issues in Github.

Thanks again!

Hey Rodrigo,

Thanks, this is indeed very helpful!
Yes please keep posting here, this is the best place for us to discuss bugs and features with the community.

1 - when receiving things in excel, the plugin “flattens” all the properties of all the received elements. So, I’m assuming a door made its way in and that’s why you see those columns. Let me know if we should dig any deeper

2 - Thanks for the model! I tried on my end with your model and the roof was received fine, can you please tell me step by step how you sent and received it? Which version of the Connector did you use the “new” or “old?”

3 - Unfortunately there seems to be no way from the API to attach a wall to a roof, only to a Level, see

4 - This could be the case! Same as 2 if you could help us with reproducible steps we’d be happy to investigate!

Thank you again Matteo,
I rerun all my steps here.

1 . I selected a single window in my project using the new connector and the “Selection” method, sent it as a commit and received back in Excel. The door’s parameters still comes with the other parameters.
This is the commit : Speckle
2 . I also resent the whole model and this time the roof was received fine as well. So, this seems to be working fine. I probably did something wrong before.

  1. I see, thanks for that info!

  2. I’ll reproduce it again with them and let you know.

best
Rodrigo

Hey Rodrigo,

Thanks for the reproducible steps! It turns out that those are the actual parameter names on the window!
For instance the DOOR_HEIGHT parameter actually corresposnds to the Height parameter on the window Type:

Another way to check these things is using the Revit Lookup addin (which I find super useful):

  • select the window
  • click on Addins > Revit Lookup > Snoop Current Selection
  • scroll down to Symbol and click on it (this is our window family type)
  • the click on Parameters
  • on the left select Height
  • on the right click on Definition

You can now see all the Revit internal details about this type parameter:

Hi Matteo,
Thanks again. That clarifies a lot.
I wonder if Autodesk decided to keep the parameter with this name for a particular reason.

We’ll continue studying Speckle and post new questions here!

Best,
Rodrigo

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A post was split to a new topic: How to send a block from Rhino to Revit as a hosted window family