Our I.T department blocks exe’s generally.
Can you provide details on how the V3 connectors are updated? This will be useful for our I.T team to plan this out.
thanks
Would like to second this too. It’s important for our workflows to be able to create native Revit Families and Types from Rhino geometry via the GH components. I can’t use DirectShapes in our workflows - you can’t snap or dimension them and they make the model large. To add to the above please can you include RevitBrace too. We use it to create structural elements, using our company standard beam, column, wall, slab Familes.
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Hey - we hear you. We’re actively meeting our client (waves at Karim) to discuss what this looks like.
A really transparent disclaimer, worth repeating, on why we haven’t prioritised this class of workflows:
While super valuable for you, they - in the past - were less so for us. Why? Simply put: very high development effort that was imbalanced by how these workflows were used. This last part specifically is something I’m happy if you guys can shed light on/contradict/enhance/zoom in on/double click on/etc.:
- they are used intensely, but sporadically: eg, after two weeks usage would drop as the early stage design part would be over.
- long term coordination frequency also low: e.g., “every two weeks” → less real time, less value
- big part of the usage was not “multiplayer”, but “single player” & existing solutions: this opened us up to more and more requests that were difficult to serve given that at that stage we were being compared to Rhino inside Revit (which always wins)
- we can never really achieve a “100%” completeness of this workflows - there’s always going to be a 20% left over that we don’t support, which causes frustration when you encounter it
- UX we can offer is not ideal without a lot of heavy lifting and indirection: because Speckle operates outside the revit context, we can’t easily provide you with a list of families, types etc. that your destination revit file has.
cc @eestrado @SeanLineham - we really want to have an open conversation here!
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Thank you, Dimitrie. Generally, I prefer using Speckle to Rhino.Inside to simply send structural lines and surfaces from Rhino to create Revit beams, columns, vertical braces, walls and slabs. I prefer the UX, specifically that the two software are disconnected - this improves the whole experience for me rather dramatically, it’s nicer, less prone to crashing and I feel like we have more control. Also, Speckle is able to connect and trim back structural elements automatically. I would love to keep using it to make our structural Revit models and for that we do need to be able to link Rhino lines or surfaces to Revit Families.
I totally hear your points. Our engagement with it is that we pretty much do a lot of our modelling in Rhino so it is an ongoing updating process. I do though appreciate that we are perhaps not using Speckle in the collaborative way it was intended, going back and forth and out to other disciplines. It is just so great at making our Revit models in the first instance! We do use it to create Rhino models from Revit models but that’s merely for reference for now.
Re. your last points, we are totally happy with it not getting us 100% of the way there. 80% is great! For Families, I think what we have is totally okay - it is on us to ensure we have the Families and Types loaded into Revit so we can map to them. That’s quite simple for us to manage and that link is not necessarily essential.
I hope that makes sense, and absolutely happy to discuss! Generally, I do want to be using Speckle to a greater capacity than we are so we would really value a chat with someone in the Speckle team if that is possible!
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Hi Speckle Team,
Is there a plan to update the Speckle-Unity connector to the next-gen connector? Given that Speckle Manager is now legacy and the Unity connector relies on it for authentication, how will this affect Speckle Unity workflows?
We currently do not have Unity on our roadmap. However, you should be able to continue using Manager and the legacy Unity connector on your personal projects in the meantime
Quick question (hopefully), does the current NextGen Civil3D connector support property set data?
Yes it does 
That’s great news, thanks! Were there any changes to the way they’ve been implemented? I ask because a workflow that previously worked with the legacy connectors now seems to drop the property sets at some point. Any pointers would be a great help!
In general, you’ll find far greater consistency across applications when publishing properties. While the update may have introduced a few hiccups, automation workflows should now run more reliably across different source datasets, whether you’re dealing with object property data or full BIM exports.
A few other things have changed “under the hood,” like how colour and material proxies are handled, but those are more specialised. Let me know if you spot anything else that’s missing!
Do you mean when receiving Civil3d models inside Civil3d? Next-Gen does not create native Civil 3D elements on receive, so your objects won’t have property sets on them when you load Civil3D models into Civil 3D using Next-Gen.
However, if you’ve built custom apps using models published with Civil3D and are wondering about changes in schema, then yes, the property set information is now moved to the properties field on each object.
All Next-Gen connectors are publishing properties this way:
properties are nested dictionaries, and you’ll find property sets as their own dictionary inside the properties dictionary of any civil object that has them.
Sorry you lost me slightly there - so if I send a civil3d object with Property set data to speckle, then receive that object back into civil3d (into another drawing say) the property set data is not available in civil3d?
Yes, exactly
I agree with all these points. To reiterate, the aim was never 100% completeness but to send as much of the main elements of the model as possible to prevent double work in modelling and alignment errors. The modeler can then go further with details. This is a huge benefit. I understand the development of the conversions is quite intensive (from some first hand experience) but it really makes a huge difference.
Hello, does this mean that the legacy Unity connector and Manager will soon stop working on Workspaces and only work for Personal Projects (e.g. projects that haven’t been moved to a workspace)?
The legacy connectors should be able to publish and load from projects inside workspaces, though you may not see the workspace itself in the UI. Let us know if you run into any issues working with Workspace projects in a legacy connector!
A heads up that we’ve reached our June 1st benchmark, and Next-Gen connectors are officially our default, stable connectors!
Check out this post for the 3.3.0 stable release changelog with some exciting updates: Next-Gen Stable 3.3 Release - May Changelog
From now on please:
- watch the changelog category for new release information
- post any questions, bug reports, and requests in community as usual: these will by default refer to Next-Gen connectors, and any V2 posts will be flagged as such
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