Rebar element in Revit

Features & Ideas
1

Hi Speckle Team,

First thanks for the amazing work on speckle.

Second, Is there any chance that you will support the Revit rebar element soon?

Best Regards

3

Hey @gjordanp,

Great to hear that you like what we do.

Yes, rebar support is definitely on the list of Revit types to support. Could you tell me a bit more about what you try to achieve? How do you use rebar in your workflow? Are there any other applications in your workflow? I just want to understand your use case more.

4

Hi Pavol,

You can see our workflow right here!!

Basically we are involved in all the life cicle of the rebar.

  1. We Analize
  2. We Design
  3. We Document
  4. We get Takeouts
  5. We send them to shop
  6. We deliver to site
  7. On site they assembly

From steps 3 to 5 we are using bim models to store rebar data in Revit.

Right now, we are developing a web plataform to scale this workflow to more Real states and Construction companies so they can manage rebars themselves from their own models.

For this we are trying to decide what platform to use Autodesk Forge, ThreeJS or Specke.

For us is simpler to keep on Autodesk Products, but Iā€™m inclined to use opensource platformā€™s because y see higher benefits on the long term.

Best Regards

3 Likes
5

Thank you for details of your workflow @gjordanp . We are working on number of improvements for the Revit Connector in current release cycle and weā€™ll take a look at better support for rebar.

Iā€™m happy that you appreciate benefits of open source solutions and Iā€™ll have more news soon. Stay tuned.

6

Hi @gjordanp

We have started to work on better support for rebar elements in Revit <> Revit workflow and I would like to get your feedback on following:

  1. Rendering of rebar in Speckle Viewer as mesh is possible but might have a significant impact on the experience, especially with large models. Better performance can be achieved with rendering of curves and could give you a good picture about rebar elements. How important is preview of rebar in Speckle Viewer for your workflow?
  2. Rebar contains main bars, stirrup and hooks. Are all these elements relevant for quantity take-offs and documentation? Or only main bars are necessary?
  3. Total length and total volume of rebar are definitely essential for schedules. Are there any other properties you would need for schedules and documentation?
  4. Parameter Updater is a Speckle feature that allows you to update Revit schedules from Excel. Does it help in your workflow?

Any other feedback is more than welcome.

1 Like
7

Wow!

This is great news.

  1. Same as Revit performance is reduced when displaying Rebars with real volume. For this Revit allow you to choose to display as line or as solid. Last option is only usefull for taking pictures and in some cases analyzing rebar congestion. In resume curves will be enough for most workflows, but mesh will be a nice option in some cases.

  2. Yes all is necessary, rebar element is composed of a rebar shape. This is a family that represent the shape of the rebar, and it is repeated multiple times. Every rebar shape contains rebar partial lengths, and hooks at start or end of rebar. There is also the rebar bend diameter thar represent how rebar is bend on corners. All these properties are relevant for documentation and fabrication. There are also some rebar that are build now by shape but by geometry(this are les common buy can reinforce weird shapes, like curves and others). At last, some rebars have the option to be variable, so every length of bars in a rebar set will have diferent length.

  3. Total length, total volume, partial lengths (including hooks), rebar shape, total weight (this can be computed with volume and density of material). It may be others, but you could Schedule all rebar parameters.

  4. I donā€™t know, i havenā€™t used yet. But it might.

Revit also has the RebarContainer Class that is similar to Rebar Class but only accesible from API, not as revit user. It will be nice to support this too.

I will be happy to meet remotely if y can be of any help.

Best Regards

8

I donā€™t really know if Speckle uses IFCjs engine. But there is also a known issue here about bending radius. Y leave you the link.

Regards

9

Hi @gjordanp !

Iā€™ve scoped out a preliminary RebarGroup object, primarily driven by the Revit and Tekla rebar classes, and would love your feedback to see if this implementation contains all the appropriate information youā€™d need.

Will pm you with a meeting link :slight_smile:

10

Good to know - but this will only surface as an issue for us if an IFC is uploaded - it shouldnā€™t impact any other part of Speckle, if at all.

1 Like