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 I’m inclined to use opensource platform’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 we’ll take a look at better support for rebar.

I’m happy that you appreciate benefits of open source solutions and I’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 don’t know, i haven’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 don’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 !

I’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 you’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 shouldn’t impact any other part of Speckle, if at all.

1 Like
11

Hi, just jumping in on this reinforcement from Revit to Speckle discussion.

We are trying to bring through from Revit to Speckle reinforcement in its 3D form and we are only getting line work. We have tried slimming down the models, even just bringing one bar through and it still is just line work in speckle.
Is there a work aound, or update that I’m missing?

Cheers.

12

Hi @Deano , welcome to the community!

Currently, we are only sending Revit Rebar elements with their centerline curve representation for performance reasons, and because for most structural workflows they are sufficient.

We’re aware that some people would like the volumetric mesh instead of curve geometry: there aren’t any plans to support this currently, but if you could explain in more detail what you need the 3d form for? It would give us better context in case we decide to support this in the future.

13

Thanks for responding @clrkng.

We are needing it for construction visualisation. So you can see by colour and volumetric mesh the differences in bar slices and sizes. This will aid in the process of what bar goes where and also when.
We are wanting to build up from reinforcement bar, reinforcement slices, reinforcement cages and to whole structures.
I have tried to upload images of what we are looking to do but because I’m a new user I can’t.

Thanks

14

Hi Dean,

I wouldn’t recommend it at the moment. Speckle is currently experiencing significant performance issues when working with rebars as wires. You can find more details in this post.

Maybe for slow models it could be fine.

Regards

15

Please try and upload the images again if you can. I just upgraded your status. Thanks

1 Like
16

I have attached two images, one of a slice and one of a cage with has many slices in it. Would like to produce something along these lines in Speckle. Thanks

Reinforcement slice.pdf (47.5 KB)
Reinforcement cage.pdf (724.6 KB)