Revit Data to Machine File

User Q & A (Post Here)
1

Does anyone have a proven, efficient workflow to get pipe invert data from a Revit model out to a machine?

Two desired deliverables:

  1. Simple elevated linestrings at invert elevation of several pipes. Manually inputting all these elevations would be tedious and time-consuming.
  2. PDF showing the elevated linestrings overlaid onto the pdf plan sheet with callouts for invert elevations where the elevation changes.

Is there a Revit add-on that would dependably extract continuous lines with invert elevations of the pipe network? Is there a smart way to do this with IFC objects in TBC? Does anyone have an opinion about using smart labels in Revit to label and publish the actual pipe elevations versus using the line label capabilities in TBC?

2

IF you can get in XML format, TBC will read in the pipe lines and structure nodes. So you will get a full 3D of the network. Pick on the pipe lines only and export to DXF. When you drag them back in they are invert/centerline 3D lines. Getting the XML out of Revit, you have to watch scaling/Units, but a lot of Revit files will have the utilities modeled in Civil 3D. We get a lot of pipe this way and it works well.

3

I have written an AI script that finds the invert line from pipes but I have to get the pipes into a DWG Solids format for AI to work as it doesn’t seem to understand IFC models yet. I have not yet completed that work and made it available via cloud services. I will do that over the next few weeks.

Alan