Grasshopper/Rhino and Revit Interoperability Development

Recently I have been actively looking at Grasshopper & Revit interoperability and I must admit that the development in this area has been very impressive/interesting (and aggressive) so far. To my knowledge, there are three main developers working in this area publicly, but interestingly focusing on three totally different ways of tackling this interoperability issue. I am sure most of you know who I am talking about.

The first one is Nathan Miller of THE PROVING GROUND. He has been working on this development for a while and has made very interesting/useful progress in this development. He primarily focuses on Revit Python scripting to achieve this interoperability. If you are one of those scripting nerds and interested in Revit & Grasshopper link then you must visit Nathan's blog.

Image courtesy: The Proving Ground Blog

The second one is Jon Mirtschin of GEOMETRY GYM. I posted about Geometry Gym development in couple of posts this year. Jon focuses on this interoperability issue from open standard file format point of view, IFC. He uses IFC as a 'translator' to send data back and forth between Revit and Grasshopper. While IFC is clearly gaining moment as a preferred BIM file format for data exchange between BIM tools and archiving BIM models, this development is definitely a huge step forward addressing collaborative / open BIM goal. The main advantage of IFC is that you can interact with lot of BIM tools out there such as Revit, Bently Architecture, ArchiCAD, Tekla etc.




Image courtesy: Geometry Gym Blog


The third one is Hiroshi Jacobs of CHAMELEON. This one is relatively new to me. I only came across this tool in last couple of weeks when one my colleagues mentioned it to me. By far, I have found this plugin to be the easiest one to use compare to the above tools. Chameleon uses point data from grasshopper definition and places adaptive component straight into Revit project environment and also can change instance parameters of adaptive components. In addition to placing adaptive components it has some useful tools for curtain wall editing, edit parameters via grasshopper, and bring Revit geometry to Grasshopper and clean it etc. Have a look on it's website for full list of tools available for Grasshopper and Revit.

After looking at all these wonderful developments by one man team each, I wonder why on earth big players like Autodesk/Bentley/Nemetschek etc. with their massive R&D budget and team cannot address age old interoperability issues. Surely, It ain't that hard!-;) 

Race For Cloud Based BIM Coordination/Collaboration Tools

Race for cloud based BIM coordination platform is heating up with Autodesk announcing recent acquisition of Vela system, current state of Tekla BIM, Artra, Bentley's AECO (Projectwise), ArchiCAD's flagship BIM server and BIMx, and many other OPEN BIM tools cropping up.  So how can a long time parametric/digital technology leader such as Gehry Technologies can be an exception to this? Gehry Technologies has officially launched their cloud based BIM coordination/collaboration tool called GTeam.

"GTeam helps architects, designers, engineers, contractors, consultants and owners collaborate, synchronise and share files from anywhere in the world. This new web-based platform is already being used by some of the world’s largest construction teams and projects. And right now it is offered as a free technology preview."

Read full article HERE.
Visit http://www.gteam.com/ to learn more about it.

Curtain Wall Basics - Empty Curtain Panel

This post is in response to a query asked on a forum where user wants to create trapezoidal openings or stepped openings in a curtain wall, something I would usually touch upon in day-1 Revit training under curtain wall.