Irrigation and Revit

Nibal,

 

Irrigation will never work perfectly in Revit, primarily due to the fact that there are no Irrigation object types in Revit.  So the only way to do an irrigation plan there is by drawing Model lines.

We are working on an initial Irrigation plugin for Revit, that will start with the ability to export the mainline placement from CAD, and import them as Model lines into Revit.  This will be released later this year.

The ideal setup would be to use Revit to export a revised base xref as needed, and still do the design in CAD.

 

--J

Jeremiah,

Is there please any update in regard with initial Irrigation plugin for Revit?

Any good news?

Nibal

Nibal,

We were just looking at Revit yesterday and discussing how to handle Valves.
The good news, is that the ability to send the Mainline to Revit is working great, and will be released later this year. The other news, however, is that we are really not sure how to handle Valves, Sprinklers, and everything else. In fact even the Mainline has us wondering, if designers are expecting Plumbing objects to be used to assemble the actual pipe. We are still looking for any input from designers who can give us some guidance on what they are expecting from Revit.

--J

J/Nibal,

I'm late to the conversation but I am curious as to where things are at with irrigation in Revit.

J - Per your previous response to Nibal, as an irrigation designer, what I would hope the revit would do is build a 3D model, similar to the what the planting is, that would show the varying depths of the pipes, valves, and heads. In my head it would be cool if when you went to the 3D view it showed the valve and head rather than the symbol (but I realize that would be really out there ). I ask because I have some clients that are wanting us to put things in Navisworks (I have never used Navisworks) but if we were designing in 3D in revit already then why use Navisworks.

Cheers!

Benji

Benji,

Yes, having every single sprinkler represented in 3D in Revit would be "out there", or better put, completely bonkers. There is just absolutely no reason to do that, especially as there is no object type for any of this.
As for Navisworks, that can import DWG files! So there is no reason to send a design to Revit first in order to use Navisworks.
The current status of our Revit Irrigation development is as follows:
- Send the mainline design from CAD to the cloud
- in Revit, import the mainline as Railing objects, at the desired depth below grade
- Possibly as well, place Valve Boxes for each valve (this of course is just as troublesome as it might be helpful - valves are commonly not placed where they will be located, and multiple valves can fit in one box, so how is the system to decide where to put the box and how many to place?)
So overall, we are currently focused only on placing the Mainline as sub-grade Railing. Which also speaks to just how insanely limiting and unusable Revit is for irrigation. It merits repeating again and again, and recanted back to any consultants who ask you to "put the irrigation into the 3D model".
Hopefully as Autodesk can open up the object types in Revit to better encompass Irrigation, we are poised and ready to do something.

--J

Haha! Bonkers... That is a better way to put it. But it would be soooo cool! Maybe someday we'll be doing irrigation design in a virtual hologram to make Iron Man both jealous and proud!

Thanks for the response and input!

Cheers!

Benji

Quoted from Jeremiah Farmer on Feb 16, 2023

Benji,

Yes, having every single sprinkler represented in 3D in Revit would be "out there", or better put, completely bonkers. There is just absolutely no reason to do that, especially as there is no object type for any of this.
As for Navisworks, that can import DWG files! So there is no reason to send a design to Revit first in order to use Navisworks.
The current status of our Revit Irrigation development is as follows:
- Send the mainline design from CAD to the cloud
- in Revit, import the mainline as Railing objects, at the desired depth below grade
- Possibly as well, place Valve Boxes for each valve (this of course is just as troublesome as it might be helpful - valves are commonly not placed where they will be located, and multiple valves can fit in one box, so how is the system to decide where to put the box and how many to place?)
So overall, we are currently focused only on placing the Mainline as sub-grade Railing. Which also speaks to just how insanely limiting and unusable Revit is for irrigation. It merits repeating again and again, and recanted back to any consultants who ask you to "put the irrigation into the 3D model".
Hopefully as Autodesk can open up the object types in Revit to better encompass Irrigation, we are poised and ready to do something.

--J

Is there a video demonstrating this process or is there someone we can talk to about using Revit for irrigation plans? Has there been any updates on the status of the plug-in for Revit? We are currently discussing how to use Revit to make our irrigation plans and every Google search has this post at the top. Is there a beta program for the irrigation plan tool? Thanks

Eric,

You're welcome to shoot us an email and let us know what you are after, and even schedule a chat with us.
It does bear repeating though, that the current state of Revit makes it impossible to do an entire irrigation plan from scratch. Even if we did try to bring some level of rudimentary tools, none of it would be utilizing BIM objects, and would simply be model lines, and generic site objects. The schedule would have to be entirely custom, so it wouldn't be a Revit schedule. And the lack of proper mouse/keyboard input methods in the API means no keyboard commands during the design.
So I would very much like to know what people are expecting. As I said previously, we were able to address one very narrow use case, just to bring over the mainline from a design done in CAD. But if the end result cannot be done with BIM objects, I certainly don't see the rationale to draw a bunch of model lines in Revit. For now, the far better path will be to use Revit just to kick out the site xref to CAD, where the irrigation plan can be completed, and then brought back into Revit as a PDF.
We did get Toposolids this year, so maybe Autodesk will add some Irrigation objects types next year and we can get going.

--J

I would happily schedule a chat with you and my team to discuss what we are after. I am the BIM Manager for my office, so I am just the messenger. Irrigation plans hinder Landscape from using Revit for 100% of their workflow in my office. We were excited to see you were working on a plug-in for irrigation in Revit, but Autodesk still hasn't made it possible. We currently use the same workflow you suggested, and it hasn't been ideal. We are evaluating ways to make irrigation plans in Revit, and maybe Rhino.Inside could get us better results.

Thanks!

Eric,

You can call or email to schedule a call.
I'd be curious why there is a push to be 100% Revit. I can't imagine the Civil is using Revit? It's even rare that Architects are 100% Revit, they will still routinely bring in PDFs of some details. If you ever do a Skate Park, the bowl design will absolutely not be done in Revit. And for Amusement Parks, the rides are certainly not designed in Revit. You're right that Rhino.Inside offers some interesting potential. But it still means that elements are not BIM objects.
Irrigation plans are drawn diagrammatically. It would be impossible to read an irrigation plan if all pipes were drawn exactly as they were to be installed, for instance with several pipe all sharing the same conduit. So it all comes back to, what is desired? Since the drawn pipe in an irrigation plan doesn't match *exactly* where it is going to be installed, why is there such a push to do the irrigation in Revit? When it also will not be utilizing BIM objects. Oh, and it will also take much longer to do the design. So I continue to struggle to understand what the payoff is.
Rooftop irrigation is the one narrow case where I can clearly see the benefit. Yet even there, I look at what would be required to do an irrigation plan in Revit, compared to using Revit to send an xref to CAD for the irrigation design, and it's like comparing a cup on a string to an iPhone.

--J

Benji, Eric, Jeremiah,

For our office, irrigation with Revit is on hold at the moment. as I see that Revit is not designed yet to do full irrigation plans.
but still excited to see a 3D irrigation plan with Revit one day.
Nibal

The Civil Engineers we work with aren't in Revit; internally, we only have Landscape Architects. We're still working on what we desire from the irrigation plans. These are some great questions and scenarios that I will be asking my team as we perfect the workflow that Revit and AutoCAD allow us to do.

Hi Guys ,

I am working for Irrigation in Revit from 4 years ,providing Irrigation model (3D) lines ,generating sheets in Revit. It is more helpful to detect and avoid the clashes with other services.
Some of irrigation product manufacturer having BIM families for irrigation product we can use it while modeling .

The only things is the we cant make any hydraulic calculation in Revit .

But, I am happy to work in Revit. If landfx able to plugin with Revit then that will be good news .

Siddheshwar,

What we need is more examples of how to accomplish irrigation within Revit. Are you using Model lines, or Detail lines? And how is that better than simply importing a completed DWG file of the irrigation plan? You mentioned BIM models for manufacturers, are you expecting these for every piece of equipment? And are you wanting to use the Revit MEP tools for hydraulic calculations? If so, then how are you using the Revit Plumbing objects on sloping grades?
We are well aware of people excited to use Revit for Irrigation, what we need is a minimum of one person to tell us what that means and send us an example.

--J

Dear experts who are able or trying to use Revit to do irrigation plans can you share some examples to see how it looks like.


Jeremiah,

If we did the irrigation plan fully in Land F/X and CAD, are we able to export to Revit and see it properly in 3D?

for now what is the maximum we can do properly in Revit for irrigation with the help of CAD and Land F/X?


Nibal

Nibal,
I was just about to post this here anyway, so thank you for asking about the workflows that might exist.

Revit and Irrigation

We actually do this at a concept level with regular standard built-in Revit pipes using the Systems tools. Just regular plumbing, hard/flex pipe, some custom sizes and families (there are sprinkler families in Revit made for buildings, but you can certainly build custom ones if you want for LS.) Although anything beyond mainlines and valves would be nuts and overkill, it's certainly done. Revit can run hydrology calcs, but that's far outside what we provide. We simply need geometry for clash. And Site-hosted box families placed over as many valves as will fit.

I admit, it is a manual placement, no quick automation (save for a block replacer routine for valves and such if they do come from 3rd party Irrigation) but once those junctions/valves are placed and set at the correct subsurface elevations (manually) then one can simply connect pipes. If we wind up doing a lot of it we'll likely employ some Dynamo scripting to handle some of this in the future.)

Don't let me oversell, it's not a quick process, (no different than what an MEP engineer does in Revit) but it approximates the larger components well enough for purposes of clash detection. Irrigation is just plumbing*

*if used for basics like clash geometry. I can't speak to calculations/schedules or custom calc values.