REVIT - custom plant data - weight
By Timothy Starkey on Wednesday, 29 December 2021
Posted in Revit Plugin
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Hi LFX Support peeps,

Sorry if I am being lazy... I could probably find this info reading your site... but a couple questions:


  1. Is the Revit plugin still in Beta?
  2. Does the data exported into revit include any custom planting info (if added... more on that below)


We have a few over structure projects, and have a heck of a time coordinating with the structural on where our palms and trees are located, how much they weigh, etc. And now matter how many beautiful marked up PDF's I send, it never seems to pan out. It would be awesome if we could import our planting plan into Revit, and have it include custom data like estimated mature plant weight.

On that, I dug through the support to find out how to add more than just size and height to the plant data... seems like it needs to be done through the portal? I can't seem to log into the portal with our support ID.

I have lots of other questions on the plugin (like will it drop to the terrain if we have a civil 3D surface in our cadd files? How do you line up the UCS with whatever arbitrary 0,0,0 the architect is using) but figure we will figure that out if we test it out.

Thanks!
Tim
Tim,
1. Yes, the Revit plugin is still in Beta. It will be until enough ACAD tools and abilities are ported over. The amount right now is great for improving the Revit workflow already, but not quite there yet to get out of Beta.

2. Right now the Revit families include the plant size fields from your Plant Sizes Preferences, but not the wiki plant data or custom plant data fields.
You can edit up to 6 plant size fields in your preferences on the AutoCAD side. Not in the Portal. The custom plant data in the portal is for plant data, not plant sizes.

I watched this video which is short and very clear on how to locate the origin in Revit to help coordinate your UCS in CAD:
YouTube: Find Origin in Revit
Amanda Marin
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2 years ago
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Thanks Amanda! Is it possible to add weight info as a tag to the plant?

Thanks,
Tim
Timothy Starkey
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2 years ago
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Tim, I might not be understanding your question. How are you wanting it added as a tag specifically? Is there a reason that using the plant sizes fields won't work for you?
-Amanda
Amanda Marin
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2 years ago
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I am probably not asking the question right. We would like to be able to portray to the structural engineer needed soil depth, and mature plant weights, for plantings that are over structure, so that they can do their voodoo magic.

The depth can be handled by the 3D model of the tree, so that it includes both a planted root ball/box size, and also shows a minimum soil volume root zone. For the weight, Is there a way, using the plant size fields, to include the mature weight of the plant? In a way that a structural engineer using the revit model would be able to load that into his structural calcs? (or at least pull it from the model info?)

Thanks!
Tim
Timothy Starkey
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2 years ago
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Tim,
You can absolutely add Mature Weight as one of the plant size fields in preferences.

In Revit it'll fill in the LAFX Field6 Parameter to the placed family for that specific species. You can then include Field6 as a column in your plant schedule.

I'm interested in finding a workflow for you. I'm currently working out a workflow for Revit to calculate total weight from that Field 6 field as another column in the schedule. I'm still working on it as our field parameters are text based that don't immediately play well with calculated schedule fields. We're thinking there might be a way to calculate a text field to an integer using a dynamo script. I'm sure we can look into adding an option to plant size preferences in the future to specify text vs integer fields to make this easier. One for the wishlist after we're out of Beta. But wanted to let you know this is the direction I'm heading for this workflow in the meantime.

Your structural engineer could also use the same method. Tell them which parameter (Field 1-6) is for weight and they can pull that (and change it to an integer for calculations).

This is of course all assuming you're not already using all 6 fields in plant sizes preference. If you're only using 2 so far, I'd set weight as Field 3 (for all plant categories).

-Amanda
Amanda Marin
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2 years ago
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