Monday 18 November 2013

IFC exchange of Curtain Panels

An area that's been on the back burner for longer than I'd like, and that is the exchange of curtain panel plates from Grasshopper to Revit (etc etc).  Some potential clients evaluating the tools for this purpose led me to implementing some ideas and strategies for this.

Note that this isn't means to rationalize or divide surfaces into panels (there are other plugins such as paneling tools for this) but as a means to generate the curtain panel plates in Revit having already conducted the paneling process.

Update to the latest plugins for Rhino and Revit IFC from http://www.geometrygym.com/downloads to test these.

I've implemented a means to represent the panels as surface objects (not extruded to thickness).  If the perimeter is planar, and has 3, 4 or 5 edges linear edges, then the Revit plugin will initiate an adaptive component family that generates an equivalent object.  Material needs to be manually altered in the family if appropriate.



Here's a sample GH definition creating a random array of planar panels and here's the generated IFC file.

I've also been looking at means to generate non-planar panels.  If the panel is an loft from one end curve to the other, then I've implemented a means to again generate a revit equivalent.


Here's a sample gh definition and here's the resulting IFC file.

I'm also investigating a means to create a non-planar panel with 5 edges.  I'd also really like to able to define master "families" of the same shape panels, and then propogate instances in Revit.  But the Revit API seems to be lacking fairly fundamental functionality to do this.

If you've requests, suggestions or questions, don't hesitate to get in touch.