How can I create intelligent panels similar to Revit familes?

I am curious if there was a way to create intelligent panels in gh similar to Revit families, with different configurations and 'materials' applied to them. I don't really have much to show as I've just begun exploring this topic, but if anyone has any ideas that would be a great help!

Thanks guys

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Damon on October 8, 2014 at 10:12am

That's a pretty general question. Can you give a little more context?

If you are talking about Adaptive Components in Revit for a curtain wall system, for example, then the short answer is "yes." You can create a GH definition with multiple types of panels that have parameters for all sorts of information like material.

Permalink Reply by Justin on October 8, 2014 at 10:30am

Yes, that is exactly what I'm looking for. I've just begun looking into morphing to surfaces but most of the time my 2d curtain wall panel will have intermediate lines within it and I cannot seem to get them all to be applied to a divided surface or grid with this added information along with their parameter offsets (Like an adaptive component does in revit). Do you have any examples of this?

Permalink Reply by Damon on October 8, 2014 at 10:51am

The workflow I use is actually a combination of GH and Revit using the GH plugin Chameleon to translate data from GH to Revit. You can look at a How To I wrote on this topic as a starting point: http://sectioncut.com/hop-between-grasshopper-and-revit/

Once you start looking into Grasshopper <> Revit interoperability, you'll find a lot to dig into.

Are you having a hard time replicating the functionality of Revit Adaptive Components in Grasshopper or the functionality of Grasshopper divided surface/panel morphing in Revit? Or something else? I'm still confused what you want to do. A picture or some sketches would be good.

Permalink Reply by Justin on October 8, 2014 at 2:30pm

Yes, I'm trying to replicate the functionality of Revit adaptive components in gh and want to avoid using Revit all together. So I would like to make components in gh with parameters and apply these panels to a divided surface or set of grid points and at the very end be able to create a material/panel takeoff right from gh. Any suggestions?

See attached screenshot of example panel.

Thanks

Attachments:

Example Panel.png, 369 KB

Permalink Reply by Justin on October 20, 2014 at 8:44am

Any suggestions?

Permalink Reply by Damon on October 20, 2014 at 10:14am

Yup, sorry for the delay. I started writing something back a few weeks ago and never finished. Here's my (very generic) suggestion:

1. Set up the design surface, either modeled in Rhino or GH depending on how much flexibility you want.

2. Create your grid in GH so that you have a series of surfaces, one for each window unit.

3. Given a list of surfaces, you can build geometry based on the example you showed me. For example, the edges of the surface = "Closed Polyline Frame" from your image, so you can report lengths from that. Once you determine the dividing points on the top and bottom of the frame, you can connect it with a line and report the length of that frame. You could use the surface and split it from which you could get the two panels to measure area or whatever.

4. Finally, let's say there are three materials. "Materials" is just a label or parameter, so you don't have to do anything to the panels, just split the list into three parts, each corresponding to a material. How you do that depends on your design. If every small panel is vision glass, you could measure the area of pairs of panels and take the smaller one. There's a list of the vision glass! Then if the larger one is sometimes metal and sometimes frosted, let's say based on height, you could measure the height of each larger panel and send one set of height-criteria to one list and one set to the another list. Three lists = three materials.

If you can be even more specific with your design, I'm happy to work through some of this with you. Check out my attached file for a very simple example.

Attachments:

GrasshopperLikeRevit.gh, 18 KB

Permalink Reply by Justin on October 20, 2014 at 10:58am

Thanks, I like where this is headed but i'm still stuck on the specifics of my process.

My current process (Revit):

1. Build the massing (surfaces).

2. Create a grid over the surfaces based on particular heights and widths of units.

3. I then fill these grids with placement panels.

4. Create 2D adaptive components with materials applied along with parameters for specified offsets of materials. I'll name each ac as a unit type name ie WT-1, WT-2 etc.

5. I replace the placement panels with particular adaptive components (unit types).

6. I prepare a schedule for both unit and material takeoff in Revit.

So I guess I would like to achieve something similar to this where I can have multiple unit types already made/determined with materials and apply them to a grid or divided surfaces and they will adapt or fit into this divided grid. and from there i could extract data like sqft of a particular unit and material.

see attached images for clarification and thanks again for your time and help, this issue has had me stumped for a while now and I'd love to solve it.

Thanks again

Attachments:

Permalink Reply by Justin on October 20, 2014 at 11:00am

So I guess I'd just need to take your script a step further and create panel types based on configurations rather than their size or location.

Permalink Reply by Damon on October 20, 2014 at 11:32am

I think that that is correct. Everything after the isotrim component is the creation of a panel type. If you split the list of surfaces from the isotrim into your different panel types, you'd build the geometry for each type from each list.

Or you could simplify the GH part if you do your steps #1, 2, 3 directly in Rhino. It would give you less parametric flexibility of the grid, but if you are selecting manually which "placement panel" is which type, this might be the easiest way.

I drew this in Rhino, each color shows what layer it's on. You could have a layer for each panel type. Then bring surfaces of that layer into GH individually and build each type and report the information about it.

Permalink Reply by Justin on October 20, 2014 at 12:36pm

I think you're right, after giving it another look this may do the trick. I'm going to look into it and report back with my progress and final script for anyone else that may be interested. Thanks again Damon and let me know if you think of anything else!

Permalink Reply by Damon on October 20, 2014 at 1:38pm

Will do and good luck!

Permalink Reply by Justin on October 21, 2014 at 10:10am

So I've run into this issue where for some reason the list items of the 'material' surfaces get flipped when there is a panel directly across from it...any ideas?