2022 Workflow for Revit, Inventor, Advance Steel, and Robot Structural Analysis Professional on Construction Cloud

LINA EL-KHOURY: Welcome to the 2022 Workflow for Revit, Robot, Advanced Steel, and Inventor on ACC. I am Lina El-Khoury, and I have with me, Mahsan Omid and Hung Nguyen, and together we would be presenting this session.

Let us go through some introduction. I'm currently the BIM Manager at Diamond Schmitt in Vancouver, BC. I have many years of experience in Architecture, Interior Design, Building Systems, and Building Manufacturing, specializing in BIM technologies. I have trained and coached many teams in multiple design and subcontracting AEC firms, and have also been speaking at AU for a few years now. You can read more about me later. I'm going to pass it to the next speaker, Mahsan?

MAHSAN OMID: Hello, everybody. My name is Mahsan Omid, and I'm a BIM specialist and a technical consultant at [INAUDIBLE], here in Canada. I've been working in the field for more than 15 years now, working with all the AEC disciplines. Some of those went in the construction firms in the construction industry, some in academia, and some as a consultant. Also, in the past five years, I've been active in BIM 360, and all the different other cloud services, mentoring, consulting, managing and administrating services, as well as training and helping some of our clients admin theirs.

In this AU session, I have the pleasure of working with Hung and Lina, for introducing the workflow, introducing what ACC has to offer, and answering some of your cloud question in the Q&A session. Thank you. Hung?

HUNG NGUYEN: Thank you, Mahsan. Hello, everyone. I'm Hung. As you see, I have many years of experience in Autodesk products, 27 years. I work with architecture and manufacturing fields. I've been doing a lot of work [INAUDIBLE] Revit, inventing Fusion 360 areas, and do a lot of simulation for the past few years. I presented in a RTC, in the Festival of Architecture, CanBIM, and of course, my favorite is Autodesk University. I think I started from 2013 until now, which is 2021. Let me pass back to Lina.

LINA EL-KHOURY: Thank you Hung. I'm going to go to the class description. In this session, we'll show the seamless workflows between Revit, Robot, Advanced Steel, Inventor, and Dynamo. The Dynamo material will be in the handout. You'll learn how to create an Advance Steel model from a non-parametric model, synchronize to Revit structural, and Robot for structural steel code check and optimization.

This class will cover new features and changes between BIM 360 and Autodesk Construction Cloud, how to share Revit, Robot, Advance Steel, and Inventor models, exploring 2022 interoperability between manufacturing and construction industries through AEC and MFG.

This class objectives, you will learn how to set up and manage Autodesk Construction Cloud workflow for Autodesk 2022 products, effectively work with the 2022 workflow for Revit, Robot, Advanced Steel, and Inventor, effectively use Robot Structural Analysis 2022 for structural steel code check and optimization, and also you will learn the seamless workflow between construction and manufacturing industries.

Our topics, BIM 360 versus ACC platforms, Autodesk Inventor, Revit, RSA, Advanced Steel Workflow, and going beyond AEC Workflow on ACC. Now, let's start our demos.

Our project for this year is called Project Water Slide. However, we will not be working on the whole water slide, but we will only focus on the lifting frame that you see within that red rectangle. Let me describe the workflow. We will start by taking a non-parametric assembly from Inventor into Advanced Steel for creating a parametric model with bolted connections. We will then synchronize the Advanced Steel Model to Revit structure for analytical setup. The Revit Analytical Model will be analyzed and optimized using Robot Structural Analysis. After steel optimization in RSA, we will update both Revit and Advanced Steel Models.

When all of this is done, we will link the Revit model back to Inventor to replace the non-parametric assembly. We will be using the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform, referred to as ACC, to demonstrate this interoperability between manufacturing and AEC. I'd like to mention that we will be mainly showing the workflow in this session. I will now pass it on to Mahsan, to present the ACC platform. Mahsan?

MAHSAN OMID: Thank you, Lina. What is ACC? ACC, that stands for Autodesk Construction Cloud, is the BIM 360 next generation rebranded and much more integrated platform. I am going to be talking about what is the Unified Construction Cloud, also known as ACC, what is ACC and what is the difference of BIM 360 and the ACC platform? And what has changed in the licensing from BIM 360 to ACC? And finally, I'm going to be introducing our project on the ACC for you.

What's new in ACC compared to BIM 360 Next Gen? If you remember the BIM 360 package, the red fields in this diagram are components that were there in the first generation of BIM 360, also known as classic version. Then comes the next generation, also known as BIM 360 Next Gen, the great ones such as BIM 360 Docs, BIM 360 Design, Model Coordination and Field.

Taking the same concept, we are taking the idea of BIM 360 platform, and further that into a unified platform. It can be translated as a diagram like this: BIM 360 Docs, BIM Collaborate, BIM Collaborate Pro, and BIM Build. There is also a brand new component in ACC called Autodesk Takeoff. Very similar to BIM 360 Docs, is the document management component that gives you access to all the features in the document management module such as issues, markups, reports, file sharing, et cetera, et cetera.

The good thing about the Autodesk Docs, is that if you own an Autodesk AEC collection, it comes under that free of charge. Then comes Autodesk BIM Collaborate, think about BIM 360 Coordinate or Glue, or all of those modules that perform clash detection and model coordination. Now, one of the interesting things here is that the BIM Collaborate Pro or the evolution of BIM 360 Design that includes Autodesk BIM Collaborate and model coordination performance, also account for collaboration in Plant 3D and Civil 3D.

Next, Autodesk Build gives you field management, project management, asset components, it also includes cost management module in the unified platform. It also gives you access to your classic fields such as PlanGrid, BIM 360 Build and Field. And a Takeoff Module, as the name implies, is for quantification tool. It gives you 2D and 3D Takeoff of your project content. The nice thing about it is that even though ACC and BIM 360 are not the same services, they are not completely different in terms of workflow and licensing from each other, they are very similar.

While we are on the licensing subject, let's talk about licensing. Typically, what happens in BIM 360 was that if I'm inviting someone to my project as a prime consultant and it's on my hub, unless it is for the BIM 360 Design, I'm assigning them a seat from my license pool. The only one that is allowed to bring their own licenses, also known as Bring Your Own License, on anybody else's account is BIM 360 Design.

Now, take a look at the ACC on the unified platform. Every single module is now Bring Your Own License, and will be managed by the named user. So you don't have to worry about providing seats for all of the SAPS and Engineers. I'll be happy to answer any further questions on the Q&A session. OK, let's get on our project.

Getting on the ACC platform, let me show you quickly how to login in all of this. The list of the projects that are with the blue globe icons are made on ACC, and any of the projects that were made in BIM 360, you will see it as a typical Blue B icon. In Docs, the structural folder is contained of Revit, Advance Steel, Robot Analysis Inventor Pro, and even Dynamo, and 3DSMax. We also made a quick intro video to our project, that shows the snap of park water ride, as well as the lift frame.

OK, let's get back to the project folder. We're going to be seeing the drawing first from the Inventor, and all of the details of the water park slide, then we are going back to Inventor Pro folder, locating the assembly file of the Inventor. It is called STC Standard 15m iam It is surprisingly very well coordinated with the DWG and the Inventor file, as you can see all of the details are coming on the platform.

In this project, we're only showing you the workflow in the presentation, we do only focus on the sliding structure, the lifting frame. So, this is the Inventor Model. Let's go back to the Inventor drawing.

On ACC, when you open the sheets menu, it has more sheets on the drawing that you can see, which shows the detail of the lifting frame. Later, Hung will show you how we use this sheet in advanced steel to reinvent the advanced steel details. With that introduction, let's hear more from Hung.

HUNG NGUYEN: Thank you, Mahsan. The first step of our workflow is taking the model from Inventor to Advance Steel. For the information, the water slide that you see there, is the SOLIDWORK models. But with Inventor, any CAD feature, we can now open almost any CAD format out there. Inventor AnyCAD allow us to reference or convert any 3D CAD to Inventor. However, when it's coming to Inventor, the converted model will be a non-parametric one.

So in our workflow, the assumption is that we need to recreate the moving frame that you see on the animated frame up there, and turn into a parametric model with bolted connection, and we need to produce the fabrication growing for all of the parts.

So let me just quickly show demo of the portion. Before exporting the Model to Advance Steel, let me just quickly show you that an Inventor project can now be operated to ACC platform. As you see, my Inventor project is on ACC, which allow me to work from anywhere. Let's open the water slide assembly drawing, the speed that you see in this demo is a real time speed, and I deliberately want to test see how fast the Inventor Model would able to open during my recording.

From the drawing and on the right click, I open the water slide assembly, and let's take a quick look at the lifting frame. As part of a fund I add 3 AUs cube there. The lifting frame is used to lift up the boat and move them to the left or right side of the platform for maintenance. I also have a motion constraint already added. So let me just show you quickly how it work. Inventor is fun to play with, it allows dynamic motions study and [INAUDIBLE] animation, and a floated view if needed.

The structure frame, it belong to a sub assembly. So, in order to export to Advance Steel, I just simply open the sub assembly, and [INAUDIBLE] as a DWG format, in order to use in Advance Steel. I would then just save the exported model right on ACC with the name go frame from Inventor. Moving to the second part of the workflow where Advance Steel would be used.

In this part, I will give a quick intro to Advance Steel Modeling. As you know, Advance Steel Modeling is known for its intelligent structural object, it has parametric steel connection, a built-in steel connection design engine, it has a lot of stairs, railing, and cage ladders, sheet and play metal work, and the best part is seamless integration with Revit and Robust Structure Analysis. So let's take a quick look how Advance Steel can handle the modeling part.

From Advance Steel, I open the frame from Inventor [INAUDIBLE] with export from Inventor, I save on ACC. To create a steel member that match to the solid, I need to create some other gap line that go to the center of the solid part that [INAUDIBLE] I could draw on the steel line easily. So let me set high the solid to show you that. But also because to save time for this presentation, [INAUDIBLE] and make it ready to convert them to columns being using advanced steel BIM from line.

This process will involve with using SSH Brow 7.5 for the column, and keep repeating this so that I can turn on the other line into a W and show the 10 by 12 to match to the Inventor Model. For bracing, I could also use the same command, and assign a SSS as to the 5 by 5 by a quarter, so that I can create some interesting connection later.

So now, let's take a quick look of how we can add the connection. In order to add a shear plate connection, I noticed that the column is really short. So in Advance Steel, it came with multiple tools that it allowed you to trim and extend the member. To verify the face and you keep hitting on the column, you see that it extends to that. And now make it easier for a shear plate connection.

Whatever connection that you create in Advance Steel can be saved in the library for sharing or future use. So I used one from the library, and I continue to extend all the column to meet the same condition of the shear plate connection that I add in earlier. So now, the best part is to propagate this connection. Suppose we have thousands of similar conditions, you want to populate them on, so use propagation.

The next step, is just simply save the model on ACC in order to do some fabrication drawing. So an AC I save the model at frame dwg. And now, I also need somebody who repair the analytic model for me. To save some time, I already done all of these. Now, I reopen the complete model, and from here, I need to export out to someone who helped me to create an analytic model in Revit. So I kick out the file, and save it under the project in ACC, and named it frame sms.

The second portion of Advance Steel that I would like to show in this workflow is the way-- how Advance Steel create fabrication drawing on ACC. Advance Steel fabrication drawing is a automatic process, if you would like to do so. It could also do general arrangement drawing, shop drawing, bills material, it supports CNC, and it have a nice tool for document management that is keep-- updated drawing and revision for you, and it did a great job on revision control. So with that in mind, let's quickly see how advanced fabrication drawing on ACC work.

So with the Advance Steel model still open, before you can generate any drawing, you need to number it. So you can turn on the single part assembly part, and the numbering part allow you to browse to every single piece on the 3D model. From this, if you like to create a fabrication drawing for every single part, you just hit the process drawing sheet, and there you can create your own process and implement it in here.

In this demo, I used something under the user that create everything on B side, and while Advance Steel trying to create fabrication of every single part in the back row, I would like to mention that compared to Inventor for example, that it were a automatic creation of drawing is not a feature in Inventor. And the comparisons could be very easily understood where in Inventor, you need to take time to put out the part and put it on the drawing, and put in dimension, and so on. And where Advance Steel, it is the automatic process.

And more than that, when the process is done and it gives you ACC, then surprisingly, when you go into the folder on ACC that I store the file called frame dwg, then under the same name, Advance Steel will create a folder called frame with two subfolders called database and details. And every single piece of steel would put it on the drawing and with the dimension and everything to it.

So let me just browse through some of them that the assembly of the BIM, or the assembly come from the model, or the [INAUDIBLE] so generate it. So let's take a quick look at one of the part for assemble randomly, and you see it quite nicely presented with proper dimensions, and so on. With that, I will pass it on to Lina for the next step on our workflow. Lina?

LINA EL-KHOURY: Now, I will show how to set up the analytical model in Revit from Advanced Steel. In this Revit and Advanced Steel workflow, I will create the Revit model from the SMLX file that Hung exported to ACC, map the steel sections, set up the boundary conditions, apply loads to the Revit model. I will also have to create load cases, then check the analytical model consistency, and adjust it by adding analytical links. Let's get to the demo.

In Revit, I'm starting a new project, and I am using the structural template we saved in the ACC project files. The new file is opening. Now that it is open, I will use the import tool from the Advance Steel extension to bring in the SMLX file that was exported earlier from the Advance Steel model. It is also stored in the ACC project files.

The sections from Advance Steel need to be mapped in Revit. To map them, I would be choosing the corresponding families and types from Revit, and I had already preloaded steel sections and columns in the Revit template to make this mapping easier.

And if I had forgotten any, I could always load the family from the Revit library. So now the frame is being built, I will ignore the warning, and shortly, we will see the frame. The beams came in as mapped. The columns-- we have the family and types are as mapped, but the structural material should be replaced.

So in an elevation, I'm going to be choosing the columns, and we'll change the structural material to a steel material. I will choose the steel ASTM A53, and click OK.

Next, I will make the modifications to the levels of the elevation. Level two is redundant, and I will delete it. The hoist level came in with the steel frame from Advance Steel. I'm just adjusting the symbol and renaming it to level two. There are no elements on level three, so I will delete it.

Next, I'm going to be working with the analytical model, adding some loads, adjusting the analytical links, and getting it ready for analysis. But I noticed that the nodes-- the analytical nodes are not showing, so I'm turning them on from the visibility graphic. Now that I see the nodes, I can apply boundary conditions to the bottom of the columns, and then I'm going to add loads it's going to be hoisted line loads to the longitudinal beams. When selecting those loads, I realized that in the properties I had chosen a dead load where I should have had a live one.

From the load cases tool, I'm going to add a new one. For nature, I'm going to choose the live, category, I'm going to choose live loads, and rename it to ML, and click OK. Let me select them again. Now I'm going to choose up to the new caseload that I created-- load case that I created. And I'm going to change the forces, and click Apply. The load's changed.

And I'm going to now check the analytical model consistency, I see I have some warnings. And that is due to the distance tolerance between nodes, so I'm going to adjust that by adding analytical links, and finish.

I would now create a sheet on which I'm going to be placing a couple of 3D views, and I would also create a schedule for the steel sections. I'm bringing in the 3D view, adjusting its scale. I'm going to create a schedule for the structural framing.

There are many parameters. I'm going to be adding few that I'm interested in. That's going to be the count, family and type, length, mark, and a couple more, and click OK. Adjusting the schedule, I would adjust it more when I place it on the sheet.

I would also bring in the analytical model, and scale it to match the 3D view, reposition both, my sheet is ready. The next step will be to send the Revit model to Robot Structural Analysis for further structural analysis. But before doing so, I have to save the file. Saving the Revit model to ACC, to the project files under the Revit folder, and renaming it frame from Inventor, and save it.

Now, I will link the Revit model to Robot Structural Analysis. I will choose Robot Structural Analysis link from the Robot Analysis tools, and select Send to intermediate file, and click OK. I will also save the file that I'm creating to RSA, keep the same name as the Revit model. Of course, it's a different extension, click No for the report, and now the model is ready for Hung to take it, and make the analysis in Robot Structural Analysis.

HUNG NGUYEN: Thank you, Lina, for preparing the Revit Analytic Model, and get me ready for the workflow of how to use Robot Structural Analysis, and the Steel Optimization Workflow. Robot Structural Analysis workflow is similarly linked to Revit.

You could create as a model directly from Revit to an [INAUDIBLE] format, and this-- in the demo that I'm going to show you, I will show you the very basic RSA analysis, how to understand the basics of Steel Optimization Module, and after analysis, I will update the Revit model using the RSA results. Show you a bit of Results Explorer that it plug-in in Revit, and you will see how all of the Revit drawings update include this schedule, and so on. So with that in mind, let's go straight to the Robot Structural Analysis and Steel Optimization demo.

So from RSA, I just find a template file, and in that, instead of building the model, I just go to adding integration and a link. I will update the model link directly to the [INAUDIBLE] model that will now put it on the ACC for me, under our folder called RSA.

[INAUDIBLE] it out for me. It doesn't take long, the model now transferred to my RSA Robot structure, include the analytical links that she added for me, and including all of the moving load that she initially set it up. All I need to do now is just run the calculation, and to that, I can show some of the result in here, a movement on y direction and something that I need to pay attention to, and so on.

So, on the steel aluminum design, is another module. I can do a secondary calculation, and where you see that it Robot structure tell me that a couple member is questionable right there, the 16 by 26. So I just left at the time W in the code, and asked the Robot to replay the member for me. And it suggest the [INAUDIBLE] member.

After doing that, I do-- I need to recalculate the analysis and-- let me just show you that it-- Robot actually replaced the member. And now, I need to do a secondary calculation, and you will see that everything is passed now with the green part, and the ratio is very low. So I did the basic introduction, so with this, now I'm good to go.

So I just want to show the workflow, how to update back to Revit, login with my name, open Lina Revit model, and choose the Robot Analytic link I update the model and the result using direct technique, and carry the analytic package over. It won't take too long. Let's just give it a-- 3 second or so. The model will update, and I would like to show you some change to the model.

So we should go directly to the schedule, and you see that now is replaced with a thicker model, and it update all of the drawing with the W 8 by 31. On top of that, I can also show the result, in here I could show the reaction, and you see it have all of the color code that is show what happened to the member, and I also showed the result on the member, and I can overlay on top of the Revit model for documentation and so on.

One thing I still don't know, is how I'm going to make this color code bar smaller so it can fit on a drawing. That is my problem. Anyway, the-- now, everything is ready to go. So all I need to do, is save the Revit model to be brought back to Inventor.

So, let's complete our workflow by bringing the Revit model into Inventor. And this Revit and Inventor workflow lets us look into the new 2022 interoperability between AAC and manufacturing. In this section, I will show how to open Revit using Inventor, how Revit model can be referenced or converted into native Inventor, part and assembly feature in Inventor can also be added to the Revit model, we can ask constraint for motion study on Revit model. Revit model can also be used for assembly, drawing can also be created directly from it, and how Revit schedule come across as Inventor BOM.

So let's switch to Inventor, and let me just open the Inventor assembly. So our task is to replace the Inventor part with the Revit model that we just created. So I opened this up, assembly, and check on the motion constrain, and everything's still there.

Now, I will just open the Revit file that was created earlier with Revit as a reference in Inventor. Few second, the module come into Inventor. Take a quick look. Now I just go ahead and save the Inventor's sub assembly that come from Revit onto ACC, name it Structure from Inventor-- from Revit, sorry.

Let's just continue. Let me just quickly show you how to come across to Inventor from Revit. Expand the subassembly, I can see all of the member will be there, and you can-- could also override it with different color and Inventor. You could also view additional feature like work plane on top of the Revit model, even is come over at a reference. So now it's about time to replace the old frame with the new one that's come from Revit.

So I would just simply make a copy, and paste the Revit model into the subassembly, spin it around-- the reason I have the work plane is it easy for me to do the constrain. So similar to Revit, I [INAUDIBLE] Revit, you can align everything to the existing frame, so that the technique I'm trying to do now, try to put into the existing position of the dummy part. So when everything is done, now it's about time to turn up some of the work plane so that we can see it in better. I also want to check see the motion constrain [INAUDIBLE] there. And yes it is.

Now time to generate some drawing. I turn up the work plane, and let's just quickly show you how the schedule from Revit coming over to Inventor at Bill of Material, or we call it BOM. You see, everything's come across very nicely as you see, even with the connection. The column frame and all of this originally is from Advance Steel to Revit, and now into Inventor.

[INAUDIBLE] now, so I will quickly generate a little [INAUDIBLE] drawing to be drawn out of Inventor part. One isometric view is good enough, and now I can take the sketch but now with the BOM in Revit, and lay it on top of my Inventor drawing. On top of that, you can also use your app balloon to the model [INAUDIBLE]

So now is a good time to conclude everything, and I will pass the next step to Lina, to conclude our workflow.

LINA EL-KHOURY: As you know, the structural and manufacturing workflow involves the engineers, the retailers, the fabricators, and the builders. In our session, we discuss the flow between the engineers and the fabricators only. We started with the conceptual design from Inventor, we created a parametric model with bolted connections in advanced steel, and created fabrication drawings.

To make sure the selection of steel members was adequate, we linked the advanced steel model to Revit for setting it up for analysis in RSA. After optimizing the steel, we applauded both Revit and Advanced Steel Models.

We then added the workflow by linking the Revit model to Inventor for motion study and further interoperability. The structure workflow can be expanded further. The builders who may use Navisworks and collaboration on ACC as you can see in this chart. I'd like to thank you for listening to our session.