Design, Develop, Deploy: Create Revit Content from Inventor Designs

MARK ALLEN FLAYLER: Welcome to Design, Develop, Deploy-- Create Revit Content from Inventor Designs. My name is Mark Allen Flayler. I'm an Engagement Engineer with IMAGINEiT Technologies. And I'm going to be your host for this course today for our learning.

So let's start off with why we're here. So inevitably, if you're in the sort of world of Revit or Inventor, and you have to create building content, or you have to create products that go into buildings, whether that's an architectural building, or a very large facility, or a factory. A lot of conversations have been swirling over the last couple of years, especially around the idea of what's called a digital twin, so being able to visualize the equipment in a visual copy of what your design data is.

There's also a lot of discussion around data integrity and communication between teams, such as this. And the overall goal of having a better digital twin, and increasing your data integrity, and enhancing your communication is to reduce your project time, especially in competitive landscapes, and also when deadlines are due, and things have to get built. So essentially, throughout today's course, we're going to have some learning objectives.

We're going to discover the available connectors and data that can be passed into Autodesk engineering and construction products. We're going to learn best practices for creating content for AEC product consumers. We're going to look at examining some simplification, and ways to remove intellectual property inside of your designs. We're also going to learn about managing content and sharing effectively with our trusted stakeholders, which can be internal or external to our organizations.

To start off, we're going to take a look at some different perspectives. So in multi-discipline projects, these are things that are important to at a high level, to these different types of personas. To a siloed Revit user, typically they need a representation of what they're buying. So they need some operational parameters. They need some physical data and some metadata. And they typically have issues with creation of what's called levels of development. And as you can see here in the lower left, if you're in Inventor user, LOD sounds familiar, but it means something different to a Revit person.

So LOD 100 being only symbols and no geometry, 200 being generic placeholders and approximate information, 300 being a little bit more information about quantity size, shape, and location, and also the orientation which can be measured and recorded. And LOD 350, a slight jump up which would have connectors and interfaces with other building systems, and LOD 400 which is a little bit more modeled at detail and accuracy for fabrication and installation.

Now to the siloed Inventor user, you would almost see LOD 500 over here, which I only even list on the left-hand side. And essentially, that's a fully fabricated high-level detailed model and drawing set, because the Inventor user is typically the fabricator or the person sourcing things and building things. So they don't work in generics. They don't work in ambiguity. They work in fine detail. And they're usually apathetic to the knowledge of BIM parameters. So this is the kind of world where a lot of siloed people live, and understanding the other side of the equation becomes a very important part of this communication.

Now, this can actually be solved by putting in quality measures, and also contract measures called BIM execution plans. Now a BIM execution plan or BEP essentially is designed to help more clearly define who's doing what, of each team member and contractor. It helps the planning, and the scope definition, and deliverables for how they should be received for either party. It also looks at project milestones and timelines for which something should be delivered, overall project goals and BIM objectives designed to make the project a success, model quality and control procedures for how the integrity of the files are coming through and how they're being communicated.

A little bit more deeper in the granularity is the working procedure. So what technology stack and software version should be utilized, what the final naming should be? Should these be live or static sharing opportunities? Is there any iterations that take place, different technology needs to assist with that? We're also in the data transfer management. Who's responsible for it?

So some common requirements you would find in a BIM execution plan is, again, communication for changes, accountability for not meeting the BEP from the building owner or architect, and that's important for the Inventor user. So requirements to the Revit person would be to provide more detailed contract language on deliverables and expectations, and to define the scope and area for a project. To the Inventor user, it would be to provide different levels of development during different project phases, or to produce metadata, or clear space, Go-NoGo zones, if you will, connectors, and geometry claims.

Now the benefits of following a BEP are somewhat fairly obvious. But we're going to state them here. So you get more accurate digital twins for a Revit user. You get a better usage of those space claims, and upfront metadata, and specifications for costing. Less issues of project delays and scheduling, which in the end makes the building owner a very happy building owner. Facilitating stronger communication between the teams, so you're not trying to guess which file is new which file is old, and how commonly you should receive it.

To the Inventor user it's a little bit more about professionalism. So it's hard to put this in an engineer's mind sometimes, but service is also your product. And it helps with repeat business for building owners and contractors who are using you. They can see that you are working within a BEP. If you're seeing that communication and timely deadlines are important to your organization, it can mean a lot of repeat business.

And this is important when there's a lot of competitive advantage to this on new requests for quotes. In the end, it's going to help with your time to market, installation decreasing. If you're responsible for the installation of something and you're not getting accurate data from a BEP about spaces and changes to the as-builts, it can drastically affect your bottom line and your service delivery of that piece of equipment.

So to help with this overall issue, we're going to take a look at Inventor in Revit in a couple of different ways. And through the years, a lot of things have changed, even in the last four years. So there's been a lot of enhancements in this world, because Autodesk has always had very strong connections in fabrication, as well as architecture. And one of the biggest key things we need to remember as we go through this, and we talk about all these different ways you can operate, is the Autodesk rule of interoperability. He who hath authored, shall be thine who ought modify. Always remember that rule.

We're going to begin by looking at the RFA and ADSK export that's been in the software for a period of time. And this is important, because it's still a content that needs to be delivered in a lot of different ways. So we're going to focus on that one first.

So BIM content creation, now, when we talk about BIM content creation, obviously there's a couple of different things you can create that Revit can consume. So there's RFAs which are called Revit families. And there's RVTs which are other projects. So we're going to focus on RFAs in this first section.

Now, at a glance, if you create an RFA inside of Inventor, it's going to be a single variation or like a static block. You can encapsulate connector data, which is important because if you have a pipe connector, or a duct connector, or an electrical connector, that data can be shared with the Revit user. So you're passing along your specific information to that consumer of that Revit data.

You can have the specification and metadata, which is the omni-class information as well. 3D model shows everywhere though. This is kind of an issue to be aware of, especially to the Revit users. If you ask for an RFA from in Inventor person, the 3D model that you create shows up everywhere, even in plan views. And you cannot create multiple levels of development like coarse, medium, and fine inside of it an RFA generated from Inventor. It's a limitation. Again, it's a static block. You can't have certain things removed and certain things added. It's going to be just one thing. So if you're required to create different levels of development, you have to create multiple RFAs.

So all the geometry when you bring it in to Revit, is actually static. It's not edible. You can't change things about it. You can adjust certain things, like you can adjust some of the metadata and the omni-class data. But essentially, the geometry is static.

Now when you compare that to a Revit authored RFA, you can do multiple variations. You can have parametric intelligence inside of a Revit authored RFA. You can also still encapsulate connector data, of course, and specification and metadata. All that would be obvious to a Revit user.

Now here, the 3D is only shown in 3D. And you have planned views which are just flat-lined ones, so it's a little bit more effective when they're doing their views with a Revit authored RFA. And over there, they do want to create minimum levels of development in course, medium, and fine so they can very quickly change between different levels of development inside of their Revit fabrication drawings. And all data there is fully constrained and modifiable. So you can adjust parameters and dimensions, you can adjust and have multiple variations of a family inside of that parametrically driven.

So the key takeaway from this is if you are an Inventor user trying to create an RFA, this works great if it's a single thing, if it's only just a one thing, single thing. If you need multiple variations or if in the BEP you're required to provide more robust, and editable, and adjustable RFA families, it's not uncommon for a fabricator to also own a seat of Revit, and they actually do a little bit of double duty. So they will do their fabrication fully detailed models, but they would also have a license or Revit to create the consumable that needs to go off to the Revit consumer.

So keep that in mind, depending on what is required of an RFA creation, you may be able to do in Inventor just fine, or you might just have to bite the bullet and go to Revit, and create something there a little bit more intelligent.

Next up, let's talk about what can go into that. We already talked about connectors. Typically, I apply these after simplification, so after you've simplified a design that you see here on the upper right, it's fairly simplified. But you can apply cable trade connectors, conduit connectors, duct connectors, pipe connectors, and electrical connectors. You can choose what type of system type it is. You can choose circular or rectangular, based on the connector type you have. You can actually apply loss methods, coefficients, flow configurations. You can tell which direction it's going in and out. So you actually have a lot of control to apply your manufacturing intelligence to this connector for somebody to consume.

There's some really good best practices around this. So you can actually create some services for connectors so that when you do simplification, the things will backfill. It will actually close it off like a watertight boundary. And that way you can fill in easier when you simplify. And using unique colors for connector phases, so that when someone consumes an RFA, they can see, well, that color there is blue. That's probably cold water. And they can connect to that.

Now if you're doing this at a part level, we'll start there first. You need to turn on simplification tools. And this will really help you as well. Some of the commands we'll take a look at are remove details, fill voids, and define envelopes.

If you're doing this at an assembly level, it's actually an important thing to know that there is a command called assembly substitutes. It's been around for a while. And one of the great things here is when you run this and you create a envelope simplification or substitute, it's basically just going to give you straight boxes and space claims. And that is a great export for LOD 200.

Now, it's a little tricky to use this command, the assembly substitute, especially the simplify or derive options to get your level 300 or 350. And I'll explain why in just a little bit. But getting to level LOD 200 is extremely easy by just grabbing envelopes, as you can see here on the right. And there's the internal detail, as you can see there, just really simplified down. You can see how much data that's really removing.

Now, for a drive assembly, again, I would say just don't. Don't. Don't even try. This process of a drive assembly just takes way too long, and it has a high level of failure when it comes to the considerations for what you need to provide. So I spent about a half hour or 45 minutes on the one on the right to try to get it simplified down, and try to maintain certain considerations for what an RFA should be. It is extremely hit or miss based on your modeling techniques.

Now, if you do it right, if you do it right from the ground up, we'll talk about some of those best practices near the end of today's presentation. When you do it right, you can actually use something called model states, which can actually as you build the model from the ground up, as you think about this as a CAD management and execution strategy in Inventor, it can make this process extremely easy, a couple of minutes perhaps.

So the simplified command though actually does a little bit better job than the drive. So if you're going to use this substitute, simplify the way to go. It's very interactive. And you can get pretty close to the output considerations you need for an RFA. So here you can see on the left the fully detailed model. But on the right, I've done a simplification to really reduce that down.

So the insides still have a lot of data. I probably could do a little bit more work on that. But the reason why I just wasn't able to simplify too well is because of modeling techniques. So for instance, this entire design up here on the top is one component, instead of an assembly, where you can grab intelligence of the parts, and start simplifying things, and breaking things down. So if you have a lot of standard components you've brought in from downloading and things like that, that can really cause some turmoil in your simplification process.

Now, when you start exporting, a couple of things to remember about RFA export, in Inventory, the up axis is the y-axis normally. And in Revit the up axis is the z-axis. So you can actually adjust this inside of the BIM content creation environment, inside of Inventor, where you can choose ton use a new UCS, or you can adjust it based on the orientation of your model. It's also release year dependent.

So if you're going to create an RFA inside of Inventor 2023, someone who has Revit 2023 is the one who's going to open that. It's not going to work if your authoring tool is trying to go into a consumption software that's older than the authoring tool. So be aware of that. If you're creating content this way, you might have to have some older releases of Inventor. You might have to work to a lower common denominator, or have multiple versions installed. That becomes a little bit tricky. But again, this is why a BIM execution plan is extremely important.

You also want to make sure you grab typical property requirements, such as structural weights and part numbers, URL to the specific equipment specifications, finishes or material options, obviously the manufacturer, and also any COBie requirements you might have. Those are usually outlined in the BEP. So as you can see from the right-hand side, you can add whatever properties you want. You can fill that in when you're doing the authoring of building components.

Now filling in OmniClass data, this is usually a blind spot to a lot of Inventor users. But they can usually guess and get it pretty close. But Inventor and Revit use a 2006 classification. 2012 is also available, but it does have some limitations. So you can adjust Inventor to read those. It is required for specifications and cost estimating on the BIM side of things. And essentially it ties an object to that specific OmniClass number for grouping.

Usually, your marketing team should know what the OmniClass data being requested is. Or it would be in the BEP as well. Now the Revit user can adjust it after consumption, but again, you're putting that onus back on the Revit user or consumer.

Now, I know this bullet looks like I did a mistake. But this is not a mistake. File size is probably the biggest consideration around exporting. Your exports from Inventor should always be less than 2 megabytes in size, usually in the sub 1,000 kilobyte range. And there are certain things you can do to identify that. So there's a Inventor Body Integrity Tool. It's kind of a hidden tool. But it tells you how many faces and edges you have. And also the simplification tools I brought up.

When I say export considerations, I mean, I don't want to give somebody a piece of equipment like the RFA like you see in the lower right. There's zero detail there that a Revit person needs on the inside of that machine. It should all be stripped away, removed, and to protect your intellectual property.

If you create a large export that's bigger than 2 megabytes in size, you might as well not have done anything at all. It puts the design and space claim and connectors back on a Revit author to create an RFA of your equipment, and basically you're not providing anything to them other than a very large file that then they have to now do something with. So that Revit author will have to create all new levels of development in Revit. They're going to have to create their own space claims, their own course, medium, and fine levels. And they might have to use Inventor to do it.

Now, I mentioned previously that you might have to use Revit to create RFAs. I know plenty of architects that have a seat of Inventor, because they have to consume that data, and then make it smarter and more intelligent, because it was not in the BEP. It was not in the contract language for how they should receive things.

Now there is another lesser known or lesser used exchange format from Inventor called ADSK. If you're going to use Revit, it's just better to use an RFA. But if you need to actually create content that goes to other systems like AutoCAD MEP, or Plant3D, the ADSK format is typically used for that. So this can go to multiple formats. It's a little bit more neutral of an export from Inventor. But again, if we're talking Revit, you're going to stick with an RFA.

Now what can you do from an automated standpoint? Maybe creating RFAs is a secondary thought or something that you would just like to have it done automatically. Well, you can write pieces of code inside of iLogic, and also API access for the BIM content environment. So you can do these things a little bit more automatically.

You can also have a custom add-in created that would do this when you save something, or maybe when you release something in your document management system. There's also a connection to the Forge platform. So the Forge platform has a Revit core engine available to do automatic RFA exports. So it can actually generate those things, and actually Inventor parameters can feed to Revit parameters. And if you want to get really fancy with it, you can have a nice parametric family created inside the Revit core engine without having to use Revit yourself.

So let's take a look at some of these tools and how they're utilized. Let's jump over to the software. We're going to start with just this simple chair. So what we're going to do is start simplifying this, basically reducing some information, creating better levels of development for this that I could export in different formats, different RFAs perhaps. One of the first things I do is I turn on the simplification environment, because this is not turned on by default.

So you'd have to come up here to your panels and pull that down, turn on simplification, and now you get these tools up here. So I'm going to begin by removing details, which will be some of these fillets on here that I feel I don't need, just to simplify this chair now. Again, this is a very small example. But the content of this carries into larger designs.

So there's my initial reduction of geometry. Next, we'll do a Fill Voids. And for this it basically creates boundary patches and then sculpts them. So let's go ahead and do that on both sides here. And I also like to remove the consumption of inputs. I like those broken out separately.

Next, we'll do a Define Envelope. So here I'll just click on this, and I'm going to have this go all the way down to the bottom here. So again, just reducing even more geometry. It makes us smaller and smaller, different levels of development, if you will. Now how do I save these as different ones to export?

Well, this is basically our first look at model states in this course. So I can go up here to Model States which replaced levels of detail inside of Inventor a couple of years ago. So we can create a new one here. And we're going to change this to LOD 200. Now LOD 200 should be exactly what you see right there. Let's go ahead and create another one, and let's call this one LOD 300.

Now so for LOD 300, it's going to have a little bit more detail to it. So what I'll do is on extrusion 11 here, I'll just go ahead and suppress that. And I'm also going to get rid of these for suppression. So basically, it shows a little bit more detail.

Next up, let's create another model state, and we'll call this one LOD 400. And for this one, we'll unsuppress those fillets. Now, if I wanted to, I can save these out as different file formats, different exports. And I actually have some iLogic code in here. One of them is Save As Multiple Formats. If I take a look at this just briefly, just some of the things you can do, when I save this document it's going to ask me to save a JPEG, a bitmap, a SAT file, a STEP file, DWF. And then I may also have it so it's set up to save out an RFA directly. So I don't have to go into the BIM content environment.

So that's a really nice touch there. And again, you would just save this out as each one of these levels of development. Back on the primary, I will make sure that I get all of those things suppressed, because that's my fabrication model.

Next up, we'll take a look at this Paint Booth. And here, we'll actually go into the connectors a little bit, and a little bit more about Simplify. So if I were to start the environment for BIM content up here, go and enter that. You're going to see inside of an assembly you have a simplified command. You wouldn't see that inside the [INAUDIBLE] It only exists here in the assembly.

So this is aimed at saying, hey, let's go ahead and make this smaller, because again we have to get that footprint down. If I were to send this right now to a Revit person and have all the connectors on it, I might say I did a good job. I put all the connectors on it. He's going to open it up and say, this is way too large. It blows my model. And I can't have it. I'm just going to restart from scratch. Thanks, but no thanks.

So let's begin with a Simplify here. Now as you can see, one of the defaults that I have already set up is my Last Used. But you can grab different presets from here, which are very important. You can create your own presets for this. But essentially, you can see all this is turning into bounding boxes. It's all turning into space claims.

Now, it's going to basically backfill and make that all solid in between there. So some of these internal boxes actually will just get removed entirely because, the overall size of this thing is going to fill it in. Now you can actually show and exclude certain parts from this as well. You can get pretty detailed with it. But if I just go in and say, OK to this, to create this substitute, we'll let that generate. This is going to be a nice file size for that level of development 200.

Now, I can still come in here and put connectors on now. You can see that Simplify tool has gone away. So I can come in here and put a duct connector on. I actually know that this is a duct right here. And I can show rectangular, circular, oval, undefined, what kind of system it is. This is actually an exhaust system, and the information for how that flow is going through there. So I can go ahead just reverse that though.

So you can control the direction as well. When I go up here to Author, you can see it's oriented incorrectly. So I could come in here and say model origin. Or I could tell it to locate based on an insertion point. Obviously, before you do this, you probably want to get it set the first way you want it.

I would normally create a UCS before I get here, and that would show up correctly for me. Now when you go to export this, if you leave it in the wrong orientation, this is an important point, it becomes very difficult for that person to consume correctly in Revit. They have a bunch of extra work to do when they bring it in. But when I click on Export Building Component, right there, they say this is an RFA. I'll click Save. And I start building that Revit family file.

And I did glance over it, but the Author Building Components did have all that metadata, and OmniClass information. That's where you would fill that out in the authoring area, before you click Export. This might as well be called a Save As, or a Save.

Now if I go back to the main representation, let's go back to the primary here. If I were to do this Simplify and try to start ruling certain things, and instead of envelopes, maybe I'd choose something else. So let's say none. Now it all looks like this, right? I could come in here and start removing things, start removing pieces of this robot, and really start getting that moved down.

The problem is when you don't use envelopes and you have high loads of detail of things you've downloaded, let me go ahead and zoom in down here, like this motor with all these fins on it. That's going to translate in. Maybe you still need to show that and an envelope is not good enough, because you actually need to show something that may be a little bit more important, maybe for an electrical connection. That can be a problem during the simplification process. That's why I don't like just downloading content all the time. I like creating my own standards. I like creating my own content, and I use downloads from a manufacturer as a baseline. You have to be very careful about that stuff.

Let me go ahead and just exit this, and show you one last quick little tool. Again, this is kind of a hidden feature. This is called the Body Integrity Tool it's Control F7. And this will tell you if you have any bad bodies, if you have faces and vertices you have, and edges. It helps you understand complexity a little bit more.

I always do this when I bring in step files. I always check to make sure they translated properly. You'd be amazed how often that doesn't translate properly, and causes failures inside of your modeling environment. So again Control F7, great tool, you can get an idea of how complex something is. So here we're at 35 faces, 39 loops, 99 edges. You've got 99 edges, but a face ain't one. Let's go ahead and go to LOD 400 or 300 here, maybe 200. And let's run that again.

So now we actually have a lot less there to really reduce that down. If we look at the Paint Booth and I run a body integrity on this, I might sit there for a little bit while it calculates, but it'd be very complex. Let's jump over to our next topic.

So we're going to talk about interoperability with Inventor and Revit. So '21 and '23 Inventor created some nice enhancements for how you can consume and bring in Revit data. And where this really enhances the RFA discussion is now you can bring in an example of a building, or a facility before you start creating your content to get better idea of where it's actually going to reside. So you can make better design decisions on the manufacturing and fabrication side.

So there's some differences here between '21 and '23, and we'll take a look at that. First of all in '21 Inventor, and this is version specific as well. So if you have a Revit 2022 file but you're using Investor '21, this will not work. But you can basically bring in the entire Revit RVT inside of Inventor. You can control which categories of data will be loaded. You must place and constrain it though. There's not just an automatic drop-in for this. Usually, the origin is a good place to start. And it's usually the first thing you bring in. So it shouldn't be too troublesome in that sense.

There is also a convert option. I don't recommend it, because then you lose all associativity to the Revit model. If you do a reference, which is the true any CAD functionality, if an update happens inside or Revit, you will actually have an update happen inside of Inventor for you. And after it's brought in, you can edit, or suppress, or break these links. But this gives you basically the full entire Revit model. And this is a great first step.

You can control different views that you're seeing. You can turn off certain things. But the downside to this is you have to have access to the entire RVT. You can't just have access to the portion you need. So you're going to get basically a lot of data noise here, a lot of things you don't care about as a fabricator. And also, the architect has to trust you with it. They have to give you access to that, which they may not want to based on how they're coordinating their project.

So inside of 2023 products, we have the Autodesk Construction Cloud coming to the rescue. So essentially, you can share only what's required for the fabricator. And this reduces a lot of that extra background geometry you don't need to see. It does require Revit 2023 models in order to create this in the Construction Cloud. So even if you have the ACC and you're using Revit 2022, you won't be able to do this. It has to be a file migration to '23 Revit, and then this can take place.

But the Revit user will start by creating a view inside of Revit. And then when it's loaded to the ACC or Autodesk Docs, they would go in there and create the exchange. So they would left-click on these three little dots and say, Create Data Exchange. So inside of Inventor, this is a little bit unique as well, because you're not opening a RVT. You're not opening a Revit file, so to speak. You're actually opening a data exchange.

And this means you're actually connecting to Autodesk Docs to an area that you're given permission to. And you're opening it from there. This also doesn't create actual IPT files. We're like a phantom environment. It's really interesting. I'll show it to you when we open something up. So let's take a look at these two different techniques.

All right, so here inside of Inventor, I have a custom body works building that I have already brought in just to save time, because this was actually a Revit 2022 RVT file. And inside of Inventor '23, it takes a little bit of time to migrate it in. But what you're seeing here is a little cloud icon. So it tells you this is a cloud file. And I can come in here and I can modify the import. I can suppress or break the links to it. But essentially, the way this was brought in is by going up to Open, and choosing an RVT that exists in my folder structure somewhere.

So you're bringing in an RVT that you've received. Typically, if it's a cloud file, it's because you do have access to Autodesk Docs, or it is in your cloud drive. That's why it's showing up there. If it was just on your local hard drive, you would not have that little cloud icon there. This is nice though, because if the cloud file updates from the Revit user, your Inventor model will update. You'll basically open Inventor, and it says the new cloud file is updating. Please wait. And it will come in for you.

Now, if I want to do a data exchange, let's see how that's a little bit different. So rather than performing opens, you're actually going up here to this Collaborate tab that you would have inside of Inventor 2023. And here you can click on Data Exchange. So I'll select that. And this is looking directly inside of Autodesk Docs. So it's looking at the project. This one is called a Factory Layout Project. And I'm going to open up the Production B Working. So I'll choose Load.

This will create a new assembly file. So this is really what you do first. It's going to go ahead and import that in. Now, while that's importing, I'm going to jump over to the Autodesk Construction Cloud, and just show you that I do have access here to this manufacturing area of this project. And this is the icon for a data exchange. So I do have access to this Production B Working. That's where Inventor found that.

Now, if I needed to have the entire RVT, then I would have to have access to the architectural models, so these full central files or RVTs in here. But by using a data exchange, the architect can just share what's important to me to this manufacturing area. So if we look at the overall model, the big one let's say, and take a look at this inside of ACC.

I would click on Sheets and Views. This Coordination B Model is actually what I want to work on. So the architect would come in here and say, Create Data Exchange for me.

Let's go back over to Inventor. You can see this finished loading. So it brought in just a part of the building that I care about, and nothing else, none of that extra annoyance. It's still a cloud file, and it still shows me what I'm working on, and if it needs to update.

So my step here would be now to build my equipment. So for this, I'm going to start just dropping in what I need. So let me grab my file that I want. Close that off. We do a place, not an open. And we're going to go ahead and place that grounded at the origin. So essentially, you would build your equipment inside the context of this data exchange. You can constrain to these different elements. You can work with it. I usually like working off the origins though. And essentially, this is what I would do.

Now, the communication here becomes important. Because as I'm building this, maybe there are certain ramifications where I need to talk about with the Revit architect, or the building owner. So for instance, for my crane to operate, I need more clearance space right here. And I can see that's a problem just by looking at this. So either I need to solve that, or he needs to solve that. If this is a greenfield and these ducts aren't even installed yet or in place, maybe they can do something there. And I can have that communication with them right now.

And it's not going to shake out later and be a 10,000 compensatory budget issue down the line when we start servicing this, or installing it. So either I can shrink my crane, or I can move my crane, or they can actually move this ductwork. But it gives me an ability to see so much more information, and to really reduce those kind of issues that do pop up during designing and collaboration.

Now, when it comes time to actually saving this out, that's our next step, now how we work with this, how simplified we make it, and how someone consumes this. So let's jump back over to the presentation.

And we're going to start by looking at some simplifications and best practices for creating that RVT content. So we are really now looking at this RVT Export, which was actually added inside of Inventor 2022.

Now, some of the things to remember is that if you're in the pre-design or pre-engineering phase of a project, you may not have a fully fabricated model to provide those level of development 200 that a Revit person might need. So there's nothing wrong with just creating some prismatic shape, and saying, here you go. Let's add this in, and kind of get the communication started. And you can start consuming what we feel that my design is going to take up, and where things are going to be.

Again, my crane to be as simple as saying, this is the general space claim, and Go-NoGo zone for this crane, and we can start discussing who should move the dock, or if I should do the crane. So it's going to be a great for that. And it can be used as a substitute later on in your process.

However, model states become a really critical point of discussion around how you simplify things, and how you follow design practices in your organization. This is something that did replace level of detail in Inventor, and we've got some great tools for it. We'll talk about that and some best practices as we go.

But one of the nice commands I really like and will really pay off if you do things the right way, is a command called Link Model States, where it will actually take, let's say you have model states called LOD 200 or 300 or 350, and you have those in each one of your subassemblies. And you have those in each one of your parts. When you use Link Model States, it will actually link them all together. Without doing that, you'd have to manually link together all of your subassemblies to the level of development that you created for the top level GA that you have.

So it's very important to have these for different levels of development for your design. And if you do it the right way from the ground up, if you live this and breathe this because this is the type of stuff you do for Revit consumption and for large capital projects like this, it really becomes second nature. But it is just a little bit more extra work per modeling file or per assembly to really get it done right.

Now, the Assembly Simplify command is where you actually create the RVT. So again, presets very important. It's not a bad idea to create a Revit RVT Export preset. Now there are some ones that come in there by default, like removing certain amounts of data. And we'll get to why RVT creation doesn't have to be as small as an RFA. We'll get to that in a moment. But RVT, is it's OK to have more detail to. It's OK to have LOD 300, 350, or even 400 or 500 if you want, depending on how big the piece of equipment you have is.

But for your source, this is where you would pick your model state. So if you want to pick a level of development, your representations, different views or positional reps like for that crane for how far it needs to swing. You don't want to have it redacted and extracted. For the output, it's important that you should consider multiple exports if you want to have multiple levels of development. But you want to choose RVT. You want to probably add the level of development to the file name, so it's easy for someone to look at and consume.

Obviously, you don't want to call it Part_1 or Simplify_3, like I have here. You can also tell it to go to your Autodesk Docs drive directly. Also, very important if you want to have a nice collaborative environment.

For the structure, you can actually create a one element RVT, or each top level can have its own selectability. And then lastly for updating, this is for you as the Inventor user, do you want to have that RVT actively update when you create changes to it, or do you want to keep it static? This will actually appear as a node inside of your model tree when you have this RVT Export, so you can actually interact and keep track of it.

Now, some additional modeling tips I would give you here it is important to add part and assembly templates with levels of development. Now depending on how you practice your modeling, it might be OK to have these as default model states already added. I don't mind doing it. I like doing it. I even create an AEC template usually when I'm doing AEC work that I would start with that for an IPT or for an IAM.

If you create substitutes though, then those kind of go away, and your substitutes might take the place of LOD 200, for example. But this will make your process of linking model states extremely easy because everything already has it. It has the same name. If someone created LOD 200 with a space and without a space, your link model states then doesn't work. The name has to match exactly. It has to have the exact same spelling. So keep that in mind. This is a great tip for that.

Also, consider adding it to your library items. If you have standard content you create all the time or you consume all the time in your designs, add that to your library items as well.