Revit and RebarCAD 3D: The BIM Solution for Rebar Modeling to Production Drawing

JOHN KUNNIL KOCHUMMEN: Good morning. Welcome to demo of RebarCAD 3D for Revit. I'm John Kunnil. Got a lot of text there to summarize. I'm a civil engineer but I've been concentrating on this for around 10 years in infrastructure projects, industrial projects. And I also worked as a structural design engineer in a few residential building projects. As I switched my career to programming and software development, for the past 16 years I'm in CADS, developing software solutions for the construction industry. Jason.

JASON COLCOMBE: Good morning, my name's Jason Colcombe. I was approached by CADS earlier this year to head up their RebarCAD program. I'll talk a bit more in a minute about my background, because it's relevant to what we're going to do. And hopefully, we can sort of get some information out of everybody, and then we'll come back.

JOHN KUNNIL KOCHUMMEN: Yeah. About CADS-- CADS is one of the leading software development companies. We developed software for civil, geotechnical, structural engineering design, structural analysis, rebar detailing, and scaffolding and scaffolding industry. And we do develop software as well as we use the software for providing engineering service to our clients. And RebarCAD is our major leading software in the market, which is used for detailing rebars in AutoCAD.

RebarCAD is there on the market for quite a long time, probably from the days when industry started-- transitioned from regular drawing boards to AutoCAD. Now again, industry is into a new transition from CAD to BIM. So now we are developing a new product called RebarCAD 3D, which will be working on Revit as a plugin application. RebarCAD 3D provides a set of tools to perform the crucial task of placing rebars and detailing reinforcement in a Revit model. It also provides tools for generating 2D drawing, bar bending schedules, as well as generating production output files.

We've got a team of around 500 engineers providing engineering services in rebar detailing, rebar modeling in Revit, and BIM services. And we face the same pain, challenges, difficulties, that you face. So we identify that problem, we identify a solution for that one, and that experience is what converted into our product.

The learning objective of the session, to start with the design reinforcement model and convert it into a practical 3D reinforcement model, produce 2D fabrication drawings from that, cleared create bar bending schedules, generate production output files which can be directly fed into different production systems like [INAUDIBLE]. And we also provide facilities to export production output system and BVBS file.

Now to demo. But before going to demo, just to understand the audience. How many of you are doing 3D rebar modeling in Revit already? Quite a few. And how many of you are using any other platform for rebar modeling? A couple of them. All right. Thank you. Jason, please.

JASON COLCOMBE: All right.

JOHN KUNNIL KOCHUMMEN: And switch those.

JASON COLCOMBE: Yeah, you switch over. OK. So just before I start with the demo, I just want to give a quick explanation why I'm here, why CADS here, why RebarCAD's here. I've worked in the industry for quite a while-- I started as an engineer, switched over then to CSC, which is more fast-track [? Orion ?] [? Ted's ?] just bought out by Trimble, so it's part of their big global package now. So I think it's their way of just trying to be AutoCAD-- Autodesk, sorry. It's just-- so yeah, that's cynical, but yeah.

So when I was there in 2010, one of the major chief engineers came back and he said, I've just had a meeting with Eurocode 3 for Steel, and he says we need to add an add-in for fast-track to get it into Revit. And at the time we laughed, because we said, are you sure? You sure you want to take into Revit, because we know-- And he did-- we did it over six months. We got it working, we got it into Revit. Then, sort of, Revit snowballed, and I thought, oh, got to see what's happening with Revit. Then the word BIM got thrown around a lot.

Now, I am a very glass-half-empty person when it comes to BIM. I think BIM gets thrown-- the word gets thrown around too much. BIM's a process. It is a process-- all Revit does is give you a BIM model. And that sort of falls onto the way the UK markets-- I'm going to apologize straightaway, because I'm going to just reference UK here, there, and everywhere because that's where I work. My model's all in metric, so don't worry about that. So again, sorry.

But the idea here is that, when we were trying to push Revit out to structural engineers in the UK-- and I went and actually worked-- I crossed over to the dark side-- I went and work for an Autodesk reseller, so I took the pain and the brunt of what everybody was finding with Revit. So we were going into structural engineering practices, and structural engineering practices in the UK. It's trying to get blood out of a stone-- they won't give you anything. They won't pay for anything. They're happy just to what they've got. Their idea of upgrading from 97 to 2000 is making sure they all right for the extra 100 years in AutoCAD.

So to go in and actually tell them about Revit, this 3D platform, there they were very skeptical. So a few people took it up, a few people approached it. So everybody, if you're into rebar and you've used Revit 2010, you realize the difficulties you faced. 2014, it got a bit better. Then for 2016, we found people were actually using, in the UK, the out-of-the box Revit with rebar, and they've been using it quite effectively since. RebarCAD 2D bolt-on to AutoCAD, and it allows people to model rebar without really understanding AutoCAD. It's got tools allowing to place, and put everything in, and automatically schedule.

So what we found then was, people were starting to look at Revit and say, we've been asked for the same information, can you give us the same tools? So in 2016, when Revit opened up the API, it allowed people to dip into the back-use code and use it more effectively. But what people are asking now is that, we want the same tools from RebarCAD in Revit. And unfortunately, it's a very, very difficult platform and a difficult process.

So we're working hard with people-- we're going round. I mean, this is only nine months in fruition, so every once there's thing's being added. As I'll go through, there's another development release in December, where there's three or four tools that we've sort of added into it.

So it's sort of snowballed to the point now where, in the UK, contractors or clients are actually requesting 3D Rebar models. So the first thing they're saying to an engineer, or an engineering practice, is, can you provide me with a 3D Rebar model IFC? If you say no, they'll just say, don't bother tendering. We're not interested. Because they're doing everything in the cloud-- they're doing it in Navis, they're doing it in Solibri, BIMSight. So they're doing all their checks and their mark-ups in this 3D environment. They're actually saying, now, to the detailers, we don't really need 2D drawings. You carry on with those, so we need something in 3D.

So the need for RebarCAD 3D is great. If anything, we're trying to play catch up. So this is a live demo. I don't know why we've done it, but we're going to do it. We'll just see how it goes, so yeah. Hey, what could go wrong?

[LAUGHTER]

So we'll do this. Ask questions as we go, ask questions about some of the things I'm doing. Don't ask me questions why Revit can't do this, can't do that, because we all know what Revit can and can't do. I saw a guy get asked a question yesterday, and I think it broke him halfway through. He just lost it. I wanted to go and hug him, but I thought, oh, that's going to make it worse. But if you have any questions at the end, then there's plenty of time to sort of-- we'll go through some Q&A. And then if we need to, we're around afterwards anyway.

So, OK. So I've just got to be careful, because I do say a lot of things like problems and limitations and things like this, but just ignore me. It's just my bitterness, so it's all right.

AUDIENCE: Remember where you are and don't knock Revit.

JASON COLCOMBE: I know, that's it.

[LAUGHTER]

It's my turn, I'm allowed payback. OK. So this is-- OK, it's a simple model. The idea of this is to allow us to get through the whole project in the time slot given. Most people, when they're using Revit at the moment, they're still in the mentality of creating 2D drawings within-- even from a 3D model-- even in the UK, even in the US. They won't even do-- I mean, I had a bit of an argument with a guy the other day saying, I don't need Revit. I want 2D drawings. I said, well you can print 2D drawings. He says, yeah, but I don't want Revit. I says, yeah, but you can print it. So it's a-- yeah. We'll just be careful.

So most people will actually, just very simply, get the slab, file, export, card format, DWG, and take it out as a DWG. And then what they'll use is RebarCAD 2D environment standalone just to mark that up, and then link it back into Revit from insert. That's the way I work it. One of the big things with BIM-- sorry for you guys over there that can't see-- so one of the big things with BIM and the BIM process is what we call interoperability-- federated models, everything working together. So if this floor plan changes, it's not going to update to the 2D CAD drawing, so it's useless. So the idea is that you have to put it in this environment. Any changes to this, then, will update the model. It'll update the tags, it'll update the schedule.

So we use-- and we haven't black-boxed this software in the fact that we utilize everything within Revit. And the reason for that is, is that when it's taken out, you could take into any platform and nobody would even know that you've used our add-in to actually use the tools to get what you need. We've just utilized everything. And the reason for that is, we need transparency. IFCs are great in some instances, but I've opened up an IFC and it looks perfect. I've opened up the next IFC and it looks like some sort of crystallized structure. So you're only as good as the information that's being passed to you. By making everything generic, means that it is going to be passed through and read easily.

So when we look at area reinforcement, we can pick the slab. And if I make sure I lock it and just pick the slab edges, straight away, by locking that area reinforcement to the boundary of the slab means, if the slab adjusts, so does the area boundary. We've got major directions which you can switch to and from-- three standard tools, that these are all built into Revit. And then all you really do is just do some editing on the left-hand side. Put top reinforcement, major-minor directions, and finish. And that's what you get in Revit. That's standard, out-of-the-box sort of Revit.

The problem we've got-- see, I've said it there-- the problem. The difficulty we have here is there's four layers of reinforcement-- how do we know what that is? With your working plan, up until 2019, you couldn't even have two views in Revit, and shared screens. There's no way to do it. What you have to do is, you have to go into a section, highlight it in section, then come back to plan. But then you've got to remember, when I'm in plan, did I actually make sure the visibility states were correct for it in that view I want to go back to? So you try to tell that to somebody who's never used Revit before-- it's difficult. It's not as simple as they make out, is it?

So the other thing-- so you've got visibility states, and we've got these layering conventions. There's four layers-- if I highlight any one of those on the left-hand side, it doesn't tell me in the properties what layer is. I've got no idea. So one of the first functionalities we try to do-- and somebody turned around and said to me, oh, you're CAD-ifying Revit, and it was an awful term. Oh, it was horrible. But the idea is that we're trying to get our users from a 2D platform into a 3D platform with the smoothest transition as we can. So we've got a lot of RebarCAD users that we're trying to actually just say, look, we'll do our best for you. If we can get anybody else on board at the same time, perfect-- but we're trying to make this transition smooth.

So what we've got is, we've got an option to assign reinforcement layer. And what this allows us to very quickly do is, not only does it make all the rebar visible, it also-- if I highlight any one of the rebar-- it assigns a property to it, so we can actually then start to filter by this property instead. In Revit, under visibility graphics, and if we go down to structural rebar, what can you filter it by? Diameter. What if you had some 16s that you wanted to see and some 16s you didn't? You have to start going into filters. And again, it's more difficulty. You're looking at visibility filters-- I've never used Revit, what's a filter?

So again, by making it visible in that respect, not only can we very quickly hide all rebar in one go, we can show it all. And these works in any view. We can even now filter it by layers. So quickly-- without even going into Revit, knowing about view ranges, anything-- we can just say, all right, just want to work on the top reinforcement in the major direction. Done. Simple, isn't it?

OK. The other limitation-- so I'm using the right words now-- is, when it places rebar in areas, it puts them in fill in the area-- that's 21 meters long. So 64-5 foot? Yeah-- three times, let's just guess. OK. So we do stock lengths, we cut, so that's not practical. If we wanted to put areas in there, we'd manually have to draw each area. Then we'd have to overlap them on our laps. Then the problem with that is, unless you use reference plans, you've got no idea if that changes whether we're going to update.

So what we did is, in the first instance, we created what we call a splice tool to allow us to splice rebar that's already in. And then what we did, we also added some project settings in. So the idea of project settings is allow you to drive dialogs within the software from input that you want to put in. This is a table taken from EC2, and it's a Euro code for concrete, and it's just a formula-driven table on tension zones, compression zones for laps, minimum stock lengths. So it's to do checks. So you can actually do anything-- you can import, export, you can right-click, you can duplicate these tables. We've got people using them for nuclear, because obviously the values are going to change and things like that.

So what we can then do is, if we use splice rebar, we select our rebar, click finish, now there's that dialog box. Now that's driven by the codes or the grade, and then whatever you select from the drop-down list will automatically fill in the information from that table. You don't have to, because as I'll show you here, I can override that table stock length to 8 meters. If I want, I can even toggle the start point to be top-left and bottom-right. So if I click OK, we've now broke that slab into lengths set out with the laps taken from that table.

The other way of working for some people, they say, well, OK, well we don't really use stock lengths, it could be I have a lap. I want to lie in a specific point. So there's two types of lap lines, and I'll show you them both. The first ones are staggered, but you know the difference between and because of the colors. But we can even then start to utilize the built-in tools in Revit, such as, OK, well, I need to break this down into three pours or three releases, Equidistant, done. There you go-- there's my lap points. You can then check using the Revit [? order. ?] What's the values? Well, they're less than 8 meters, as well. Perfect.

So then this time when we splice, we select our bars, Finish, select our lap lines, Finish, and it'll even gray-out anything that's not relevant anymore to stop people putting information in incorrectly. And let's just don't take that, because they're less than 12 meters anyway. And there you go-- look, we've got staggers. If I want, these are built-in Revit tools, so show middle. There you go-- look, you just use these sort of things to show where the bars are. We can even use Select and say, well, I don't want that one, I want to pick another one. So there's lots of things you can sort of do in the software.

So just to show you, to finish off with the last splice, so Lap Line, Straight-- I'm just going to break it into quarters, something as simple as that. So Splice Rebar, you select your rebar, Finish. Select my lap lines-- you can individually, if you pick them, if you want-- finish, and that's done. Tick. So even if you-- that option there, if you had a huge slab, say 200 foot, and you said, well let's break it into a 50 foot slices, you could do that. Then you can even tick the box to say, well let's make sure every bar within those 50 years isn't over 12 foot. So you can even do it double-up if you wanted. It. And now you can see, look, it's just spliced around that point.

Now the reason why I've done it on this view is, when you use-- when you remove-- and now, if you're using Revit out of the box and you want to add any rebar, you have to remove the area boundary, otherwise you can't do anything with it. When you remove area boundaries with a varying rebar, you get this-- all individual bars. OK? So under varying range in the RebarCAD tools, we can select the host, click on Finish, and it's grouped them all back into varying ranges, even respecting the split lines. So straight away, it's putting everything back as it should.

Now those of you who've used Revit to try and visualize rebar when it's singular, is a pain in the backside because you have to start tabbing, click, hover, tab, control, click. So what we've done is, we give you an option to hide bars, will give you the first and the last. Show bars will show more. We can even hide selected bars and just go through and just pick. So it's just making tasks that probably take four or five clicks into one. So it's just standardizing it. Let's just put them all back.

Now the last thing for a varying rebar-- because it depends how people work, some people might not do that-- 1A, B, C, et cetera-- we can actually put in steps. Highlight the rebar, 750 for impacts, shortest bar, done. So that will actually create steps now-- ranges. Now up at the top there, you're going to see our bar mark is not up to date. So what it's actually telling me is that I'd probably add bars 1A Z there. We've renamed them, do you wish to re-number all the bars? If you don't, it's like a quick undo. If I say OK, that's fine, let's just update it, it actually puts, then, the new number and naming conventions in. So there you go.

Now to do that in Revit, it's probably a good 10-minute exercise because you'd have to draw one range, copy it down, un-tick so they're not double-lapping, do it again, stretch out. So again, it's productivity. We're just trying to make what Revit does more seamless and smooth. Now this is where I've got to be careful of bad-mouthing Revit. OK. It's a really good way to show you the Help menu as well.

Those of you who've used path reinforcement will know the limitations of path reinforcement. Now a good thing about this Help menu-- and it is, every release, it's updated-- but it's not really helping you. It's a quick-start guide, because everything I've done today is actually in this book-- the same work through, everything I've done, is here. So if you do come across a trial, or you're interested, just print this out and you're already there. Everything there, so there you go, look. There's step in and hide it.

But the reason why I want to show you this is, people are maybe not aware of path reinforcement. Come up. There we go. Path reinforcement will only go perpendicular to an edge. That's it-- that's all you can do. If you wanted to do that in Revit, you'd have to do a single bar then array or copy it. That's three times, and it doesn't group them, it doesn't count them off. Path reinforcement doesn't allow acute edges for angles or slabs. We're all right with that, don't worry. OK.

So what we've got is, it's called edge bar placement. You pick your slab, you pick a point where you want to come off. Now that is the bar-- it can go in any direction at all. Even if we put it at an angle, it wouldn't go outside the slab like path reinforcement if we did perpendicular. So we're just going to go horizontal for now. We've got even, on our tool, we've got some feedback. Guy said, be nice if you'd, like RebarCAD, you'd put the picture in to show what the shape of the bars are. Yeah, of course it makes sense, so sent it to development. Yeah, we'll do that-- no problem. So these are the sort of things that we need to-- you know, we're finding out from our customers.

So this is going to put a U-shaped bar in, so this is leg ANC, Bs are the depth of the slab. If I put 0 in there, it's an L. OK. If I went 0 underneath, it's an inverted L. We can put our spacings in, bar type. What Revit does quite well-- see, I'm praising it there-- is it doesn't allow you to put bars in it can't be bent. So if you cannot create the radiuses, it will just say, look-- bar diameter cannot do the calculation radius, you can't put it in.

If you do come across that-- and it'll give you a warning-- just put the tick box, and then it will actually put a semicircular bar in to suit. It'll adjust the radius of the semicircle. I know I've got 12s in there, so I could put additional cover. And all I do then is draw along the edge and place. That's it-- done. If I hadn't of talked or waffled, that would've taken two seconds, OK? That as easy as it is. But what it's also done, it's created CADS group. It's not a Revit group, it's not an array group, it's a CADS group. And what a CADS group allows us to do is use one of our special annotation tools, and allows you to pick which bars you want to show.

Now I've done this on purpose, because I brought in a tag that's rotated in the wrong tag. Look, and I'll just get a message-- it's a standard Revit message. And the reason for this is that I just simply want to show you there's nothing special in this. That is just a Revit tag. Anything we do to it, it's a Revit tag. We're utilizing what's in Revit, it's not hard-coded. Unfortunately, some softwares that I've used for rebar, once you do that it's very, very difficult. And if you pass it on to somebody else who hasn't got the add-in they can't edit it.

That tag, if you're using Revit in-house, just swap it out with your company one. Look. There you go, that's as easy as it is. If you were clever and you had got your company standards, you'd even go into the tag settings and set it up in here to your generic company one. So it automatically does it. So it's just trying to show you how transparent RebarCAD is with just using everything within the software. OK.

Now those of you who've tried to put reinforcement in Revit, is, you'll notice that the rebar in Revit is very simplistic. And the fact that, if I highlight it-- apart from copy and rotate-- none of the tools in the Modify panel work. Now you try to explain that from somebody who's come from an AutoCAD background. Yeah, there's two bars in there, but I'm sorry, Phil, it doesn't work, OK. It's-- yeah, it's not a conversation you like to have.

So what we've done is, we've come up with a series of tools to allow us to sort of get right in that. There you go. And if you highlight it, it's actually changed its shape, the correct shape codes taken, the correct dimensions. Again, it's just making what you do in AutoCAD in Revit. And this is that the people we're pushing that on. Join rebar by moving. OK, well I've got a big group, there's my hosts. Well let's just move those ones too, then. There you go.

Now the reason why somebody says, well, I wouldn't put my rebar in like that. And I said, well, a lot of people do. They'll put area reinforcement and an angle exploded then try and join it up. And the reason for it is that, if you try to put that shape in Revit, you'd have to go Rebar, Sketch, Highlight, then start drawing the shapes something like this, and then going around, and then finish. Then if I wanted a-- there's my bar-- if I wanted to copy it in Revit, I'd use copy, pick up point. Or I want it to multiple, I mean, at an angle-- what's the right angle? There you go-- 600 and there's one and then 600 another.

We've even said, if you're going to do it that way, just work smarter. How about we just copy rebar along a path, highlight it, pick Down 300, done. So again, it's making those 10-step tools into two-- something as simple as that.

One other issue you get when you remove every reinforcement, any changes you make to a slab-- such as this-- do not affect the rebar, because we've removed the area reinforcement. It's dummy rebar now. Again, we can't split it, we can't trim it, we can't do anything with it. So we'd have to actually highlight this, drag it back, copy it, move it down, drag it back, copy it-- probably a 10-step process.

So we've got the option here to trim rebar, so we trim, we highlight the slab, we pick the edges that we want to use for by boundaries. Then either by individually picking our lines or using the multiple we can trim rebar back very quickly. Not only does this create new ranges, it also respects the cover of the slab, so it's cut it back to cover. So again, it's following the rules of the slab. While we're here, opening reinforcement, slab opening, done.

You can choose, if it's a wall, front or back, top or bottom. Anchorage lengths, extensions in the corner, do we want more than one bar in plan? OK, let's put this information in. Click OK, there you go. Done. If that opening updates, it updates. The good thing about this, though-- and I'll quickly show you this. So again, if you were to a view you can't see the rebar, most people go wireframe. Problem with that is, you're going to see everything underneath that you don't want to see. So if we just set this back to hidden line, all we do is rebar, Show All, one click.

But the good thing about this-- remember I just put that opening reinforcement in? It's automatically put it, unlocked its own layer. Click OK. Not only can we work in 2D, we can work in 3D. Edge bar placement again, pick on a wall, draw your direction, there's my settings, pick a face. There you got. That's it. If I want to change it, edit the properties, it's done.

Those of you who've used Revit for rebar, trying to put edge bar reinforcement into a curved wall-- I know your pain. So what we can do here is, again, edge bar placement, pick the wall, pick the face, done. It doesn't group it, because it doesn't know the set at point. But if I select one and then just use the built-in tools, I can actually use-- we've got our own group rebar tool. If the software can't-- if RebarCAD can't automatically group it, it will actually say, well, we don't know where to set out from, you need to give us a bit of help-- we can group it that way. So when I mark them up, it's going to have the same bar reference.

Now in 2018.1 and 2019, the focus on irregular shapes in rebar has become greatly increased. So what you've got here is, if I click on rebar-- and they class it as an irregular shape, it's a sloped wall. OK. You have free-form rebar, and free-form rebar is a huge step for Revit. It actually allows you to multiplanar structures, and it allows you to place rebar on faces-- rather than draw it, pick a face.

So those of you haven't looked, if you go onto Revit Autodesk website and put multiplanar rebar or free-form, it allows things such as, what is it? Splayed columns. And it allows you to work ramps coming up a carport, so multiplanar slopes. It's a really good tool. The one limitation of it is that, when you place it in 2018-- in 2019 you can pick the shape, but 2018 you can't-- is it locks it to shape code double zero-- they're U-bars.

So what we've done is, we've created a tool to convert free-form rebar into-- and it'll even do checks. Look, it will tell me that the end is outside the host, so it might cause problems. And if I highlight it, then look-- we've converted it into standard rebar to allow you to edit it, schedule it, and do whatever you want. I can even very quickly swap that out for a different shape code, multiple, maximum space and say 600. There you go, look. So the button now, it knows the host length and we've just edited something that we couldn't edit before.

We've looked at copying along a path, we can even copy from host to host. Even If it's rotated. Now common sense has to step in here somewhere. If I'm copying from a rectangular pad to a circular pad, expect some problems, OK? What it will do, though, it will actually put that information in. And if you do have to stretch-- now the reason why some of it doesn't edit is, there's some limitations, at the moment, in Revit, about locking rebar to other rebar and constraints. They're working on that at the moment, and hopefully in the next development release it will be resolved so it will actually follow all the rebar.

If I did one floor, I can copy floors, though. So I can do all these sorts of things. It's pretty straightforward. Again, if I went into this environment and I just said, look, by layer I want you to turn off former reinforcement, OK. If I've got some assigned reinforcement, I could just click on these ones here and just say, well what are those? Just call them beam links. And straight away, rebar visibility, there's my beam links. It's a real quick way of working to turn things on and off.

Now for those of you who have, again, used Revit in anger, to actually create-- I mean, this could be what we call design intent, the start of a project. We'll just put, let's just eight tens at 300 across the whole beam just to give us an estimation. We do our design, we come back, and say, well, it's a shear critical member, we need to put some shear zones in for this. So most people would drag it back, set a distance, use mirror, mirror and a point, copy into the middle. You then overlap so there aligned, un-tick so you don't double count. See how you're getting Revit lessons now, as well, for free? So then you can edit that to, say-- say 500. That's what you'd have to do in Revit to do that, OK, using the built-in tools.

Now if we take it back to its original state, we've come up with an option to convert Rebar into a split set. Now this is not only good in this instance, it's good in planar areas when using couplers, because those are areas-- such as shown in that picture there-- where rebar, because of an opening, might fly across and you need to break or split rebar for couplers. But this is a simplistic way. Highlight, I want to split here, I want to split there. I can highlight them then, and just do that 500. So something that took me 10 clicks and loads of tools just done now in 3. So it's a way of working quicker and smarter in the software. OK.

Now the other thing that rebar-- we've looked at splicing in plan, we can even create crank laps. So we use a lap slice again, this could be it. I'm just going to put it anywhere I want, so there we go. If you had more than one lap in an area, or in a whole elevation, you could put them all in at set values. If you were clever, you'd even put dimensions going from there to the lap to control it so it could be a global parameter.

So we can Crank Lap, you select your bar, click Finish. You select your lap line, Finish, and we've got this nice little dialog box there to give you information. You'll notice you can even crank in plan. Says go Right, No, there you get cranked around that point. Again, we've even had some feedback over the last couple weeks are saying, can we have an adjustment of where the cranks are, like an offset from that line? Because most people might do it at the top of the slab. We said yeah, sure-- we'll have a look at that and see how you work.

But the main thing for that is, let me just quickly show you this. Not only did it crank the first one, it did both of them because they were in a range-- so both laps. If you had a whole run of bars and there in one wall and you spliced them at the bottom, it would do them all in one go. OK.

So if we are looking now to get this information into a sheet, very simply we click on Annotate, select Host, highlight the slab, Finish, done. The one element, at the moment, that we're trying to work with Autodesk on, it always puts the middle one on. We're trying to ask them, if there's two bars touching each other, will you just offset one? And we're working hard with them and to go around it. But we can actually just say that, select, and we can pick that one and un-pick that. We can, again, select that one and not that one.

These tags are generic, again. If I highlight it, select Tag, click, I could manually override like this. There you go. If I really wanted to, I can edit the tag as you would do in Revit. I can highlight the properties of it, come into the label. With spacing, I left it at 299 on purpose, because I can actually come in and just say, well, let's just round it to the nearest 10-- so like this. I can even, if I wanted, add a shared parameter. And I think, let me just-- I should be able to get there pretty quick.

So if we go into our program data-- application Programs, there you go. Just to show you, look, we've even got our parameters in there. So everything that we put in the software is all there. If I wanted, I could even come down and put the reinforcement layering. So it'll even put T1, T2, T3, automatically in the tag. So if we wanted to do that, you click OK. So you can actually just click OK, bring these sort of things in, and do those sort of things, so it's pretty transparent in the way it works. So you can do those sort of things.

Now if we look at a base plan like this-- some people say, we don't do profiles-- don't worry about it. Just click it to Course. There you go, that's built into Revit, it's nothing special. This is caused a bit of confusion on my tour, because when you have two bars overlapping, your process here is to actually virtually move one up to say it's hidden behind, and show like a bit of a ghosted view. What we do, we're looking at actually adding into a ghost, like a detail item within the bar to actually allow you to nudge it up to show one behind another. What we've got in the UK is Tick and Tag. The idea of a Tick and Tag is, it will actually Tick and Tag bars that are one behind the other. So it'll actually say, there's two bars there, one's behind the other. And that's the end of it even though they're actually-- you're looking at that view. But we are looking at the alternative, to actually allow us to nudge the bar up to say, look, it's behind here.

But the main thing about this, more than anything else, is, do you know how difficult it is to get a tag to come in to snap to the end of an object? It is really difficult. If we want, we can create these sort of things as well for just picking bar ends. If we want, we can highlight it, un-pin it, for a space to rotate it. People say, well, we don't ever tick that way round-- that's OK, look in the family. We've actually got them the other way around. We've all put it all in there for you, and you just work as you need to. You just pick out what you want. You duplicate the family-- so we duplicate it-- and let's just switch it round the other way, Reverse End, that's it.

So when you go to that, you can actually just say Tick and Tag, and it'll swap it. That's as easy as it is. It's all actually in the software. So we're doing all those sorts of things, there.

So, to create a frame, something like this, was just, like, four or five clicks. It wasn't difficult. It was just using all the information.

Now, one of the big things we try to say to people about Revit and the BIM process is that you have to model everything you want to see. And one rule that we used to work with is, 99.9% of all text in a Revit model should be a tag. And the reason for it is, is that tag-- if anything changes on the elements, the tags automatically update.

It's your Get Out of Jail Free. If you tag everything that's using information that's built into a family, anything that changes in the family automatically updates there. We've all done it. We've all used--

Oh, well, we've all used AutoCAD. You've done a revision, you've gone to the printer, you started to print, the first three lines come off and you go, oh, god. And then you press Cancel, and you cut it, and you screw the paper up, and you're making sure nobody's watching because there's a sign above the printer saying don't waste paper.

[LAUGHTER]

So we've all been there. So the idea of this is to make sure that, if anything changes, it automatically updates. And that's the way we say we work in Revit. OK.

So, if we start to look now of getting this onto a sheet, the way it works in RebarCAD is we give-- it's called Assign Member. So, in other words, the rebar is assigned to a member. In Revit, it's the same thing. It's a host mark. We're giving the host a mark. The idea of that is that that rebar, then, in the properties is hosted to that slab. If we ever call out that slab in a schedule, that rebar is associated to it. It's like a hierarchy.

Then what we can do, we could say Assign Drawing Sheet. With Assign Drawing Sheet, we can highlight the rebar and say, well, we only want to put this rebar on a sheet. Now, this has even been involved further in our new update. We've actually got Assign it by member, Assign it by sheet. Because we've even gone to-- is it-- member sheet and--

JOHN KUNNIL KOCHUMMEN: Member sheet.

JASON COLCOMBE: --and release. So the idea is, we've done it that way because three people said we all do it different. So, if somebody said by level, we'd add that one in. So, again, it's these sort of things.

So we've assigned that to the sheet. The same rules as Revit. If you want to put rebar on a sheet, or on a drawing, what you see is what you get. You just place it-- something like this. Nobody likes these. Let's just get them out of the way. Let's just get rid of the line.

Now, we can place the sheet anywhere-- the schedule for this sheet. We don't have to put it on the sheet, but we can. Most people say, well, we don't do that. So that's not a problem. We can put it on a blank sheet, then. Place.

What that will actually do-- it'll pop up. We've got detailing standards. You can choose what you want to show-- straight bars, varying bars, all bars, any other bars-- whatever. You can-- sketches. Let's just include the first instance, just to show you one in the schedule.

Sort by host mark. So that would-- supposed to be the name of something. Or we could even say Category. Show me all columns, all floors, all pads.

And all we're going to do is filter it-- so, again, sheet or release. Let's say sheet. Click OK. Click to place. If there's more than one, because it's a big schedule, you just click to place them all next to each other.

So what this will do, then, it will go and search that sheet for all the rebar placed on it. And there you go. It's all done. This is a group. And within the group is a family. And the idea of this is to allow you to come in, edit lines, edit text-- whatever you want. If you haven't got your own rebar template, or you don't want to use the Revit one, just use that.

Now, a lot of people don't even use those elements. What they'll do is they'll leave and just say, well, Excel. Let's do the same thing. We'll just take it out into Excel. And that'll take it out to an Excel format. We've even got Excel templates built in. And we've even got instructions to tell you how to set them up, to work through them in our Help menu.

So let's just click OK. Say, yeah, let's open it up. There you go. Look. It's just in Excel. So, again, we just-- it's transparent for you. It's as easy as that.