Synchronize Revit with Advance Steel

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DEEPAK MAINI: Our objective in this part of the course

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is to synchronize Autodesk Revit changes with Autodesk Advance

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Steel.

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As we know, design is a pretty fluid state.

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So the engineers and structural designers

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keep changing the design on a regular basis, which

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means that our Autodesk Advance Steel detail model

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and documentation is out of sync.

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And this is where the power of Autodesk Revit and Advance

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Steel interoperability comes into picture.

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So let's see how we can synchronize our Advance Steel

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model with the changes from Autodesk Revit.

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Let's get straight into Revit first.

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In this model, the structural engineers and designers

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have made some changes.

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So let's start with exporting the structural steel

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data from this Revit model.

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If you remember, we're going to the Add-Ins tab.

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And Under Advance Steel Extension ribbon panel,

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we click on Advance Steel Extension fly out.

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And we are going to click on Export.

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We'll click OK.

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And we can now save this as smlx file.

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Just remember to make sure that nothing

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is selected before you export the smlx file.

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Otherwise, only the selected elements will be exported.

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Let us now switch over to Advance Steel.

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This is our detailed model, and I'm

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going to go into the Export and Import tab.

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And under the Revit ribbon panel,

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I'll click on this option called Synchronize.

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I will load the version two smlx file.

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Now this is a really powerful workflow.

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In this workflow we are going to see every single element that

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has been added, deleted, or modified in Revit.

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So before I do anything else, I'm

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going to expand the dialog box by clicking on the Filter

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option A brilliant feature of this dialog

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box is that the elements are displayed color coded.

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So for example, the elements that are deleted

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are displayed in red color, as shown in beams here,

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the elements that are appended are displayed in green color,

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and the elements that are modified

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are displayed in blue color.

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In my case, I'm going to start with clearing all the filters.

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Now the first thing I want to check

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is if the engineers deleted any beams or columns

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from the design model in Revit.

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So I'll select Beam, Column, Deleted, Apply Filter.

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Now it has come up with this massive list of beams

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that were deleted.

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This doesn't make sense because we did not

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see these many sections deleted in the Revit model.

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So what we are going to do is display

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a column from the smlx file, which

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is the section file column.

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The section file column is blank because these

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are the sections that are not available in the smlx file.

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Let's now display the same column

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from the Advance Steel model.

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And we can see that we've got all these sections that

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are available in the model that are not in the smlx file.

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Most of these sections are the sections

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of the joist that we have added, and also

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the vertical briefings.

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So I'm happy with this.

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I don't have to worry about these.

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Next I'm going to look at all the beams and columns that

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have been appended.

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I can see that there are two beams that have been appended.

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And that's why you can see that these beams are available

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in the section file column, which means that they are

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in the smlx file but not in the section column, which means

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that they are not in the model.

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Now this is important for me because I

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want to bring in these beams.

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I'm going to select the status of both these beams,

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and I'm going to click on Apply All Actions.

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And I can straight away see that there

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are two beams added to the model and they're

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available right here, one and two.

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Next I want to see all the beams and columns that

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have been modified.

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As you can see nothing is displayed

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in the dialog box, which means that there

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were no beams or columns that were modified in the Revit

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model.

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So you can see this powerful workflow lets us synchronize

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our structural design created in Revit with the detail

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model in Advance Steel.

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Let's now copy some connections.

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I'll start copying this end plate connection.

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And similarly at this location you

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can go and add a double side clip angle joint.

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This is the model in which I've added all the connections

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to the new beams that we synchronized from Revit.

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And now if I go into my Document Manager,

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if I expand the Details category and under Up to date category,

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we've got these files that are up to date.

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However, there are some drawings available in the Update

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required category.

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These are the drawings that would

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have changed because of us synchronizing the new beams.

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So if I right-click on any of these files

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I've got this option called Force Update.

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This option is used when the drawings have not

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been released for fabrication so I can update these drawings.

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We also have an option called Update Revision.

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This option is used when the files are released

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for fabrication and we need to update them with that revision.

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In our case, I'm going to force update

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the update required category.

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So it'll update all the drawings in that category.

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What you saw in this course was a really powerful workflow

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where we were able to synchronize changes

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from the design model in Revit with our detail

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model in Advance Steel.

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And then we also were able to quickly update

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all our documentation.