Validate and Import Advance Steel Data

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DEEPAK MAINI: Our objective in this course

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is to validate and import Advance Steel data

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into Autodesk Revit.

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In more structural designs, the engineers

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want to regularly validate what steel detailers are doing.

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Until a few years back, it was very

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hard to do because there was no way

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to easily validate a detailed model in Autodesk Revit.

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All this changed with the introduction of Advance Steel

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a few years back.

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Advanced Steel gives us this really powerful workflow

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where we can export SMLX file of the detail model

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from Advance, Steel and then we can validate that model

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against the design model in Revit.

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Another situation is where the engineers

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need to deliver a fabrication level model with elements

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of LOD 400 or above.

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In that case, the engineers can import

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the structural connections-- which are the fabrication level

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connections-- from Advance Steel straight into Revit.

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Now, please note that these connections can

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be created in Revit as well.

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However, engineers prefer importing them

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from the detail model.

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That makes the workflow a lot easier for them.

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So let's get straight into Advance Steel

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to look at this workflow.

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This is our fabrication level detail model in Advance Steel.

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I'm not going to export the SMLX file of this model.

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For that, I'll go to the Export and Import ribbon tab.

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And under the Revit ribbon panel, I'll click on Export.

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As you can see here, I can export SMLX file

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from Advance Steel as well.

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I'm going to rename this.

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Let's now switch over to Revit to validate this model.

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Now, to validate the detail model,

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I'm going to go into the Add-ons tab.

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And under the Advanced Steel Extension ribbon panel,

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I'll click on Advance Steel Extension fly out.

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Now, this time I'm going to click on Synchronization.

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Now, the process is very similar to what

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we saw in Advance Steel.

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I'll start with loading the SMLX file.

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And now I'm going to expand the dialog

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box by clicking on Filter.

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I want to start with checking all the beams and columns that

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have been added to the model.

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For that, I'll first click on Clear All.

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Column, Beam, Appended.

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Apply Filter.

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I can see this huge list of beams that have been added.

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And similar to Advance Steel, let's

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go and add some additional columns in the dialog box.

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We can now see all these sections

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

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These sections, if you remember, are

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the sections of our joists and vertical bracings.

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I want to import all these sections in the Revit model.

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So I'll click on the Status column

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and I'll click on Apply All Actions.

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You will notice that these sections are now getting

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added to the Revit model.

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I'm going to speed up the process a bit

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to save some time.

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Here we go.

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Next I want to find out all the beams and columns that

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have been deleted.

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As you could see, nothing has been deleted.

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Similarly, I want to find out all the beams and columns that

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have been modified.

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Now, I can see a big list of these sections that

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are modified but if you look at these sections,

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the change is mainly the material change.

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And that could be because the material

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name could be different in Revit and Advance Steel.

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So we can ignore this.

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What you saw here is a really powerful workflow

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to validate the detail model with the design model.

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The other thing that we talked about

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was, if the engineers need to deliver a fabrication level

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model with elements of LOD 400 or above,

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those elements need connections.

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And these connections can be created in Revit

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or we can import them from Advance Steel.

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In this case, we are going to look at all the connections

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that have been upended in Advance Steel.

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We can now see all these connections that were appended.

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I'm going to click on the Status column

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again and Apply All Actions.

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And now it starts the process of importing all these connections

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from Advance Steel into Revit.

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This process takes a bit of time,

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so I'm going to speed it up to save some time in the video.

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Here we go.

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So we have now imported all these connections

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from Advance Steel into Revit.

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As you can see, all these connections

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that we have imported from Advance Steel

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are displayed as green lines and circles.

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And that's because, by default, the connections are displayed

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with medium level of detail.

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In the next course, we are going to learn

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how to change the visibility of these connections

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and also of some of the other structural elements.

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What we saw in this course were two really powerful workflows.

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The first one was where we validated the detail model

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with the design model in Revit.

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And the second one was where we were

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able to import structural sections and connections

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from Advance Steel into Revit.