BES322593 Rebar Detailing of Seismic Wall-Based Buildings ...

BES322593

Rebar Detailing of Seismic Wall-Based Buildings Using Revit API and ETABS Jorge Villarroel B./ Rene Lagos Engineers

Description

In seismic regions, everyday structural engineers have to deal with rigorous and time-consuming rebar detailing to comply with code requirements for seismic design and local rebar detailing standards. Historically, this task was done in 2D detailing software like AutoCAD software, but today the industry is based on the BIM (Building Information Modeling) environment, and it’s necessary to create rebar elements inside the Revit model. This class will show you how this approach was accomplished, continuing with a class presented at Autodesk University 2017—“BLD124825—Automatic Rebar Detailing of Wall-Based Buildings Using Dynamo and ETABS.” At that time, development was done in Dynamo, but to reach the desired productivity, the solution was migrated 100% to the Revit API. The goal of this class is to share the experience of the process, along with the stream of decisions related to geometry analysis and simplifications on rebar detailing with different local practice industry and seismic design standards.

Speaker

Jorge Villarroel B. [email protected] Structural Engineer graduated from the Universidad de Chile in Santiago de Chile. I've been working in Rene Lagos Engineers since 2013. In 2017, I became part of the New Technologies team heading Revit app developments through the Revit API and Dynamo. In 2018, I became the director of the Innovation and Development team, where I lead a group of 4 people including structural engineers and developers. Our main task is to optimize processes using technology, constantly searching for new software and platforms to customize our tools, so we can offer our know-how as a service for the internal client (production team) and the external (architects, contractors, designers, etc.). In 2018 I joined the board of BIM Forum Chile.

Learning Objectives

• Learn how to do translation from Dynamo scripts into Revit API.

• Learn about geometry and information manipulation for rebar creation with Revit API.

• Learn about integrating ETABS results into intelligent models.

• Learn how to identify productivity improvements through coding based on Revit API.

mailto:[email protected]

INDEX

1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................3

1.1. CONTEXT.....................................................................................................................3

1.2. TARGET PROJECTS ...................................................................................................6

2. REVIT, WHAT IS OUT OF THE BOX? .................................................................................7

3. INTEROPERABILITY AND SOLUTIONS ...........................................................................11

3.1. THE DYNAMO ALGORITHM ......................................................................................17

3.2. CHALLENGES TO BE TAKEN IN ACCOUNT ............................................................20

3.3. DECISION MAKING: WALLS......................................................................................25

3.4. AND MOVING ON… BEAMS, COLUMNS, SLABS AND FOUNDATIONS. .................30

4. CONCLUSIONS AND FINAL THOUGHTS ........................................................................39

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. CONTEXT

One of the major keys to successfully develop a project is to accomplish the deadline on time, within budget and with limited errors. Nowadays, in a coordinated environment, computation tools let structural engineers and designers focus on minimizing the errors in the early stages of the project, which entails the decrease of in-place modifications (constantly seeking the approval of the specialist in charge) and after all, generating a more fluent construction process. The foregoing has positive repercussions on budget and deadline accomplishment. Nevertheless, projects have similarities with each other. Different buildings can be designed using similar materials, could be used for similar purposes, geometric resemblances, etc., but also, they have important differences. Some of the main differences that engineers and designers have to deal with are:

• The region of the world the project is erected: Every country has its own regulation and construction standards and all the actors involved have to stick to the rules.

• Type of project: residential, offices, retail, industrial facilities, etc. Projects have different types of specialists according to the type or purpose of the building.

• Different types of clients: Clients tend to work in a similar way through their own projects.

• Workflows: Every team involved in the project has its own way to work within its team and as usual, that according to its needs, the technology used is not common between other teams.

This class will be focused on the hurdles in the last point, Workflows, encountered in the rebar detailing process and how at Rene Lagos Engineers (RLE from now on) we needed to accommodate our way of doing things in order to satisfy productivity, clients needs, and national/international standards. For structural engineers working together with designers, there are 3 main stages in the process: analysis, structural design and detailing the drawings. In a regular workflow at the office, an engineer is faced to develop an analysis obtaining the results that he uses as an input for the structural design. Once the building is meeting the required regulations (codes, owner requirements, etc.), he is able to start detailing the drawings according to the country/client standard.

This class is also a continuation of the AU2017 class: BLD124825 – Automatic Rebar Detailing of Wall-Based Buildings using Dynamo and ETABS. By that time we only conceived that the correct workflow for rebar detailing was composed of those 3 stages:

In this case, different software is used for each step. For the analysis models ETABS, SAP2000, and SAFE are the most used software. Microsoft Excel was the platform where all of the calculations were done. Finally, the engineers with the help of a designer, create an Autodesk Revit model to get the geometry of the elements in order to detail rebars in AutoCAD using LISP scripts to enhance the process, but still very manually. For the Analysis – Structural Design stage, RLE has developed RLE-Tools, a software that takes the output of the analysis model and manipulates the data of the entire building and offers a reinforcement proposal that can be easily modified according to the engineer’s criteria. This data is stored in many forms, depending on which type of elements the engineer wants to create rebars to. This goes from Excel Spreadsheets to a MySQL database. As the BIM came to stay, technology and software allow the designers to create all structural elements inside the same environment. In RLE, we created a team focused on searching for solutions that satisfy the thesis that everything is created inside the BIM model and all of the drawings must be just an output. The main task consisted in connecting this different software, creating a stable interoperability network, so the results from the analysis were used directly as input for the BIM model. As the analysis model are just a representation of reality1, all the correct geometry comes from the Revit model, so the geometry of the elements is being read, decomposed and properly manipulated so the Structural Rebar element is created.

1 At RLE, we spend very little time in creating analysis models, considering geometric simplifications that don’t influence sustancially in the building’s global behavior.

ANALYSIS MODELS STRUCTURAL DESIGN DRAWINGS

Using this approach, the analysis and BIM models could be created in parallel, offering substantial time-saving. Nowadays, the workflow is as follows:

In the project’s design/construction process, the building faces many changes at different stages. These changes can be due to architectural modification, system interferences or even for a structural demand that hasn’t been requested. In the worst scenario, the engineer has to modify and adjust almost all of the sheets as many times the project change. In these terms, this would be negatively affecting the budget, milestones, and deadlines. Turning the adopted solution into a full Revit model that includes rebars in RC elements, is still a very time-consuming task that diminishes the efficiency obtained in the analysis/calculations phase. Native Revit tools for rebar detailing are helpful if structural elements are limited in number, but they lack the required efficiency when working in middle to large-size projects. For the problem presented, the RLE team first chose the potential of Dynamo for Revit as the platform to develop the interoperability in the Calculations – Drawings stage. Finally, the tools were translated into full API development, creating a fully-functional plugin. As Dynamo being a plugin not intended particularly to create rebars, in the following chapters will be presented a discussion taking the pros and cons of the decisions involved in the process and some interesting results.

ANALYSIS MODEL (ETABS)

STRUCTURAL DESIGN (RLE-Tools)

BIM MODEL (Revit)

DRAWINGS (PDF/DWF/DWG)

1.2. TARGET PROJECTS As Earthquake being a constant hazard in Chile, the standard residential construction is made of Reinforced Concrete (RC from now on) structure. The volumes are structured based on reinforced concrete walls that resist shear and bending moments in two directions perpendicular to each other. The vertical resistant elements are connected in each level by slabs, also of RC, that in front of horizontal solicitations, act as the rigid diaphragm in its plane.

Figure 1. Plan of a typical residential Chilean building.

At first, we focused the development into RC walls as this being the predominant anti-seismic element in Chilean buildings but extended to the other RC elements included in the project.

2. REVIT, WHAT IS OUT OF THE BOX?

Revit Structure 2019 offers a wide range of tools for detailing reinforcement. They are divided into the element type that the user wants to put reinforcement into. With the proper setting, the element can be configured to set the element cover standards and rebar type customization, according to the project demands.

Figure 2. Reinforcement in the structure tab of the ribbon.

If the project has limited wall elements, the task can be done comfortably, just adjusting the view plans, sections, and reference planes according to of what element the user wants to work with, and putting the corresponding rebar into the wall element. As every rebar is related to a single host element, the wall element contains all the reinforcement information needed.

Figure 3. Rebar shapes for single/multiple/container.

Despite this, for a mid-size/large-size project, putting reinforcement using these native tools could be a very time-consuming and tedious task, because the user would have to work with one element at a time. In the best scenario, if another element requires the same reinforcement, the user could copy the bars from one to another but could experience some troubles due to the bar-host relation. These tools don’t satisfy in its plenitude the Chilean detailing standards. As every element has its own independent reinforcement, adjacent elements don’t necessarily understand what information is in the neighborhood. Also, for an interoperability workflow described above, the user is losing the efficiency gained in a previous stage. Like in the AutoCAD workflow, the user is putting 3D elements manually. There are numerous tools developed by third-party companies that put the reinforcement according to the analysis model results. In RLE we tested several, but the stumbling block was the detailing standard. Different from the US and Europe, in Chile, wall detailing is shown by the entire elevation (as a grid section) of the wall, indicating every edge, opening, element encounter, etc. Also, in this elevation the overlaps are put in the exact position where they will be placed, so during the design process, the engineer and designer can avoid dense bar meetings and interferences with other elements reinforcement.

Figure 4. Example of a wall section drawing - Chilean Standard.

Figure 5. Enlargement of the previous drawing.

We found that with Dynamo, there is an opportunity to develop a tailored solution for our problem, which allows the user to have complete control of the rebar element created. In addition, Dynamo offers the ability to interoperate between an output file from a custom software (RLE-Tools) and work with the processed data. Later on, we discovered that to reach desirable productivity we would need to do some enhancements to the algorithm which could be only achievable using traditional text coding using the Revit API.

3. INTEROPERABILITY AND SOLUTIONS

The most popular structural analysis and design software for buildings used in Chile is ETABS. The first stage of the interoperability was to manipulate the analysis results from ETABS 2016 to get perform the Structural Design stage according to Chilean code specifications. ETABS (and similar software) provides different tools to perform the Structural Design inside the software itself, but it lacks the required productivity for typical Chilean buildings where a lot of shear walls are used.

Due to the amount of Wall elements in the model, the first approach was to handle wall reinforcement as a starting point and then move on to the next type of elements: Beams, Columns, Slabs, and Foundations.

This motivated the development of an in house software called RLE-Tools, which takes the analysis output and provides a proposition of vertical and horizontal reinforcement mesh in addition to corner rebars. When a vertical mesh is changed, corner rebars are automatically updated accordingly.

If detailed calculations are needed, a detailed report is automatically generated. Being able to further check detailed step by step results is very important in a highly automatized process where the line between improved productivity and the loss of control of design flow is very thin.

After the Structure Design stage is finished, the reinforcement proposed bt RLE Tools (in terms of square cm of boundary reinforcement) needs to be transformed into real commercial size rebars. This is done in the same excel sheet either manually (user puts the reinforcement rebars at each wall boundary) or the software proposes a distribution that is validated by the user.

The main goal left is to create a tool that, with a few steps, read the rebars data in RLE Tools output form (excel sheet) and transform them into the Revit 3D element, using enough artificial intelligence to recognize the environment where this element will be placed. The tool needs to accomplish Pareto’s Principle, which means that this tool needs to cover at least 80% of the cases involved in a project so the 20% remaining, could be detailed in manual mode using native Revit tools or smaller developments.

Here, the designer creates two separate models, ETABS and REVIT, and the communication between these two models is through “Labels”. So, every element created in the ETABS has its geometrically correct twin in Revit. Despite this being a manual task without much automatization, it is a relatively simple task to do and therefore no great efforts are being put into this.

As the data is listed by Pier and Story number the reinforcement information is taken from the Excel file no matter how big the analysis model is. The workflow developed for the automated rebar creation was based on the recommendations given at Autodesk University 2016 Class - Dynam(o)ite Your Rebar Design by Dieter Vermeulen2 (ES15357).

Following is a brief description of the algorithm:

For the creation of the rebar elements, the data is separated in two different paths. Area reinforcement and Edge/encounter reinforcement. Beyond Dynamo OOTB (Out Of The Box) nodes, the RLE team used Dynamo for Rebar and Bim4Struc packages which are related to rebar creation. The first one allows the transformation of a curve into a rebar element and the second lets the user choose the layout that the rebar set is going to have. Here is the difference between the two paths. For the Area reinforcement, the emphasis is placed in rebar spacing and for Edge/encounter reinforcement, the number of bars.

2 http://au.autodesk.com/au-online/classes-on-demand/class-catalog/classes/year-2016/revit-structure/es15357#chapter=0

Read the Input Data from

Excel

Select the Revit elements

to work with

Create the lines from the element selection,

choosing between faces and reference points and planes.

Manipulate the lines created do they

understand who is in their neighborhood and get the edge condition

for the different situations.

Generate Rebar

Elements from the lines created.

http://au.autodesk.com/au-online/classes-on-demand/class-catalog/classes/year-2016/revit-structure/es15357#chapter=0

http://au.autodesk.com/au-online/classes-on-demand/class-catalog/classes/year-2016/revit-structure/es15357#chapter=0

Figure 6. Early test Wall to put reinforcement into.

Figure 7. Early edge reinforcement recognizing boundry

conditions.

Figure 8. Edge and area reinforcement together

Figure 9. Two contiguous floors enlarged.

Figure 10. Detail of the end reinforcement. It recognizes if there is or isn't a wall encounter in this position.

The elements created are Revit elements, so once the rebar element is placed into the model, the user can easily modify and change it according to an eventual project modification. As these tools were meant to be used by the RLE Project Team, consisting of structural engineers from different ages and different levels of expertise in computational processes, the end-user interface was a big deal in question. In the early Dynamo approach, we used Dynamo package Data-Shapes by Mostafa El Ayoubi3 to create UI that allowed the end-user to manipulate final parameters and settings to the reinforcement before the rebars are created.

3 https://data-shapes.net/blog/

https://data-shapes.net/blog/

3.1. THE DYNAMO ALGORITHM

The first step is to select the elements, for this purposes we used the Data-Shape package mentioned before. Here we obtain the elements to be reinforced.

As we are using the tool to create rebars from elevation to elevation, we need to filter only the elements that are visible in the corresponding view. All the elements perpendicular to the current view are for computing border conditions.

Using python nodes, we read the spreadsheet to get the data from Excel.

Then, we created Dynamo Custom nodes to establish rebar design conditions:

• Stories rebar splicings.

• Rebar overlap lengths

• Boundary conditions for the bottom and top stories.

This is where the Dynamo geometry (blue lines) are coming handy, allowing the designer to pre-visualize the rebars that are being created.

Next, accommodate the lines created to be transformed into rebars. Here we created another custom node to specify the host geometry for rebars. This needed to be separate for mesh reinforcement (Mallas) and wall corner bars (Puntas). Some of the decisions made in this step are:

• Bar length according to the national rebar market.

• Encounter detection and rebar adjustment.

• Selecting rebar hooks depending on which border condition: free end or encounter.

• Covers.

From the curves created as Dynamo geometry, using the node Rebar.ByCurve, create a rebar element inside the Revit model and using the Rebar.SetLayoutAsMaximumSpacing, creating a layout for mesh and corner bars.

Finally, add some relevant information to the just created rebar elements. This information is relevant to the future query of the rebars created to do some schedule for example.

3.2. CHALLENGES TO BE TAKEN IN ACCOUNT

Once the main reinforcement is put in place, there were still remaining cases that the automated process does not cover. To name a few:

• The interaction between two walls with different thicknesses. The main automated process understands when there is a discontinuity in the edge of the wall, but it reaches its limit if the wall thickness changes from one story to another. In this case, the user will have to create a multiplanar rebar manually that fits the situation.

Figure 11. The discontinuity at the edge of the wall recognized by the routine.

Figure 12.The discontinuity and thickness changes. Red line supported - Blue line not

supported.

• To let the user have full control of the bars that are going to be in the final product, some tools were developed for placing bars semi-manually for the cases that are not included in the main automated process. These tools also work for openings, shafts or windows.

Figure 13. Edge reinforcement put using semi-automated tools.

Figure 14. Reinforcement for opening, put by using semi-automated tools.

• The Dynamo main automated process, was develop so the user could work elevation by elevation, putting reinforcement into wall elements, selecting them by Pier number. In some cases, the elevation had different Pier Labels and the interaction between them is not well represented. Although we developed a tool that managed the interaction as border conditions, this was a limitation of the algorithm.

Figure 15. Multiple piers in the elevation.

Figure 16. Reinforcement into the Multi-Pier elevation.

Figure 17. Boundry conditions (close-up) for the Multi-Pier elevation (after the main automated process).

Figure 18. After applying the boundry conditions tool.

• Time consumption for rebar creation in multi pier walls overpassed the 7 minutes in some cases which was not suitable for real projects. This is due to the many calculations, geometry recognition and, 3D elements creation (rebars).

• Dynamo is a very stable plugin, but there are some issues or bugs in third-party packages and in the OOTB nodes that created certain instability for production teams. Also, the way to debug these errors could be a very painful and time-consuming task due to how some nodes are created (zero-touch nodes) transforming them into black boxes. Although there is good documentation about fixing or tracking these errors4, the lack of complete control of the tools could be a problem if the script grows.

Figure 19. Dynamo crash example.

• Transfer the tools from user to user. To keep everyone updated became a problem because we needed to monitor which version of the packages were installed in one's PC and keep track of the updates of each individual set of nodes.

4 https://archi-lab.net/digging-through-revit-warnings-to-find-meaning/

https://archi-lab.net/digging-through-revit-warnings-to-find-meaning/

3.3. DECISION MAKING: WALLS

The first step to decreasing running time5 was to optimize the script parts replacing groups of nodes for custom nodes, Python Nodes (textual programming) or create some zero-touch nodes. This is a comparison of the runtime in the different parts of the algorithm before and after this implementation was created.

Figure 20. Running time before Dynamo optimization.

5 We used the time measurement nodes from the Clockwork package.

Process Time [sec.] Time [min] %

Element Selection 14 0.2 1.8%

Element selection filter 16.08 0.3 2.0%

Geometry interpretation

from the Revit model40.2 0.7 5.1%

Spreadsheet read 120.6 2.0 15.4%

Applying Boundry conditions

and structural regulations44.12 0.7 5.6%

Geometry creation (Dynamo

Geometry) - Mesh

Reinforcement

120.6 2.0 15.4%


Geometry) - Wall-end

Reinforcement

148.6 2.5 18.9%

Rebar element creation 241.2 4.0 30.7%

Parameter asignment 40.2 0.7 5.1%

TOTAL 785.6 13.1 100%

Figure 21. Running time after Dynamo optimization.

Despite the results indicating 70% faster for a standard wall elevation, the production team didn’t approve the tool for production purposes because, in order to prepare the drawing for construction, the designer needed to spend some extra time arranging the labels, dimensions and cropping the views in the sheets. This could extend from several minutes or even hours.

Also, changes in the project were not taken completely into account in this algorithm, so there was a need to re-create all the reinforcement adjusted to the new geometry and do the label arrangement again.

After several tests, we decided to test the same algorithm translated as a Revit Macro (using C#) taking into account all the previous discussions. The results were very promising in terms of the flexibility of the script, the running time and the stability of the plugin. Following is the time consumption in the whole API process:


Element Selection 5.1 0.1 2.1%








Geometry) - Mesh

Reinforcement

35.5 0.6 14.9%


Geometry) - Wall-end

Reinforcement

40.5 0.7 17.0%



TOTAL 238.8 4.0 100%

These results drove us to the conclusion that the API platform was the way to update the plugin into a full Revit API created using C# in Visual Studio. This way of creating the app allowed us to create a more robust collection of tools concentrated in one place.

As RLE has an office in Lima, Perú, we needed to create a version tracking software for distributing the tools and a compiled solution suited perfectly.

The interface was completely re-designed and incorporated all the feedback provided by the production team. This knowledge lets us expand the development to different areas, not only developing rebar creation tools but to optimize inner areas inside the office such as document control/creation and BIM coordination.


Element Selection 1.5 0.025 8.0%









TOTAL 18.73 0.312 100%

An example of the reinforcement created with the API is as follows:

Figure 22. Sample of a geometry complex wall elevation with detailing.

Figure 23. Closeup of the critical seismic zone of the building.

We baptized this tool collection as RLE Suite, containing tools into two separate ribbons: RLE-Rebar and RLE-Dibujo. Some of the tools are more automatic than others, depending on what the input is.

3.4. AND MOVING ON… BEAMS, COLUMNS, SLABS AND FOUNDATIONS.

With the experience gained in the wall reinforcement, the production team came with the task to

reinforce beams of one hospital building (120.000 m2 ≈ 1.300.000 ft2) and a shopping center with a similar size. The structures were based no only in shear walls, but beams and columns. We created a similar workflow as described for the shear walls but with the improvements accessing the app through RLE SQL database credentials. This allows the user to query the particular project standards and relevant information set by the project manager. In this particular tool, to pair the elements between models, we used the “Spandrel” labels, so the user could label the Revit elements according to ETABS elements. The improvement here was that we decided to create beam shapes so the designer could configure the stirrups according to the longitudinal bars, setting the diameter and bar spacing so the rebar ratio placed satisfy the demand. All the geometry and boundary conditions are taken directly from the Revit model elements. Finally, the designer configures the longitudinal reinforcement in an Excel Spreadsheet and for the sheer reinforcement uses the shapes already created. Also, we created a way to override these shapes to be more user-friendly. An example of this is as follows:

Figure 24. Beam shape "fx01" containing double stirrups for 4 longitudinal bars.

Figure 25. Sample of the engineer's Excel spreadsheet for beams.

Figure 26. Close-up of the information put by the engineer.

Figure 27. Rebars, dimensions and tags created from the information of the spreadsheet.

Figure 28. Section cut for the beam created by the

automatic process. Figure 29. 3D view of the beam in the first span.

Due to the magnitude of the project, for the hospital building, the goal to achieve was to create beam reinforcement and the corresponding detailing almost ready for drawings using the automatic process (spreadsheet). This goal was achieved in plenitude. The time spent on this task was 50% less than using traditional CAD detailing. In this case, almost all the beams had the same geometry, so the automation was possible in a very simple way, only putting the effort in recognizing the boundary conditions for spans: length, how many supports, cantilever beams, etc.

In the shopping center, the geometry was more challenging so we needed to incorporate algorithms that recognize geometry changes between beams.

Figure 30. Geometry variation sample, from span to span.

Figure 31. Geometry variation sample, inside the same span.

Another thing was to allow multiple users (engineers) detailing rebars in a single shared model (central model – Revit Server). For this, we created a MySQL connection to query the information created inside the spreadsheet and stored it in the RLE database. This allowed us to even share the work with our office in Lima, Perú. All of these adjustments were achieved in order to satisfy the project team requirements and were standardized across the company for future projects. The next step was to develop a tool for creating rebars in the remaining elements. At this point, we decided that Excel spreadsheets were quite outdated, so we decided to create a fully functional Design Assistance module in RLE Tools so the engineer does all the work inside a unique platform. We decided that for columns all the information will happen using the same “shape” method, which is, storing the stirrup and longitudinal reinforcement configuration according to the analysis results.

Figure 32. Column design assistance interface (RLE Tools).

Inside the Revit RLE-Rebar tool, we included the options for placing Rebar Couplers instead of traditional rebar overlaps and the flexibility for the end-user to set where the bars are splitted.

Figure 33. Rebar couplers at the bottom of the column.

Figure 34. rebar couplers instead of traditional rebar overlaps.

For data storage, we moved our database to an Amazon AWS to satisfy the desired company’s connectivity. The data created inside RLE Tools is automatically stored in the RLE database for future data mining purposes. As for slabs reinforcement, we thought that area reinforcement would be the solution. After some tests and showing the rebars created to the production team, indicating the limitations regarding rebar shapes and boundary conditions, we needed to create a custom tool. We came up with the idea of storing the reinforcement information in a custom annotation family and the slab field geometry using a filled region patch. This way, the tool reads both the info and the geometry and turns into rebar layouts recognizing proper border conditions, depending on supports and shaft openings. Basically, the process is as follows:

STORE THE REINFORCEMENT INFO IN

ANNOTATION FAMILY

CREATE SLAB FIELD (FILLED REGION)

INTERNALLY, CREATE AREA

REINFORCEMENT TO RECOGNIZE

SHAFTS

TURN AREA REINFORCEMENT INTO REBAR LAYOUTS

FOLLOWING PROPER REBAR SHAPES AND BORDER

CONDITIONS

Figure 35. Custom annotation family and filled region to be used to create slab reinforcement.

Figure 36. Rebar reinforcement settings reading the info from the annotation family.

Annotation Family

Filled region

Figure 37. Rebars configuration for border conditions, rebar savings, and overlaps.

This creates the rebars and rebar detailing as follows. For the drawing creation, the designer needs to arrage the tags according to the drawing standard:

Figure 38. Plan view for slab reinforcement.

Figure 39. 3D view of the created slab reinforcement.

This is used to create slabs and foundation reinforcement as well. This is the least automated tool that we have and we are now working on a platform that transfers rebar ratios from slab design in ETABS, so the engineer won’t need to create the annotation family, but read the database instead.

4. CONCLUSIONS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

Productivity improvement is the direct result of the process. The engineer will no longer have to spend time on tasks that are not generating value for the project. The extra time gained will let the professionals focus on singularities such as discontinuities of elements that require proper attention for building health. Native routines and third-party tools are already deep developed for reinforced concrete elements and we don’t exclude using them if they satisfy the Chilean standard and the RLE workflow described in the previous pages.

Having a Full 3D Revit model with all of the reinforcement put in place, ready for coordination could be a titanic task. The problem gets bigger if you have a strict deadline to stick with, and even bigger if the software you’re using is set to work by other country standards that your country does not completely share.

Dynamo for Revit presents the chance to solve the problem described in the above paragraphs, with certain subtleties, such as limitation for some particular cases. It is a friendly programming language even for a person who does not require the skills of a professional software developer, but who has an imagination greater than a kid’s and a team that believes the path he is taking maybe isn’t the best, but surely is a very good approach. It is a great tool for particular developments because of its ease to use and also for creating sketches of more robust algorithms. Its documentation is vast and very dynamic. Translating the algorithms into fully Revit API codes could be a very intense work to do but the benefits of its implementation in terms of speed and stability are endless. If you or your team needs to transfer your development into Revit API, you should consider hiring a software developer as constant consulting or even to share some coding knowledge. Whats is with the future for the RLE development team… we are now aiming to cloud computing, so the next step is to translate the exposed development into web services like Forge, so the engineer doesn’t need to work into the PC or at least query some information directly from the internet. We live in the Big Data era. With all the information got in the design process and stored into the RLE database, the next step is to do some data mining so we can predict the rebar requirements of the building of the future… at least we at RLE think so!

BES322593 Rebar Detailing of Seismic Wall-Based Buildings ...

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