22 Jan 2019

View Revit Grids in the 3D views of the Forge Viewer

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Recently, I received a couple messages from our Forge customers that are requesting the same feature about showing the Revit Grids in the viewer, so I got a chance to make it happen and have decided to blog it down. Let's see how to do it!

 

Before starting, there is one more thing you need to know:

Due to the Grids in Revit are only shown in the 2D views (such as Floor plans, Elevations, Sheets and etc.), they are invisible in Revit's 3D views. Therefore, we cannot see it in the 3D views of the Forge Viewer, either. They will be ignore by our Revit model translator during exporting. This is the current limitation as I know.

 

However, it's not completely impossible. To achieve this, we can take advantage of the Revit family to create a 3D Grid component with the generic line-based model template. Here is the look of the 3D Grid family:

3D Grid RFA

 

Afterward, we can place this component onto positions of the Revit Grids in the floor plans.

Place 3D Grid in Revit

 

 

To speed up, I wrote a Dynamo Script to place 3D Grids properly.

3D Grid DYN

 

The result of this Dynamo Script:

3D Grid DYN result

Note. This Script will fetch positions of all grids in the Revit project, and then place 3D grids in the chosen floor only. If you have to show 3D grids in multiple levels, please modify this script or write your own Revit addin to achieve it.

 

Now ready to upload this RVT model to Forge for translation. Just wait for the translation complete, then you will see grids are there!

3D Grid in the viewer

 

Enjoy it! Here are the materials used in this blog:

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