BIM Blog

Latest Advances for Wood & Metal Framing in Revit [WEBINAR]

During the past year, we made over 40 updates to our Wood Framing and Metal Framing BIM software for designing walls, floors, and roofs in Revit®. We’ll go through the most significant ones in this free 30-minute webinar on June 3^rd.

Meeting the needs of framing professionals around the world drives us to continually improve our BIM tools. It’s how we build BIM together. The enhancements you’ll see in this webinar include new features, enhanced sample families, and requests made by clients that bring benefits to a large part of our user base who design prefabricated timber and light-gauge steel-framed buildings.

Although we hosted webinars as features were released during the course of 2020, we’re pulling it all together in this one so that you can have the rundown in one convenient place.

The webinar will be held twice, so please register for the session that’s more convenient for you. Content will especially be of interest to designers of wood-framed buildings or LGS-framed buildings, architects, engineers, BIM managers, and out-of-box Revit users.

Main Benefits of AGACAD's Wall Reinforcement Revit Tool

Here are seven benefits of using our Wall Reinforcement tool to model rebar in precast and cast-in-place concrete walls in Autodesk® Revit®.

1. Easy user interface

Wall Reinforcement has a UI that is consistent, easy-to-read, and stable. This makes it easy to learn and implement the tool in your company.

Cut Opening: Automated Dimensioning in Revit [WEBINAR]

We invite you to join our free 45-minute webinar on May 27th to see the latest feature that has been made for our Cut Opening BIM Solution for Autodesk Revit: adding dimensions automatically for penetration holes.

Cut Opening has been enhanced by the addition of a new feature: Smart Dimensions. This newly added functionality lets you create dimensions in a Revit model. Whether you need simple or complex dimensions, the Cut Opening tool will not only populate your model with openings but will also save time on dimensioning those openings as well as lots of other elements. 

Smart Dimensions was modified explicitly for Cut Opening so that it could also measure linked elements, making Cut Opening more robust and eliminating manual tasks that designers routinely have to deal with.  Join our free 45-minute webinar to learn about the new possibilities! 

The webinar will be held twice, so please sign up for the session that’s more convenient for you. We especially invite designers, architects, BIM managers, MEP and structural engineers to participate in this webinar. Content will also be of interest to out-of-box Revit users.

How to Dimension Reinforcement for Precast Elements in Revit [VIDEO]

Dimensioning rebar depends on company standards or on requirements coming from the manufacturer. Either way, it’s relatively easy to do once you’ve got the rebar modeled in Revit®.

One way you can do it is by placing dimensions and changing visibility settings using native Revit commands. Another way is to automate that process with a Revit plugin. For precast elements, I would suggest Smart Assemblies, as it can create views, dimensions, schedules, and sheets – everything you need for shop drawings.

Alright, so I will skip how to do the process manually in Revit, which hopefully is covered on YouTube or by your Revit software providers, but here is how you can do it with our tools. I will jump straight into the Smart Dimensions tool that’s part of Smart Assemblies and open its configuration. (Video below.)

1. Open Smart Dimensions

Once you’ve opened Smart Dimensions, go to its configurations.

Precast Concrete Wall Reinforcement in Revit [WEBINAR]

Modeling reinforcement for precast walls in Revit is no longer a mysterious task that only a few detailers do. It’s becoming standard practice in BIM and 3D projects in general without having to switch to 2D to finish documentation.

Whether you generate piece drawings or export information to CAM machines, though, you need to have actual rebar elements in your model if you want to get sections, quantities, and other information. And since it takes quite a lot of time to model thousands of rebars, it sure helps if that work is done automatically.

That’s why we developed our Wall Reinforcement tool for Revit. Come see how it works in this free 30-minute webinar on May 13th. Besides a typical workflow, we’ll also show the latest features.

Modeling rebar in precast walls in Revit eats up a lot of time, so we developed the Wall Reinforcement addon. It’s part of our Precast Concrete BIM Solution, which streamlines the whole design process based on the workflows and insights of precast experts around the world – and eliminates myriad mouse-clicks in the process.

The Wall Reinforcement tool can place external and internal reinforcement, straight and diagonal bars, stirrups around openings and perimeters, plus reinforcement for wall corners. The tool recognizes wall shapes and places rebar based on your configurations. And if you have a sandwich or double wall, you can apply different rebar settings for each layer.

The webinar will be held twice, so please register for the session that’s more convenient for you. We especially invite precast designers and structural engineers to participate in this webinar. Content will also be of interest to out-of-box Revit users and those thinking of switching from AutoCAD to BIM.

How to Place Pocket Families for Roof Joists in Revit [VIDEO]

In this post, I’ll show three ways for placing joist pockets in Revit for tilt-up construction projects.

One way to do it is manually in plain Revit. The other two ways make use of our Smart Connections BIM tool that can distribute hardware, details, voids, any sort of element or family in Revit whether you’re designing buildings from precast concrete, wood frames, or metal frames.

Whichever way you go, the first several steps are the same, so let’s start there. (Video below.)

STEP 1. Create a pocket family by using a face-based family template.

QR/Barcode Generator added to Sort Mark Revit Tool [NEW FEATURE]

Would you like to generate QR codes or barcodes that can be placed on your shop drawings in Autodesk Revit? We recently added a new feature to our Sort Mark tool for Revit that allows you to do exactly that.

One of our T4R Add-ons, Sort Mark is a powerful plug-in that automates sorting and numbering in Revit. In addition to renumbering elements the way you want, it can also detect and renumber grids, determine swing direction and orientation of doors, recalculate shared coordinates, and more.

In this post, we’ll show how to generate QR and barcodes using Sort Mark. This feature was something we had been thinking about for some time, especially after a client requested it. Since you can place anything you need into that QR/barcode, the possibilities are vast, as it can ensure better quality control, enhance collaboration between teams, or speed up the manufacturing process.

Setting Up Collaborative BIM Model & Revit Project Standards [WEBINAR]

With the advent of BIM and the transformation of the AEC industry in response to changes in the way we design and build, the collaborative nature of projects has become the keystone of success.

Join our free 30-minute webinar on May 6th and see how to use Revit central/local files, worksets, configuration files, standards and templates to set a solid foundation for any project type or size. Intended for architects, engineers, and BIM managers involved in the design of timber or light-gauge steel walls, roofs, or floors in Revit. Sign up below!

The advancement of architectural and engineering software has allowed BIM practitioners to share building models (digital twins) to an extent where a number of teams are able to work and collaborate on a single model. Clearly, the potential here is huge. But success largely hangs on the ability of those teams to collaborate.

That’s where AGACAD comes in. Combining Revit with technology like our framing solutions makes collaborating smart and efficient.

This webinar will be held twice, so please register for the session that’s more convenient for you. Content will especially be of interest to designers of wood-framed or metal-framed buildings, architects, engineers, BIM managers, and out-of-box Revit users.

Beam Reinforcement in Revit: Stirrups, Supports & Common Bending Shapes [NEW FEATURES]

Modeling main reinforcement and stirrups for precast beams in Revit is easy with our Beam Reinforcement tool. Some clients recently gave us feedback regarding the add-on, so we developed some new features that will further streamline the work of precast detailers.

The updates have to do with stirrups, rebar at beam ends, and common bending shapes of main bar. Descriptions of each of those new features below.

Revit rebar placement: Centered stirrups

After one of my previous blog posts about Revit beam stirrup layout, a user contacted us asking for a small improvement – centered stirrups – because in some situations it is better to have equal spacing than to have bars at exact positions.

New Ways to Split Revit Walls Vertically & Horizontally with Smart Walls [NEW FEATURE]

Smart Walls is our Revit add-on that simplifies wall management, allowing you to quickly disassemble layers into different wall types, control gaps and joins, split walls into panels, insert gravity points, and more. Part of our Tools4Revit Suite, it’s also included in our Precast Concrete BIM Solution since wall panels are ubiquitous in precast design.

This latest update for our Smart Walls tool has new ways of splitting walls horizontally – via configurations – and vertically – via reference plane.