A meeting with Agacad helped clarify the challenging task.
“To enter the Revit market, the company needed to create its own Revit family library,” recalls Jokūbas Vaišvila, an MEP specialist and BIM software engineer at Agacad. The problem was Salda’s extremely large number of products, many of which are non-standard, customised for individual customers: air handling units and fans, heat pumps, heaters and coolers, controllers, ducts and more. “All told, thousands of Revit families were needed – truly a huge job,” Vaišvila notes.
Agacad agreed to develop a Revit add-in that could read data from Salda’s modular air handling unit selection and modelling software, known as VentMaster V5, and use it to automatically create and import Revit families. The families would include a list of properties for the imported ventilation assemblies: assembly details and section information, duct dimensions and connection coordinates, calorifier connection points, thermal, electrical and acoustical performance data, and so on.
Working closely with members of Salda’s team, Agacad developed the new Salda VentMaster V5 Revit Add-in, which fully meets those requirements, automatically creating Revit families at the LOD300 level of detail.
The add-in also features a direct link to the parent software. So, whenever changes are made in VentMaster V5, the corresponding parameters and geometry also automatically update in the Revit model.
The software created by Agacad lets Salda’s customers work faster, smarter, and more flexibly in the design, production, and installation of ventilation systems for their BIM projects since data entry and drafting work are automated.
“It’s great to be ahead of major competitors,” Astrauskas says, noting that many HVAC manufacturers can still only export DXF files – the 3D format for AutoCAD. And even compared to those with some BIM functionality, Salda now has “a better and more convenient link to Revit – the tool is integrated and imports additional data for other parts of a project. It brings everything together, facilitating collaboration and data exchange among the various different project participants.”
Thus, the new Revit Add-in has enabled Salda to enter new, progressive markets where BIM technologies are used. It has also strengthened ties with existing customers.
“We made this investment to boost customer satisfaction, and the tool really does reduce labour costs in the design not just of ventilation systems, but of the whole building. For example, with it you can automatically transfer electrical data to a project,” Astrauskas says. “So it creates added value for our customers, which gives us a competitive edge. And the fact it’s free is a huge advantage. Many other solutions in the industry require paid extensions.”