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Importing Rhino Models into Revit as Native Content.


No tool should dictate the design…


Building BIM model directly in Grasshopper.


In this exercise, I focused on building an automated import of "SAT" geometry from Rhinoceros into Revit using Dynamo visual programming tool. In order to expand the capability as a designer working with BIM, allows updating BIM elements according to the latest design changes, while all parameter values remain in place.



Covering the interoperability workflows that enable teams to use the tools appropriate to each phase of design, each team member’s expertise and skillsets, enabling their imagination to be the limit of their designs rather than the required toolsets. Covering a method for importing geometry into Revit software as native content to produce drawings. How to apply a premade, easy-to-use Dynamo script that will enable importing Rhino software-generated geometry into Revit native content.


Use the right tool for the right task…


This technique has been developed and tested on a range of project scales, with overwhelming success and quantifiable increases in team productivity and efficiency. This exercise features Revit Architecture, Dynamo Studio, and Rhino, and Grasshopper, BIM Autodesk Construction Cloud.




Exporting geometry from Rhino to Revit, and how to tell Revit how to behave.


Setting file systems in Revit and Rhino, in order to have a good environment for moving data between the systems, and a good interaction while using Grasshopper and Dynamo.


Using Spring nodes will help to import any type of geometry into Revit as native content.




Observations :


  • Revit is great at documentation coordination and management but it is not so great at quick and agile design iteration! Since we need both, we need to explore a technique that uses Native Revit contents, as it has more graphic controls, especially when cutting the object.


  • Break your geometry up into simpler parts. Revit will like it better.


  • Add more control points if the surface is inaccurate.


  • Any time you start with an existing Revit model and want to import something, first export a portion of your Revit model to the software you are designing the geometry to be imported in.


  • Complex forms tend to be lighter when imported, due to absence of construction geometry in family. 700 MB linked project file to a 5-10 MB family in the main project file.

  • Most of all, remember Revit likes solids…



This technique allows to :


  1. Work much more quickly during early design stages

  2. Create early design drawings quickly using Revit

  3. Use the best tool for the job in early design stages

  4. Allows team members who do not know advanced modeling in Revit to contribute to some of the most complex parts of the model.

  5. Allows rapid design iteration to be added to the drawing set before it is fully modeled.

  6. Reduces remodeling required in early design phases to produce a drawing set.

  7. Allows for fabrication level models to be imported back into Revit.