Revit Structure
Although SI Xchange assigns a group label to all of the elements corresponding to a single Revit member, the user is still able to assign different properties to each individual element inside STAAD.Pro. By understanding how SI Xchange handles this situation, the user can be careful not to assign different member sizes, materials, or rotations to elements belonging to a group generated by SI Xchange. When importing changes from STAAD. Pro, SI Xchange will check that the properties for all elements corresponding to one Revit member are identical and will issue a warning in the log file if any differences are found.
product focus
2012
Another common difference between Revit and an analysis application is type or section property names. Although steel sections tend to have standardized names, they can differ between applications. Most analysis links provide some way to overcome these differences through customized settings. In many cases, differences in naming can be resolved automatically by the analysis link if given some additional information from the user, such as mapping of Revit families to a shape and member type. In some cases, however, this is not possible—and a one-to-one mapping of type names is required. A case in point: STAAD.Pro does not use standardized section property names for all steel shapes. Single angle type L8x8x1in Revit Structure corresponds to L808016 in STAAD.Pro. To accommodate this, SI Xchange provides a text file that maps the STAAD.Pro names to the standardized names for each type.
Figure 2: Shape Map Editor in SI Xchange.
Metric families, the Shape Map Editor allows the user to add any families not already included.
Another example of an analysis link accounting for differences between model data is how the RAM Structural System link accommodates cantilever beams. In Revit, a cantilever beam is modeled as a separate beam, supported at only one end. In the RAM Structural System, a cantilever is specified as a length at the start or end of a beam, which projects out past the beam’s support. To correctly export a cantilever to the RAM Structural System, the user must set the corresponding Start and End Connection properties for the corresponding beams in Revit to Cantilever Moment. On export to RAM, these beams will be merged into one cantilevered beam. In an another example, RISA’s documentation for the Revit 2011 link details how to model X-braces in Revit in order to achieve the correct geometry inside RISA for analysis and design.
Check the Settings Correct program settings are essential to successful analysis integration. This includes settings in the analysis program and settings in the link itself. As mentioned above, mapping of Revit type names to the names used by the analysis link is an important step. For standardized names, this can be done automatically; however, an analysis link typically needs some information to help with automatic mapping. In SI Xchange, Revit families are mapped to a shape, category, and material. The link then uses this information to find the correct section size in STAAD.Pro. Although SI Xchange comes preconfigured with mappings to common Imperial and June 2011
Figure 3: Set units in STAAD.Pro.
www.augiworld.com 33