507 Dynamo Final Project

Final Project Advanced View Functions of Rooms

Jong Joo Kim Zhequan Zhang USC Fall2019 Arch 507 Professor Karen Kensek

Arch 507 Final Project

1. Project Team

Jong Joo Kim MBS ‘21

Zhequan Zhang MBS ‘21

1

Arch 507 Final Project

2. Project Description a. Problem Description Revit is a BIM software that helps architects or designers digitally build their designs super-fast. However, when it comes to do interior designs or when users want to simply see the interior spaces, Revit doesn’t have functions directly doing those jobs. In most of the cases, users usually use Section box in 3D Views to cut walls, ceilings, roofs, etc. so that interior spaces are exposed or place Cameras on the spaces where users want to see in perspective view. This tedious way can lead to an annoying and time-consuming problem, especially, when users have many rooms and spaces to look at or to work with.

b. Proposed Solution The team adopted the category called Rooms to solve this problem. Rooms category contains useful information and hidden geometry. This hidden geometry feature of Rooms category can be visualized in Dynamo and can be utilized to make a bounding box containing the room geometry. Bounding box feature is especially required to make sections boxes in Dynamo.

First, the team located rooms in every space or program and, by using Dynamo, generated bounding boxes of each room. Then, the team used bounding box to make a Section box and placed cameras inside the bounding box.

Section Box in Revit

2

Arch 507 Final Project

Floor Plan with a Camera

c. Project Goal The goal of this project is to find effective way of approaching to the internal spaces of digital models in order to increase the overall work efficiency. By using the proposed ways, users will have better interior design modeling experiences in Revit.

Also, users are expected to have faster communications with their colleagues or clients by visually demonstrating quick accesses into each program or room. Not just the users, people without architectural background can understand projects’ interior spaces through 3D views of each program or room.

3

Arch 507 Final Project

d. Sample Model Simple 2-story building with 11 rooms.

d-1. 3D Views

d-2. Floor Plans with Rooms

4

Arch 507 Final Project

3. Dynamo Script a. Overall Script

5

Arch 507 Final Project

This script mainly allows users to generate cropped rooms in 3D views, cropped plans, and interior views of rooms. The whole script is composed of two main groups. The purple groups use every rooms in the model while the blue groups start with one selected room.

Purple Group: Every room will be used at the same time.

Blue Group: One selected room will be used.

b. Purple Groups b-1. Every 3D Views of Rooms with name

6

Arch 507 Final Project

This script basically conducts Section Box to every room in the building. Also, Element.SetName nodes create the 3D view of each cropped room. The names of the 3D views are same as the Room name so that it is easier to find the room users want.

Default List of 3D Views

Generated List of 3D Views with Room names

7

Arch 507 Final Project

3D view of cropped Class 101

Every cropped room will be shown in Shaded visual style and depends on the generated section box sizes, roofs and ceilings can be presented, which prevent users to see the insides.

Ceiling covers the 1st floor restroom

Roof blocks the vision to the Kitchen

8

Arch 507 Final Project

b-2. Visibility Setting

This script has 2 functions, change the visual style of the generate views and hide certain categories. Visual style will be changed based on the integer number connected to Visual Style Select nodes.

Also, now ceilings and roofs can be hidden by using View.SetCategoryOverrides node. This node hides any selected categories from the designated views. For the designated views, 3D view will be a proper choice.

Shaded Kitchen and 1st Floor Restroom without ceiling and roof

9

Arch 507 Final Project

b-3. Hide Everything Inside the Room

This script can hide everything in inside the rooms, more specifically bounding box. The team couldn’t find any nodes for this operation and ended up making the first python script.

Before and After view of Library 10

Arch 507 Final Project

First of all, we get all the rooms, then turn the rooms into geometry. Then convert those geometry to bounding box. We used python script to get elements in the bounding box and hide them. The bounding box need to be scaled, so that the wall or elements on the wall won’t be included. Archi-lab has the original Hide.Elements node, but it doesn’t work. So, we rewrite it base on the original one.

Python script to get all elements in the bounding box

11

Arch 507 Final Project

Rewrited version the Hide.Element node in Archi-Lab 12

Arch 507 Final Project

b-4. Interior Perspective View

PerspectiveView.ByEyePointTargetAndBoundingBox node helps users place Cameras in any place. The team used this script to place cameras in every room generated so that now users also don’t have to place cameras in every room manually. In this project, the team used BoundingBox.MinPoint as eyepoint and BoundingBox.MaxPoint as target.

Blue Points = BoundingBox.MinPoint

Blue Point = BoundingBox.MaxPoint

Grey boxes are room geometries and Every room has two points. The cameras will be placed on the BoundingBox.MinPoints and look at the BoundingBox.MaxPoints

View from the camera placed on Class 201

13

Arch 507 Final Project

View from the camera placed on Staircase 1

The default Visual Style is always Hidden Line. This setting can be also controlled by the Visibility Setting script.

Views generated by PerspectiveView.ByEyePointTargetAndBoundingBox node are always locked. To unlock the views, users can simply find the house with lock icon on the bottom and click Unlock View.

14

Arch 507 Final Project

Shaded Staircase 1

Unlock view

View from different angle of Staircase 1 15

Arch 507 Final Project

b-4. Plan Drawing

Plan drawing of each room can be generated by this script. This script also uses the bounding box to crop the room, and the SectionView.ByBoundingBox makes plan view of everything in bounding box. However, even though the node says section view and every view of plan will be generated under the Sections view, the drawings are not sections but plans.

List of plan drawings under the Sections

16

Arch 507 Final Project

Plan of Kitchen

Plan of Conference Room

17

Arch 507 Final Project

c. Blue Group c-1. One 3D view with Room Name

The blue group scripts allow users to choose one room they want to specifically look at while the purple group scripts use every room. List of the rooms can be found from the Room.Name and Watch nodes.

Users can simply type the room name in String and connect it to the String.Contains node. Then, use List.FilterByBoolMask node to get the selected room element. Rests are same.

Only cropped Kitchen view is created under the 3D Views.

18

Arch 507 Final Project

c-2. Visible Setting

Visible Setting also needs to filter the views just to get one specific room information. The List.FilterByString node can filter out everything except the one connected to String in the list. Now, Match from the List.FilterByString node can be connected to setting nodes. In this way, Kitchen view will be only affected by Visibility Setting script.

19

Arch 507 Final Project

c-3. Hide Everything Inside the Room

This script is almost same as the purple script. Users are asked to bring the view they are using from the List.FilterBySpring and plug that into IN[1] of the Hide node.

c-4. One 3D view with Room Name

Both Kitchen and Kitchen Interior under 3D Views

This script is also almost same, but because dynamo can’t run c-1 script and c-4 script together due to the their same View type, which is 3D Views, it is preferred to make another String containing a view name similar to the selected room’s name. In this case, the team wrote Kitchen Interior.

20

Arch 507 Final Project

4. Future Works and Improvement a. Customizing View Type The team couldn’t find a way to customize View Type. One main problem of this project is that both cropped room model and camera views are generated under the 3D views. When both scripts are generated, the cropped rooms get their view names right, but camera views are generated with odd names. Also, each room plan drawings are generated under the Sections, not Floor Plans. It is necessary to change the plan drawings location in order to prevent confusion.

List of 3D Views, when b-1 script and b-2 scripts are generated together.

b. Running every script at once The team would like to increase the work efficiency by reducing the number of times users manually run scripts. The whole scripts can’t run at once. Sometimes it is required to run one script first, and then go back to dynamo, unplug the previous script and finally run the second script. For example, b-1 or c-1 script run first to crop rooms within newly generated 3D views, and then, users can use b-2 or c-2 to change the Visual Setting or hide curtain categories if they want. If users can run whole scripts at once instead of running scripts step by step, even more time will be saved.

21

Arch 507 Final Project

5.References a. Packages Archi Lab Clock Work Springs Steam Nodes

b. Online Source https://forum.dynamobim.com/t/graphic-styles-or-discipline/4651 https://forum.dynamobim.com/t/multiple-3d-views-from-rooms/16766/3 https://forum.dynamobim.com/t/list-elements-in-room-by-category-byroom/23527/3 https://forum.dynamobim.com/t/use-dynamo-to-create-3d-perspectives/11457

22