North Arrow aware of True North and Project North (Also, Sun Aware Families)

[samuelsanf]

It a little weird that Revit with all it's parameters, the possibility of defining true north and project north, doesn't let It does not have a way in which the annotation family for the north arrow can read the values of the true north and project north, and places on the real orientation.

It doesn't feel "BIM" when you have to rotate the north arrows in your view. It would be a small improvement, but I think it's worth having.

In Revit the Arrow annotation must:
- Read and mark the True North
- Read and mark the Proyect North
- Have the posibility of add more user defined arrows (I the have now); in case some one want to mark a magnetic north, or whatever.


In addition, Sun position must be family aware, if you place a mechanical brise-soleil that moves blocking the sun, ti should move when you change the sun position in your model. I think that in Dynamo you can do it, why not directly on Revit? It's a must have for sustainable design.

[samuelsanf]

It is ridiculous that the view cube can automatically mark the True North and the Project Nort, while the North Arrow annotation can not do it.

[samuelsanf]

The Survey Point and Project Base Point are actually aware of True and Proyect North. In Identity Data of Project Base Point you can see a parameter with the angle between Project North and True North.

[Anonymous]

Very good idea, it would be also great if Revit make natural ventilation analisys

[samuelsanf]

@Anonymous

Thanks! I agree with you about Natural Ventilation. Here's an Idea about it:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/revit-energy-analysis-suggestions/idi-p/6967653

[samuelsanf]

The key here, is that Revit let you use "in the project" the value parameter of the True North and Project North angle.

This can be done with Dynamo, but you have to run it every time you place a north arrow.https://forum.dynamobim.com/t/aligning-true-north-with-revit/5072

There is a lot of Good North Arrows online with Project North and True North, but you have to specify the value manually (Something against common sense). https://www.revitcity.com/downloads.php?action=search&keywords=north+arrow&user_name=&sort=score

About the Sun-aware Families, I think is related with cardinal orientation parameter (but it should be on another post), anyway, it would be awesome if you could utilize families of solar panels or brise-soleil that change it position when sun moves on a Revit Solar Study. You can do that on Dynamo too, but I think it must be easy to do on Revit if you call a parameter (shadows and sun paths doesn't do anything similar?) 
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=solar+tracking+sun+revit+dynamo

[krzystoff]

By far the biggest pain with Titleblocks is the North Point — getting the angle to be reliably parametric and adjustable from within the project is almost impossible, and then it doesn't match the project/site orientation — users have to manually update it on every sheet.  With this fact, you are left with many users who skip the step of setting the project angle correctly (because it pretty much does nothing) and then horrified to discover much later that the shadow angles (which we require for Govt Development Approval) are sometimes wrong.  If Titleblocks could support matching the north orientation automatically, this would cease to be an issue since it's immediately apparent from any sheet.

On top of that, there is some ambiguity with nomenclature of 'True North'/'Project North' in Revit vs 'Survey North'/'Magnetic North'/'Grid North'/'Astronomic North'/'Assumed Bearing North' angles which are used in the real world (some surveyors apparently used to take their Basis of Bearings from a herd of cows).

[anielson]

This is a good and important idea. Would be a grand improvement and I agree, more BIMish.

[Mark.Friis]

Yes the True North Angle Parameter musst be accessible within the family editor so everyone can make their own Arrows. We would use this for our Coordination/Origin cube when comparing Models and making collision tests.

[ks2_wmb]

I have a north arrow nested into one of my viewport titles with a parameter for rotation.  However, there's no way to connect that rotation parameter with a "difference between project north and true north" parameter.

[samuelsanf]

More than 9 years ago... but I still have some hope. 😅