Importing from Revit objects instead of meshes

[jcgonzalesA2PCU]

Hi. I'm using Formit 2022.1.0 and I have trouble with giving the right scale to materials I want to use on an imported Revit 2022 file. It seems that, by default, all the faces of the building are imported as meshes instead of objects. Is there a way to change this?

[josh.goldstein · Accepted solution]

Hi @jcgonzalesA2PCU,

That's correct, FormIt defaults to meshes for any imported content, including context geometry from Revit.

Currently, it's not possible to change this behavior, but you can easily convert everything coming from Revit back to FormIt objects so you can edit them. 

• Ensure the Revit Context layer in FormIt is visible and unlocked so you can select the objects on it
• Do one of the following:
  • Edit the Revit context group by double-clicking it, select all (Ctrl + A), and use shortcut MO for Meshes to Objects, or right-click on the meshes and choose the Meshes to Objects item at the bottom left of the context menu
  • Install the "Mesh + Unmesh All" plugin from the Plugin Manager (plug icon on the right side of the FormIt window), select the Revit context group, and click Unmesh All in the plugin. This plugin recursively un-meshes everything in the selected group(s), which is easier in some cases.

If you'll be doing this a lot, the second option may be the fastest, since installing the plugin is a one-time operation. Converting the entire context group into objects is then just a couple of clicks away.

If you'd like to control the default behavior here, this is something we could consider. Are you intending to modify the Revit context geometry, and send it back to Revit? Currently, anything on the Revit Context layer is ignored when sending geometry back to Revit, so you'd have more work than just converting back to objects if this is your intended workflow - you'd need to get the geometry off the Revit Context layer as well. If you can provide a bit more about what you're trying to accomplish here, it would help us understand what we could improve.

Hope this helps, and thanks in advance for any additional information you can provide.

[jcgonzalesA2PCU]

Hi Josh, thanks. That "Mesh + Unmesh All" plugin does it for me. We are starting to test Formit as an alternative at my office, so at this moment the idea is to import from Revit to Formit and leave it there to explore different looks. I see there is this Lumion plugin for rendering, any plans on having something similar with Enscape in the near future?

[josh.goldstein]

I'm glad that worked!

We appreciate you trying FormIt. Our connection to Revit is certainly better than ever, and we're building on our progress for better workflows in the future. Stay tuned!

We'd love to have Enscape as much as you would. It's up to them to build a FormIt plugin, but you can add your voice to their forums and let them know you'd like Enscape to integrate with FormIt. You'll see many other requests for this there, and the Enscape moderators seem to be actively forwarding the requests to their internal systems. Fingers crossed!