Importing Revit topography into Formit

[stevokay]

Attempting to import a Revit exported SAT file with all components but Topography turned off I get the Formit error "unable to read the file, failure, no reason given".   Any suggestions for importing Revit topography into Formit? 

[tvollaro]

That is the problem with Revit Toposurfaces... you cannot really export them to anything! We did a FormIt Friday webinar on topography topics a few months back. How familiar with Dynamo are you? I included a dynamo script that takes the points from the toposurface, creates a surface, and then exports the resulting mesh to SAT, which can then be imported into FormIt: https://autodesk.box.com/s/x1gn0pnhp5h7em5hlk501gxwo4x0yh6a 

hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Hi the link for the Dynamo script to convert Revit Topo to an SATT format for inport into FormIt is broken. Any chance you would be willing to repost?

[Tobias_Hathorn]

Sure - the links from the original blog post still work - https://formit.autodesk.com/blog/post/working-with-topography

Here's the specific DYN file you're looking for https://autodesk.app.box.com/s/x1gn0pnhp5h7em5hlk501gxwo4x0yh6a

Thanks!

Tobias

[Anonymous]

Hi Tobias, I tried the Dynamo script and it wasn't working a few days ago.

Our project is in SD, and we want to build the model in Formit, with eventual import into Revit. Thus, does it make sense to build all parts of the model in Formit, with eventual import into Revit?

For example, as I heard that Topograpy is a special category in Revit, I instead built the topo in Revit. However, it's been fruitless to try to export into Formit. Flux.io no longer seems to work (if you try to sign up for an evaluation version, it keeps bouncing back to the homepage). Finally, I exported the Revit topo as a dwg, but it's a useless scramble of triangulated surfaces that I don't have control over. Any suggestions? Or would you recommend that we just build from scratch in Formit?

Our office has just had a discussion about the desire to switch from sketch up/ rhino to Formit so we can just move more smoothly into Revit.
To be continued.. thanks.

[Tobias_Hathorn]

Hi Caroline - Thanks for the heads up about the DYN - I can review this weekend and see why it's not working - can you let me know what version of Revit and Dynamo you're using? There may also be a specific dynamo package necessary to have installed. Note that this is the blog post that taught me how to write the dynamo script to convert topo to a surface then export to SAT - you can try recreating from scratch! http://plevit1.blogspot.com/2015/02/dealing-withtopography-in-dynamo.html 

Given your situation - I think that modeling the topo in Revit, then exporting SAT to FormIt is the best bet. I doubt you'll be able to do much editing of the topo in FormIt - but it will be editable geometry. You won't be able to import those changes BACK into Revit later - so you'll have to update your original topo in Revit as well.

Flux has recently announced the shut down of their services (end of March), so I'm not surprised they aren't accepting new customers. Unfortunately that means the end of the very excellent 'site extractor' service!

Feel free to follow up with more 'transition to FormIt' questions. Happy to help,

Tobias

[Anonymous]

Hi Tobias,

the dyn link is not working. Could you resend or fix the broken link? Sometimes it is embarrassing trying to implement Formit and having to deal with a lot of things to do yet. However, I would appreciate if you could relink. Thanks.

[Tobias_Hathorn]

I'm sorry, Maurilio - We (Autodesk) have recently migrated our file storage solution. So these links are broken. 

We will update the links soon (now that you point this out!) and update this thread when they are available.

In the meantime you can still revisit the referenced blog post for parts of this content

http://plevit1.blogspot.com/2015/02/dealing-withtopography-in-dynamo.html%C2%A0

Thanks for posting,

Tobias

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I will just start with the fact that I am a total newbie at Dynamo, and this is my first attempt in working with it.

I have been also trying to import my Revit topo to Formit using the script provided in this thread, but am experiencing errors left and right. The latest error that I have hit a wall with is:

“PolySurface.ByJoinedSurfaces operation failed.
Unable to stitch Surfaces into a single PolySurface. : ACIS_EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION – Access violation”.

I have attached an image of the script and where the errors are occurring. If anyone has a solution (and one that a beginner like me can easily follow) or if someone has a better script or method (sans Dynamo) to get topo into Formit I am all ears!

Thank you