Fabrication Hanger - Area Of Influence Properties

[TheRealChrisHildebran]

Striking out on finding/accessing the Fabrication Hanger properties below via the Reivt API.

• "Area Of Influence",
• "A of I: Filled Circle"
• "A of I: Circle Thickness"

I've attached a screenshot "hanger.png" from CadMEP with arrows pointing to the properties in question.

Has anyone found these to be exposed?

Autodesk Fabrication Hanger Document

[JimJia]

I'm communicating with engineering team on this, will keep you updated on any progress.

[JimJia]

I'm forwarding update message and question from engineering team:

"In general pattern options are not accessible via Revit API. In general modifying pattern options is something we have to be careful to handle in Revit and we are reviewing requests to access the pattern options on a case-by-case basis. We could expose those particular options as methods on the fabrication part, or one of the hanger cells thereon.

However, to be honest I’m not entirely sure whether they are even obeyed in Revit or just in the fabrication software… Is the request to get and/or set the values and/or to make sure that they are useful in Revit ?"

[TheRealChrisHildebran]

Jim, thank you for addressing my question with the development team!

The answers to their questions quoted below are "Yes and yes". 

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@JimJia wrote:

I'm forwarding update message and question from engineering team:

"In general pattern options are not accessible via Revit API. In general modifying pattern options is something we have to be careful to handle in Revit and we are reviewing requests to access the pattern options on a case-by-case basis. We could expose those particular options as methods on the fabrication part, or one of the hanger cells thereon.

However, to be honest I’m not entirely sure whether they are even obeyed in Revit or just in the fabrication software… Is the request to get and/or set the values and/or to make sure that they are useful in Revit ?"

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Having the ability to control the visibility and size of the "Area Of Influence" for FabricationHangers within Revit as we can in CadMEP would be very helpful to us in developing our Company's Toolset for Revit. MEP coordination, prefabrication and general BIM use would benefit from this access.

Thank you again Jim and Team!!

Chris

[JimJia]

I'm forwarding updated messages from engineering team on this, FYI:

"Getting and setting them could be done as methods. Making them useful may be more problematic, IIRC those values are used for clash detection and I think we generate extra geometry in CADmep that then clashes if something comes within the area of influence.

In Revit we have avoided this kind of workflow entirely – instead pointing customers to using products like Navisworks to do clash detection. It has the ability to detect these kind of ‘area of influence’ clashes on any type of geometry, not just hangers.

Whether it makes sense to bring things like extra geometry into Revit just for clash detection is something that we’ll have to consider carefully.

A visualization like this should be done with the AVF, not with actual model elements. A workflow that actually checks for unsuitable positioning of elements should be done in a way that doesn’t depend on the user having to ‘look’ through all the model to identify issues, it should be reported in some way, and likely facilitates resolving the issue(s). I can’t say at this point that I understand how these A of I are used (they sound more like Volumes.. not areas), and what the behavior would be in Navis.. but I’d expect that every one of them would report a clash with the slab they are associated, which doesn’t seem desirable(?). We’ve done some things in the past, like making sure the Navis team excludes intersections between duct taps and insulated ducts… but in the case of A of I, if you’re excluding these, what is the point of having them defined as a volume?

This is something we need to evaluate the workflow on, and see if it is something we really want to own… or enable partners to do. In general, we know there are lots of limitations with what can be done w/ hangers, and ultimately, I think we need to revisit quite a bit. I’m hoping to focus later this year on hanger improvement needs research.. I believe this issue came from one of the customers we’re currently getting feedback on re: sloped piping, and will discuss w/ them further."