FormZ to Revit Modeling issues

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am having trouble assigning walls to a mass in Revit. I imported this mass as a DWG from FormZ. The form is a complex circular shape with a handful of curvy edges, as shown in the pictures.

When I attempt to assign walls to the mass by going to Massing & Site and then Wall in Model by Face and then hovering over the mass, only tiny slivers of the mass are recognized like in the Revit 3.png picture. 

I know complex shapes like this can be done by looking precedent projects online, so I am simply wondering what I am doing wrong. Should I be using a different program to bring this form into and to add detail for presentation?

Thanks,

FormZ 1FormZ 2Revit 1Revit 2Revit 3Mitch

[ToanDN]

Try Roof by face see how it goes.

[Anonymous]

The same thing happens where it doesn't recognize the rest of the mass.

[fg]

Unfortunately there is little to no useful documentation on issues like this, but as someone who has struggled with similar problems I can offer some insight into the real limitations here.  I suspect that your surface, which may or may not display smooth, is not “uniformly smooth” in a mathematical sense. For example whenever a line is filleted to a radius, the  new curve is no longer really smooth  because the curve has an abrupt transition.  If you were to graph this curve you would see the derivative suddenly jump from zero to something else. In Rhino you will often see that when trying to create some surfaces like this,  Rhino will break them up into smaller surfaces similiar to what you have shown.  These lines are not “rulings” or iso curves, they are distinct surfaces.  In Rhino the solution would be to rebuild your curve geometry so you start with continuous smooth curves - i.e curves/ slides  that will not explode into arcs and lines.  I  have not used form z recently enough to offer any advice in the rebuilding of this form In there but I think the principles are similar.  In Revit You should be able to create wall or roof by face for each face of your surface.  You will see a seam between each face.  Not all seams are ‘bad” - perhaps you can live with seams at the filleted corners, and smooth out the rest.  The more you smooth out the overall shape the more your shape deviates from the original. So you have a three way conflict here between smoothness, simplicity and how closely you want to stick to your original edge geometry.  You can have two but not three.  Trying to keep your edge geometry tight and smooth will greatly increase your complexity, and you can reach a point where Revit will not accept it.

hope this helps