Revit Triangle Count

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am worried about performance on some models and I would like to check some information. Right now, the only way to check the triangle count of a Revit model is to export it and look at the triangle count in the 3ds Max Project Browser or Polygon Counter Tool. Anyone who has dug through exported FBX model from Revit has noticed that curved extrusion are disgustingly filled with useless triangles.

http://support.insitevr.com/uploading-models-and-images/technical-notes-3d-models/revit-reducing-tri...

I was talking to another BIM manager and he says that the exported triangle count is higher than the triangles that Revit see inside Revit. Is this true? Is there a way to see how curved surfaces are split into triangles inside Revit? I would like to know about the raw number of triangles on a curved object when in a Revit session (prior to LODs). Is it comparable or the same as what is exported? If not, how do we see the number of triangles in a model and visualize it?

Of course, the goal is to get rid of superficial triangles to improve performance.

[cbcarch]

I think that Detail Level affects Polygon count. Set to Medium for best performance/quality balance.

You can check this by exporting FBX or AutoCad with view Detail Level set to Coarse, Medium, and Fine and compare results.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply. My main question however is: Is the triangle count when exported the same as the triangle count within Revit?

There is a reason for this. I advocate making the families less triangle heavy and the other BIM manager is saying that the geometry is only heavy once exported outside of Revit. So if he is right that Revit only creates these triangles when exporting, then we do not need to spend time fixing this issue, since it only affects exported geometry. I doubt that is the case, but would love some source or backup information to solve this question.

[cbcarch]

Not sure.

Try turning on wireframe view in Revit family, look at triangulation.

Export to Cad and FBX.

Take a look and see if triangulation seems the same or different?

[Anonymous]

Revit does not show triangulation inside Revit for curved surfaces.

There certainly IS triangulation, but it leaves it mysterious by showing only curved areas in wireframe mode. So, it is not true wire frames (which would be really hard to work with anyhow).

Also, in 3ds max, you have to select by individual triangle to be able to see how truly bad the triangulation is. So it is not directly exposed then either, you have to dig with tools that are not in Revit.

[PinRudolf]

My answer is over 2 years late; I ran into this post when looking for a way to count triangles within Revit.

Revit adaptively meshes your model. The triangle count of an instance depends, for example, on it's distance to the view-camera. You can also notice changes when rotating a view; it uses much less triangles. This adaptive behaviour keeps revit quick as long as it does not have too many faces to create triangles from. (That is why it is suggested to lower the amount of faces in your families.)

This would not make sense for exports, so exported files are consistantly meshed, therefore: I think your college is correct, the polygon count on an export can not be compared to the polygon count your GPU processes to create an image.

Did you ever find a method to measure your models 'weight'?