Vísual aid to modeling

[yes_and_no]

I actually don't know how to describe this.

A while ago some manufacture asking us to do some manufacture works. They have a way of recording their complex equipments into some kind of 3d presentative modeling into computer.

• You can clearly see it was some photos attached to some simple 3d forms to represent the equipments in plan, elevations, 3d with approximate dimensions. We didn't ask how they did it and what program it was.

Now suddenly we in position wanting to create something like that. I know vaguely about revit decals. Wonder if this is the right approach.

Or maybe it is something else outside revit, can be insert or import into revit so we can have architecture works around them, in plan, 3d and elevations...

Any ideas ? Yes, the reason being that we don't want to spend time modeling them complex machineries for the time being.

[ToanDN]

Decals work if the forms are relatively boxy but they only show in realistic or rendered views.

[barthbradley]

Overlay Views on Sheets.  

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@yes_and_no wrote:

• You can clearly see it was some photos attached to some simple 3d forms to represent the equipments in plan, elevations, 3d with approximate dimensions.

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you sure it wasn't photorealistic (a.k.a. renderings)?  

[constantin.stroescu]

it looks as the manufacture  made a Photogrametric survey of real objects.

The result is a Mesh with an overlaid image .

This type of 3d scan can be done by capture photos with a hand camera for small objects or UAV drone for large areas The images will be processed by special softwares (as Recap Photo of Autodesk)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry

A Mesh with mapping is not an intelligent object , so , I think you'll have to recreate the object as parametric geometry, either in Revit or , if a small one, better in software of engineering .