I’ve been thinking about how BIM and Dynamo could be used beyond traditional design and construction workflows, especially for museums, cultural attractions, and other visitor-focused organizations.
For example, a museum may already have detailed Revit models containing information about galleries, exhibits, rooms, facilities, and visitor areas. Dynamo could potentially help extract or organize selected BIM data and connect it with other systems used for visitor management.
One interesting use case could be connecting building or exhibit information with a digital membership card. Instead of a membership card being only an identification or check-in tool, it could potentially provide members with information about exhibitions, events, facilities, or specific areas of a venue.
I’ve also been looking at platforms which provides digital membership cards and member engagement features. It made me wonder whether there is an opportunity to connect BIM/Dynamo-generated data with membership or visitor-experience platforms.
For example:
Extract selected Revit data using Dynamo
Organize exhibit or facility information
Send relevant information to another system through an API
Use the data for member-facing experiences
Keep the workflow automated when the BIM model changes
Has anyone here experimented with using Dynamo or the Revit API to connect BIM data with external membership, CRM, ticketing, or visitor-experience systems?
I’d be particularly interested in hearing about API-based workflows, Dynamo packages, or Python approaches that could make this type of integration practical.
Hi @membershipanywhere Welcome sure possible…basic its all just data there can be connected to whatever…i would say…so all data we can take out can for sure be used in other systems…both for what you say..and for facility management, BMS etc…just the fantasy
That’s what some of the digital twin models are built for. From what I’ve seen so far, most of the time either the owner or the team providing such solution won’t go with .rvt. They would setup a client-side app or service to interact with sensors or the methods you have in mind that pick up changes. Typically, you would trim down the .rvt models then export to get a lite version with necessary metadata and sort out a pipeline starting from that. The model itself is less editable than it was in Revit, but for example, you still get to move a painting or sculpture around easily or apply some other updates.
I mean you could keep pumping changes into .rvt model and let it serve the front-end to users on client app, web or mobile, especially when the front-end is not very graphically intensive, and as long as you want to keep Revit around. Just IMHO, there are better ways to handle this.
I am 99% sure that would violate licensing, and it would also be quite slow and limited to ‘one user per Revit session’ so everyone would see the same thing. Revit’s meant for building design, not idealized for user viewing or digital twins.
Pushing the RVT up into APS and using the viewer to help users navigate and plan their visit is a quite viable use case though!
Whatever you do it needs to be a web based solution - anything less will be a hack that generally fails long term in my xp. Whilst I love Dynamo, it’s not naturally dynamic as comes - it wants to run something end to end then move on, piggybacked on idling if its in revit. It is quite deterministic vs what a twin needs to be.
Likewise membership > database > web. Hard to avoid given onus on companies to secure personal details.
After what I have seen non aec web devs produce these days I’d honestly recommend a custom site and back end/storage/worker if the budget accomodates it. AI has changed the game in how many people you need to deliver and with the right people on board, maintain.
Abstract the model down where you can, e.g. a 3d room block with some major exhibit 3d models in them at most is an adequate model probably, with hotspots to pinpoint things or connect to a 3d view via something like matterport. Nodejs or similar can generally handle well optimized, selective geomretry. Consider a model where users can tag themselves in 3d and take photos, make comments at those points, or encourage the use of QR/lanyard handouts to trigger this. To me that would make for a dynamic social twin (just be ready to moderate it).
Look at major museums for examples e.g. NYC NMH and British museum, no doubt they will be doing something fairly cutting edge and it probably works. Iirc when i went to nyc nmh they appeared to have an active twin running on various devices and screens there. Work your way back from that as the moonshot.
You don’t want to publicise all the access routes in and out of your Gold Treasure Hoard exhibition!
A simplified abstraction of the building geometry is easier for visitors to understand, and needs less maintenance. You can still embed all the information they are interested in… Interactive, videos, text, images… As well as the web options, there are also examples in gaming (Minecraft, Fortnight).
sure possible…basic its all just data there can be connected to whatever…i would say…so all data we can take out can for sure be used in other systems…both for what you say..and for facility management, BMS etc…just the fantasy 