Convert Naviswork Coordination model into editable in-place family?

Hi,

I found a workflow to quickly create a site context in Infraworks. I can them bring this model in Navisworks and link this into Revit. I use this to bring in the surrounding buildings into my Revit site.

Unfortunately, the topography is wholly inaccurate, so I have to get rid of it altogether. The accuracy of the surrounding building is also wrong, by about 20%. Since editing this FBX linked into Naviswork is not a good workflow, I was wondering if we could use Dynamo to recreate the buildings into an editable in place Site family using basic extrusions?

Any advice is welcome.

How have you determined the accuracy of the infraworks, navisworks, and Revit models? Can you show the 100% accuracy at infraworks and navisworks stages and the 89% accurate result in Revit so we can understand the issue?

Best results may be infraworks to Civil3D linked into Revir via the BIM360 connection toolset.

The Infraworks model is visually different than what Google maps shows, which is why I want to have editable extrusions in Revit to be able to edit it.

In the example below, you can see some buildings are missing or not high enough. It’s great that Infraworks in able to get us 90% of the way there, but I don’t feel like tracing it all in Revit to be able to edit it. Also, living with the Infraworks model as-is is just not accurate enough to not be annoying.

As you can see, the topography is a total disaster, so we are ignoring it.

Have a look at the GIS2BIM package
There might be something there that can deal with 3D information from Google Maps.
You can also ask the developer

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This is great, but too complicated for me. My head would explode.

I am hoping to find a node package that can take a couple of boxes from the model and convert it into an editable ‘model in place’. I already have the basic model, so going back to find it as GIS seems overkill.

The data in the model exists as geometries - try using the DirectShape.ByGeometry node in the springs package.

I won’t be surprised if you’re unable to edit most/all of it as easily as you’d like. Likely the simple solution is to start with something other than the initial content you used in Infraworks, and to utilize a more complete starting database/model or even multiple layers of models/databases inside of infraworks before you export. This is more or less what the GIS2BIM package would do - read the same database that Infraworks read and create a Dynamo shape which translates to a Revit model.

What was your starting model in Infraworks?

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In Infraworks I used the Model builder so it was all done automatically.

Then I exported the building to Revit using the workflow described here

Thought that may be model builder. Infraworks bases its models on the open street map GIS repository, with the imagery coming from Bing Maps. Often times local municipalities have better data for both topography and buildings that you can leverage for massing, and since your going into Revit via navisworks I’m guessing you lose the texturing anyway.

This Linked In video gives a good how to utilize these other sources, including sketchup masses.

Once inside Revit the direct shape or family instance node will be your best bet. Best to start with a better source though.

I know this is an old topic but currently looking for similar solutions with Dynamo, and Navisworks model generated from an STL.

As far as the topo goes, this is pretty normal. You need to refine the topo surface in infraworks using satellite images that have a higher degree of accuracy. Otherwise you end up with issues like we see here. Also you are better off using something like civil3D to get your topo looking nice, but yes the direct topo from bing maps (which is where the original topo is pulled from) is highly inaccurate. Often you see water going up hills etc but after reworking the topo with a GIS file you will find it is rationalised and highly accurate depending on the accuracy of your GIS file.

Did you find a way for dynamo to generate the volumes of the buildings in the surrounding site for you??