My firm links in mechanical models into our electrical projects. Then we “connect” to them by placing electrical connectors in the same spot on the family and wiring to them.
My question: Is it technically possible to have Dynamo “automatically” place electrical connectors on the mechanical equipment linked in from another model?
Should be possible. Below are my thought s for the beginning at least.
I thought it sounded possible, but I’m more or an expert in Access than Dynamo. If anyone has further suggestions please let me know. I’m going to further review how to do it today and ideally work up a solution (assuming it can be done?) within the next week.
Thanks!
Are you editing the families and placing connectors (which are only available in the family editor) or placing “empty geometry” face based electrical devices within the project environment? if you are doing the former (family editing) I am not sure if Dynamo will help you much at this point. But if you are placing hosted “connector families” in the project environment, then yes, Dynamo can do that. You may not find many examples on here of that though. If you read between the lines though, there are many similar examples on the forum (placing baseplates on the bottom of columns, placing lights in ceilings, placing furniture on floors, placing doors in walls, etc). Just think of it generically as placing a hosted thing on a host, not placing a connector on a mech unit.
You have it right Ben, I have a connector family (which happens to have a connector as part of the family). We are trying to not duplicate the mechanical equipment in both our Revit models (Mechanical and Electrical), instead we are interested in placing connectors at a location on the equipment. Thus giving our electrical team a location to wire to and something within their model to schedule. Technically their current process really isn’t that much work, but I wanted to use it as a proof of concept for our team and get them thinking creatively toward tasks that could be automated.
I actually thought the big problem would be the fact the data (equipment) is linked into the model, I wasn’t (and I’m still not) sure how Dynamo would handle it.
Download the SteamNodes package. There’s a node called Element.GetFromLinkedFile. This will allow you to get the elements, geometry, position, etc of all elements of a certain category if you want from a linked model.
Downloading as I type this. Thanks for your help Ben, it’s appreciated.