BIM-Centered Workflows for Structural Analysis

TOMASZ FUDALA: As the industry moves from CAD to BIM, structural professionals have an opportunity to capitalize on more effective product delivery workflows, increase the productivity, and reduce rework waste and cost. We, at Autodesk, are prioritizing workflows and capabilities that would help prepare structural professionals both for the challenges of today, and the buildings of tomorrow. With that in mind, we are pleased to give you an introduction to our new BIM-Centered Workflows for Structural Analysis.

My name is Tomasz Fudala. I'm the Technical Marketing Manager for Structure at Autodesk. I have a structural engineering background, in my area of expertise at Autodesk include structural analysis and design, code checking, detail and game fabrication. I'm passionate about computational design with Dynamo, especially, how this technology can be used to automate engineering work.

I am joined today by my Autodesk colleague, Catalin Lang.

CATALIN LANG: Hi. I'm a Catalin Lang, former Autodesk employee, current Autodesk-- former Autodesk customer, current Autodesk employee, working construction field for about 22 years already, starting from junior unskilled worker, storekeeper, project coordinator, car designer, structural designer in the end, [? doing ?] Autodesk since 2014 as quality analyst, currently, the product owner of a team that developed the Revit [INAUDIBLE] modeling features, concentrating to connect instruction engineers to BIM environment using Revit as coordination between physical model and structural solution.

TOMASZ FUDALA: Before we begin, we need to show you our Safe Harbor Statement, in short. Our presentations at Autodesk University may contain forward-looking statements about our outlook, future results, and related assumptions, and total addressable markets, acquisitions, products, and product capabilities and strategies. The forward-looking statements made in these presentations are being made as of the time and date of their live presentation.

We disclaim any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Purchasing decisions should not be made based on these statements. Let's get started.

In this class, you will learn about a completely new approach to structural analytical modeling that was introduced in Revit 2023. This approach offers structural engineers more flexibility and control over their analytical modeling, particularly, for complex structures and, therefore, enables bi-directional workflows between Revit and analysis software. Moreover, you will learn how the new library-based steel connection design automation introduced in Revit 2023 enables you to design steel structures more quickly and accurately using predefined and easily customized rules maximizing results of structure analysis.

OK. Let's start with the new analytical model in Revit 2023. As more and more structural engineers connect to and embrace building information modeling BIM workflows, there is increasing demand for analytical collaboration in BIM. For many years-- for many years now, Autodesk Revit has offered features for structural analytical modeling.

But structural engineers often struggle to use them effectively. They have been looking for features that would give them more flexibility and control over their analytical models, especially, while modeling non-standard and complex structures. For example, engineers might want to adjust the position of a physical model easily without changing the geometry and positioning of the associated analytical model.

We know that engineers are looking to increase the analytical modeling productivity, while ensuring that their physical and analytical models are well-coordinated throughout the design process. To that end, Revit 2023 introduces a completely new approach to structural analytical modeling. We have totally reimagined the structural analytical modeling workflow with the goal of helping engineers use Revit to coordinate across structural physical and analytical models in the drive BIM-centered analysis workflows from there.

As before, you can leverage existing physical geometry into 2D and 3D views as context for the analytical model. The analytical model remains associated to the physical geometry, but is now independent, providing you with the benefits of speed and accuracy in model creation, while protecting the analytical model from unexpected changes.

Structural engineers can now create a model with analytical members and panels in the context of the physical model, and then decide what the physical analytical relation should be as they go elements by elements. The analytical elements are now fully parametric and associated with grids and labels, enabling you to control analytical model positioning using these items. When modeling analytical elements, you can now assign data, structure role, type, and profile shape, and define cross-section rotation, and specify how these elements should be analyzed.

To keep track of the relationships between physical and analytical elements, you can easily associate them to each other. Once this is done, associated elements can be easily found in the model using the highlight association feature. Now, I would like to show you a quick demo on how the analytical and physical models behave depending on how these models are created.

This is a sample structure where we have the physical and analytical models. The elements in each model have their counterparts defined. There is an association between them defined.

But this is a different kind of association that we had in the past. I call it, personally, a weak linking. The physical and analytical elements know about each other's existence, and they can exchange properties information so you can synchronize data between these models using Dynamo or the Revit API. But they will not influence each other when we start modifying the geometry.

If you are not happy about this new behavior and you actually like the previous approach where the analytical model followed their physical geometry, you can still create and modify your models this way. Currently, both models can use data, like I mentioned, grids and levels as a reference. So, for example, if you plan to move a physical column and it wants to have the analytical model follow that change, simply move a grid and both models will update the geometry accordingly.

And if you would like to move just the physical model and not-- do not want to make any updates to the analytical one, you can simply uncheck the move with grids property for the analytical nodes. Let's see what happens now when I have the same grid as you can-- as I move the same grid. As you can see, only the physical elements followed that grid, and my analytical elements remained unchanged, remained in the same position, in the same place.

The same applies to the opposite situation. You can quickly update the location of your analytical model without changing the position of associated physical objects due to their independence. This gives you much more flexibility when working on both models concurrently.

This new approach to structure analytical modeling enables you to create representations for any type of structure-- buildings, frames, pavilions, bridges, stairs, and more. You can create consistent analytical models that align with your preferred engineering approach. With modeling autonomy enabled by member and panel objects, the analytical model can represent not just structural elements but, also, generic objects, roofing structures, stairs, compound geometries, et cetera.

Revit 2023 also introduces new role-based structure analytical model automation. The new solution ensures that automatically created model should always be consistent and connected, eliminating the need for tedious corrections and end rework. This tool enables you to generate a structural analytical model automatically from selected physical geometry.

This is the analytical automation feature in the Revit UI. This functionality offers many options for customization, including analytical elements, prioritization for structure category, and connectivity tolerance. So as you can see, you may specify a tolerance for the distance between the analytical elements.

You can designate a first, second, and third priority elements hierarchy. This is useful, for example, when prioritizing column locations over BIM locations. First priority elements are the main elements, meaning, that second and third priority elements will snap to them. Likewise, third priority elements will snap to first and second priority elements.

This feature also allows you to create association between newly created analytical elements, and physical counterparts. You can also choose to have any analytical elements inherit the properties from associated physical elements, such as material, section type, and cross-section rotation. You can specify whether analytical opening should be created for selected floors and walls.

Finally, once the analytical model has been generated, it can be updated based on physical model changes. You can-- now, you can see in this example that the section profile of the physical element is exactly the same as its analytical model counterpart, as the physical model properties were inherited by the generated analytical model automatically.

The automation logic can be customized to specific product types, whether those buildings, roofing structures, bridges. Optionally, those who are skilled to use computational automation techniques can open up the automation logic and edit it in the convenient visual scripting environment of Dynamo.

The recognition of analytical node status has been significantly improved and helps now better determine analytical model quality. As far as the BIM model quality is considered, we can now control how analytical objects are associated with the physical counterparts, if needed. This helps track whether, for example, load bearing and other model elements are respectively represented or not by analytical objects.

CATALIN LANG: With the new analytical modeling approach comes with a new complete API. So as the analytical elements are completely dependent now, you are able to create and adjust their position without involving the physical counterparts. During the adjustment, the node connectivity can be disabled, and this option gives you more freedom in terms of adjustment operations.

The physical analytical relation can be also managed for API, as you can use this association to check which elements are already associated, verify the physical elements are-- if they are correctly represented in article form, or use the association to automate analytical model update based on the physical model changes, as in the previous slide.

TOMASZ FUDALA: Now, with the unleashed versatility for analytical module geometry in Revit through bi-directional workflows with analysis software enabled, as Revit eliminate its own model limitations and can capture geometrical edits made in other tools. And the link between the Revit 2023 and Robot Structural-- Robot Structural Analysis Professional 2023 software has been updated to reflect these changes that have been made to analytical modeling in Revit.

Structural engineers typically start a design process by interpreting architectural drawings, creating design documentation, and creating various analytical models. In this workflow, the structural model is created in Revit, and then sent from Revit to Robot Structural Analysis software where the structural analysis is performed. As you all know, elements of a building structure must be designed to ensure that they can resist applied loads and internal forces exerted in specific conditions.

Having internal forces in the Robot, you can run code checking of the structure to verify and design steel, concrete, timber elements, based on a wide variety of national and international codes. Once you have completed the structure analysis and design in Robot, this information can be sent to Revit to update the model and documentation, construction documentation. The new analytical model remains associated to the physical geometry, but it's now fully independent.

So having its own set of properties, such as section-- having its own set of properties, such as section type, material, et cetera. Therefore, when you update the Revit model using Version 2023, after the code design process in Robot, bringing information about updated cross-section into Revit, you will notice that the physical section types in the Revit model are not automatically updated. Only the analytical model section type properties are updated.

We are aware of this, and that this is not a problem, as we can leverage the fact both models know about their existence. So you can do an on-demand synchronization between these two models. This very simple Dynamo script can help you propagate, synchronize, cross-section information between the analytical and physical models automatically.

Let's see how it works in action. I have the same situation in this model as I have just described. The model has been updated by the Revit Robot link, and now my analytical elements have different section profiles than their physical counterparts. This can be identified by the elements properties in the Model Viewer or listing the analytical and physical elements side by side in the same schedule.

Another option is to run the Dynamo script, which would make a comparison of the models. And by using color coding, we can make it even more clear which elements have the same cross section shape and which do not. So let's run the script.

And in my example, the physical elements in red have different section profiles than the associated analytical ones, which means that these elements have the analytical model updated after the code checking phase in Robot. In addition, comments have been added to all physical elements.

The second script performs synchronization between models. In this case, the cross section properties of the analytical elements are propagated to their associated physical counterparts. Now, the models have been synchronized and the construction documentation has been updated accordingly.

Probably the most revolutionary capability when it comes to the BIN-centered workflows for structural analysis is the fact that, now, we can start modeling with analytical intent. As the analytical model is now completely autonomous, it allows you to initiate structure analysis workflows from Revit without any physical geometry.

Instead, you can start a new model from scratch and focus exclusively on the structural analysis aspects. Start modeling with analytical geometric, first, and simply add physical geometry when needed for the construction documentation and detailing phases. This workflow is especially well-suited and applicable to projects where an engineering requirements dictate the design.

As I already mentioned before, now in Revit, analytical elements are fully parametric and associated with grids and levels, enabling you to control analytical model positioning using these datums and others. You can also control analytical layouts through global parameters, combine analytical objects with groups, define analytical object dependencies through parameters.

This new capability enables engineering-driven, analysis-centric workflows directly from Revit. Let's bear in mind, this is just the beginning of our revolutionary investments and efforts in the analytical modeling and structure analysis. Caitlin.

CATALIN LANG: Yes. Starting with Revit 2023, you see we added new objects, new capabilities, and most important, structural engineers can automate and customize the model creation update using the physical model as context. In the near future, we plan to add new Dynamo nodes, among others, that will automate the model update file in the structural analysis feedback.

Also, some loads-- some loads are [? not ?] representation of some elements in the physical model. New powers will be added to these elements completing the definition workflow by automating the load combination process. In terms of physical analytical relationship, we plan to enhance association to enable the collaboration and quality control workflows. That implies more than one-to-one relation.

Regarding the modeling, more capabilities will be introduced as curve panel, vertical panel, and many others. Please visit our public roadmap page for more details.

TOMASZ FUDALA: OK, now let's talk about the library-based steel connection design automation features that are shipped with Revit 2023. Finding the optimal sizes for the structural elements is not trivial. It is so time-consuming to come up with good steel connections for every new design.

Imagine the tools that were out there about a decade ago. This connected across design and modeling phases. Work sharing was in its early days, and there was no proper BIM solution that could have embedded all the details that engineers must handle in their minds.

Now, with Revit 2023, you have access to new library-based steel connection design automation features. These tools will help structural engineers working with typical steel buildings work faster and more precisely, enabling them to spend their time on more valuable tasks.

Structural engineers and fabricators can blend their own, specific rule into libraries of connections which will serve as the single source of information for all new projects. With Revit 2023, you will find sample libraries of steel connection pipes configured according to commonly-used engineering standards.

These have embedded associations between the connections proposed by the tables from the standards, the steel profiles to which they fit, and the ranges of compatibility member end forces. Single or double angles, shear end plates, seated connections, column splices, base plates, and many more typical connections like these are included in various Revit 2023 content packs and available via your Autodesk Account Portal or the Autodesk Knowledge Network.

Currently, at this moment, we provided libraries-- three libraries. There is American Library, British, and German library. But no worries if you don't see libraries that would be valid in your country.

You can take the libraries shipped by Autodesk and duplicate or edit existing connection times to expand and customize your own. The associate connections with profile sizes is meant to be a universal tool for all engineers to express the rules they need to respect for each steel connection type. And once saved in libraries, they can be reused across projects, saving countless hours.

Imagine how easy it is to create the design intent model with steel connections when you can place off-the-shelf connections in the model automatically. Once libraries have been defined, the next steps of connection automation enable a simple connected workflow.

Start from your new Revit Design Intent Model, then transfer it to Robot Structural Analysis Professional or another analysis of that can exchange analysis results with Revit to perform the structure analysis. And then bring it back to Revit where our out of the box rules read the results, look into your preferred libraries, and match the intersections of steel elements with compatible configurations of connections automatically modeling the steel connection types.

To facilitate easy rules management, we created dedicated rules for each of the typical kinds of connections found in our sample libraries. For example, this reduces the risk of accidentally placing end plates with four rows of bolt instead of five, as our automation mechanisms check the actual shear force from the indicated load combination against the limits defined for each connection type and will automatically place one capable of resisting that force.

Just in case you may think performance would become an issue when dealing with so many connections, it's worth saying that, in Revit 2023, the overall performance of navigation in all views has been improved with benchmark tests reporting an average improvement of 35 for more than 100 effective test cases. Moreover, the analytical model in the Revit is now created on-demand when needed. It's total independent, which means creating and editing detailed models with steel connections is up to 50% faster.

Let's see a quick demo of this functionality. This is a building structure with structure analysis results available. You may use the member end forces dialog to specify internal process and movement [? spool ?] steel connections. Your model can also use structure analysis results imported into Revit from Robot or third-party tools.

And, like I said, now in the Revit, sample rules are provided for placing steel connections based on predefined ranges of applicability. These are found in the Steel Connection Automation Player. So open that player and simply search for by ranges to filter out those that make use of their ranges of applicability.

Then set up input parameters, and click Run, just like that. An important fact to remember is that all structural members can leverage information stored inside analytical elements. Rules for each type of steel connection are used to place them based on relevant criteria, such as profile sizes, steel grades, and capable internal forces.

These rules work in tandem with predefined libraries of connections. These are Revit files, extra Revit files, containing the connection types, design geometry, parameters, and associated ranges of applicability to ensure connections are selected appropriately.

Since connections can now be placed much faster, highly-detailed design models with connections can be created quicker, too. This empowers engineers to create estimates faster and more accurately before submitting their designs for tender, increasing daily competitiveness. This gives you more time to iterate on the design itself by reducing the tedious work of modeling connections, steel connections.

Constructability can be assessed early, as well. Once connections are modeled, one can easily do a cross-check using Autodesk BIM Collaborate. This helps ensure that the design process is headed in the right direction from the start, potentially saving significant rework over a traditional workflow.

Today, you have seen new features introduced in Revit 2023 that support BIM-centered workflows for structure analysis. We have explored new Revit analytical model capabilities and the library-based steel connection design automation. These Autodesk BIM tools and workflows are all part of our broader portfolio for structures.

As you have seen and heard, Autodesk is continually making investments in structural analysis workflows. These tools are designed to work together in a BIM process to give you a more seamless, connected workflow as your structural projects move from one phase to the next. I would like to thank you very much for being with us today. If you like this class, please, please click Recommend.