ClimateStudio + Revit?

Misha, I tried out the new Revit-to-Rhino ClimateStudio workflow on a rather complicated 200k building and it was a huge improvement over our previous techniques (via DWG, Rhino.Inside Revit). The main improvements to the Revit-to-Rhino workflow were: (1) all the glazing was brought in as single-layer surfaces with correctly oriented normals, (2) geometry was placed on layers with reasonably assigned materials, and (3) rooms/areas were brought in as surfaces that can be used for the analysis grids (tagged with the room name/number!). Those steps always added up to a lot of extra work in the past. Work I still had to do: separating out interior & exterior glazing to apply the correct glazing materials, separating out exterior glazing that had operable shades so those shades could be added to the simulation, and separating out regularly occupied rooms/areas for the analysis. That study was more of a later-stage compliance and LEED credit check on a well-developed model, so I cannot say if ClimateStudio is ideal for early, iterative Revit modeling. However, I find I learn so much more about daylighting and glare via ClimateStudio than I do with Cove.tool.

Hi Chris! I would love to hear more about the workflow you’re describing, especifically how to bring in the glazing as a single surface.  I often import models for ClimateStudio from Revit to Rhino as ACIS solids. All the geometry comes in clean and in the right layers no matter how large or complicated the model is. But glazing comes in as a six-sided element, just as the rest of the Revit elements.  Are you available for a quick chat? Thanks! hzambrano@mahlum.com  

Hi Helena -- welcome back! I would be happy to have a chat, but for the benefit of anyone else reading this thread, Misha and I are discussing an entirely new feature of ClimateStudio that includes a small Revit plugin to export geometry that can be more readily imported by the ClimateStudio software in Rhino, with some of the afore-mentioned improvements over the ACIS solids workflow.  This new feature is in ClimateStudio version 1.7, which is currently only a release candidate: from within Rhino, type "CSVersion" and you should get a link to the release candidate if you want to try it out. The workflow is described on the ClimateStudio documentation site:   https://climatestudiodocs.com/docs/revitExporter.html   https://climatestudiodocs.com/docs/revitImporter.html   https://climatestudiodocs.com/docs/revitImportTroubleShoot.html

Misha, getting usable thermal model geometry out of Revit does seem to be on a whole new level of difficulty. Though I have not tried it myself, Pollination seems to have some tools to do this. The Pollination Revit plugin (commercial product, not free) can export to Honeybee JSON, which is a format that the Ladybug tools (like Honeybee, of course!) can use directly. Pollination is by the same developers as Ladybug/Honeybee, but to my understanding is focused more on workflows. If anyone has tried out Pollination, I would love to hear about your use cases. https://www.pollination.cloud/blog/getting-a-clean-analytical-model-from-revit-is-possible