Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Autodesk Memento - Cellphone Photogrammetry Experiment

One of the most important things in our world, today, is data. Being able to leverage data for efficiency in the field, client turnover, and documentation for future reference by our service department. I began thinking back to a post that I wrote earlier in September about Memento and how I leveraged images to recapture the google earth terrain (influenced from Arne Bjelland), and decided I would try to accomplish the same thing, but with images from one of our completed systems. So I took eighteen photographs, emailed them to myself, and then processed them through memento. Here are the results:

Boiler Board


Run #1: 18 Cellphone Images

Run #1: Processing Time about Five Minutes





Once this file has been loaded into Memento. Memento can then export this file as a .rcp file. This opens up in Autodesk's ReCap software and allows the user to tag with notes and document in recap for future reference. The user can save the file as a point cloud. In turn the user can import the point cloud to Revit for future reference. It's important to note that prior to loading to ReCap you will want to use the scaling tool in Memento to reference two points and to give it a dimension. This will scale the file accordingly and allow the file to be view-able in a point cloud format. After scaling it accordingly you can load it into ReCap.

Point Cloud that can be notated. These notes support attachments (at this point in time only images) and hyperlinks. Hopefully in the future they will allow pdf specifications.



Example of notations in edit mode. The preview box is much more eye friendly and doesn't obstruct the point cloud as bad.
After you've documented the image, or while someone else is documenting this point cloud in your office, you can import the point cloud into Revit and use it for referencing the pipe locations and equipment placement. We're intending on reverse engineering our prefabricated assemblies this way.

Section of the Point Cloud loaded into Revit and scaled accordingly for tracing/placing pipe and equipment.
3D Revit View (AutoCAD Underlays for placement and coordination of point cloud positioning)
The workflow will be something like this:

1.) Assemble the prefab assemblies in the warehouse.
2.) Scan the assemblies. (Take pictures of them)
3.) Process them with Memento.
4.) Scale the file in Memento.
5.) Export to .rcp
6.) Open in ReCap
7.) Note the equipment with installation manuals.
8.) Import the point cloud in Revit and build the assembly referencing the scanned images.

What's next?

Placing the equipment of course!

We create our Revit families and document them in Unifi. This allows us to reference specification data through the cloud and to ensure everyone is using the appropriate families.
We are able to log all of our families through Unifi, and as we complete a family we can upload it to Unifi, where it then becomes usable by everyone in the office. This family contains all the documentation and information that can then be referenced in our schedules accordingly.

Revit model referencing the cellphone image.
You can add additional images to clean up the 3D model that is generated. I will be uploading some samples of these in the future.



Friday, December 11, 2015

Dynamo - Folder Creation Module

The other day I was looking at ways to mass produce folders and now here you have a spreadsheet of values that create a series of folders! I'm aware this is also achievable through an excel macro, but I thought I would share Dynamo in a folder structure creation module! In this particular example I'm strictly referencing an excel spreadsheet and mapping each row to an initial directory specifier. The module cycles through each row and in turn creates a list of folders in the location!

You can also tie in additional columns to the the rows so that it feeds the description; however, it's important to note that in this case there are special characters in my excel list that will throw some errors in the folder structure without some error handling/exceptions.
Mass Folder Creation with Dynamo!

Friday, December 4, 2015

Dynamo - Specification File Writer/Specbook Writer

So after getting back from Autodesk University in Vegas this year I've been thinking a lot about data. What can I do to simplify some of our workflows, and how can I get our prefabrication assemblies to run the smoothest at Harvey's Plumbing and Heating. I was thinking about it all day and I finally came to a conclusion. "DYNAMO! I found it!"... sorry for the horrible pun... anyways I've decided I will embed file location paths from our network to our family files and write a script that can copy the files to and from a file location. This is fantastic because now all we have to do to get the information to the trades in the field is to simply place the families, and with all this amazing data to be able to send it seamlessly to the cloud! Here's the module. I intend to obviously add more to this, but for now it works perfectly from taking Revit Family files data paths and copying the placed nodes files to and from folder locations. PERFECT for ease of data transferring and folder creation in a360 Team.