By Justin Doughty
There are many tools and methods to create Revit models from Point Cloud Data, however one of the most Revit-user friendly pieces of software I have used recently, is the add-on Faro PointSense for Revit. This gives you a wide variety of tools in dedicated PointSense ribbon in Revit and works well with day to day Revit commands. Its ability to automatically detect and place a correctly sized family in relation to the point cloud is very impressive.
Below is a quick overview of some of the basic commands and how they can be used to create Revit elements from a point cloud.
The first step should be to create Revit Levels from the point cloud, you need to be in an elevation view or similar, to extract the correct levels.
Go to the PointSense tab>VirtuSurv Tools>Level. Click a point on the point cloud that represents a known level. This will automatically create a “Floor_” Revit level and corresponding Floor Plan View:
To speed up creating elements, a cleaned processed image is created from the point cloud. To do this, go to the PointSense tab>Object Tools>Prepare Point Cloud. Set your options then Start. Once processed, this view can be inserted:
To create walls, then go to the PointSense tab>Object Tools>Fit Wall. Click 2 points, start and end, between the lines of the wall, this will bring up the Detected wall and give you options for placement.
The option “Insert Selected Type with Adjustment” will automatically create a wall in the detected location with the correct thickness:
The next step is to tidy up the walls created in the previous step. Go to PointSense tab>Alignment>Align Walls. Select the walls in the view and click finish.
In the dialogue, specify parameters for wall angles or joins, and click OK. This will join and re-orientate your walls automatically:
Creating Windows and Doors is really simple, these are both placed in the same way. In a section or 3D view, go to the PointSense tab>VirtuSurv Tools>Door (or Window)
Click 2-4 points on the point cloud, and a door will be placed in this position:
So with these few simple commands in Revit, we can get the result shown below:
In Future blogs, I will be looking into some of the other great features of Faro PointSense for Revit.
Sample point cloud data can be found on the Autodesk site below:
More information on Faro PointSense for Revit can be found at the Faro site below: