Recently I was asked to take an Inventor model into VR. Normally I would use VRed or 3DS Max interactive but after chatting to a colleague we thought let’s take it into Revit Live and see how it looks in there.
It was a very large model but non the less we fired up our “Beast” machine and started the process.
The first attempt did not have a good outcome.
Our thought process entered the BIM content environment in Inventor, Publish the assembly by selecting Export Building Components and save it as a Revit family (.rfa) file. We opened the file in Revit and it was sitting on its side. Oh, maaaaaan. It’s that whole Inventor Y-axis business!!
Ok second attempt. We changed the UCS in Inventor and exported it to an .rfa file. We brought it in (correct orientation this time) and then loaded it into a Revit project. The colors of the model were all wrong. Okay, so that is not going to work.
The third attempt was to export it out to a .dwg and modify the colors in AutoCAD. After changing my thousand object material I gave up. This was way too much work, there must be another way.
The fourth attempt was to take it into 3ds max interactive and then into Revit Live. After looking at the processors maxing out at 10 % and 4 hours being passed. I hit control, alt and delete and canned the process. Life is too short and we needed to find a quicker solution.
The fifth attempt was the winner. I went back to the BIM content environment and this time I shrinkwrapped the model. But looking at it, the glass didn’t look like glass. The material was not see through. GRR!!! I was just about to give up when I accidentally clicked on the Realistic view and what do you know. The glass was see-through. YES!!!
We quickly exported the model out to Revit and uploaded it to Revit Live.
The outcome was very good. Not as realistic as VRed or 3DS max interactive, but good enough for a walkthrough and a look inside.
Inventor models can be exported as BIM content to be used in a Revit model with other Revit content.
