Exceptional Autodesk GIS Product Knowledge • Outstanding Experience in Infrastructure Industry Integration with Business Systems • Focus on Asset Management • Infrastructure Design www.brockwellit.com Adding Revit Models into ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online Introduction In this document you can find the steps to add a Revit model into ArcGIS Pro Project and later to publish it into ArcGIS Online. ArcGIS Pro, since the most recent 2.2 version, offers direct reading capabilities for Autodesk Revit so that BIM information can be brought into the ArcGIS platform’s workflows. With this added feature, an entire BIM model can now be visualized in a geographic context, providing more transparency to GIS users of what is inside a BIM model. It will also help to create a deeper understanding of infrastructure in the larger context of both constructed and natural environments, thus expanding the level of information that Smart cites, AEC companies, and others can access. Though ArcGIS Online can’t read a Revit Model yet, with a simple conversion in ArcGIS Pro, layers of the model can easily be published into a scene in ArcGIS Online. These steps are detailed in this whitepaper. To be able to add the Revit model into ArcGIS Pro, the Revit model has to have a coordinate system assigned using the Plugin for Revit. After these steps are complete, you will have with your Revit file a .prj file:
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Exceptional Autodesk GIS Product Knowledge • Outstanding Experience in Infrastructure Industry
Integration with Business Systems • Focus on Asset Management • Infrastructure Design
www.brockwellit.com
Adding Revit Models into ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online
Introduction
In this document you can find the steps to add a Revit model into ArcGIS Pro Project and later to publish it into ArcGIS Online.
ArcGIS Pro, since the most recent 2.2 version, offers direct reading capabilities for Autodesk Revit so that BIM information can be brought into the ArcGIS platform’s workflows. With this added feature, an entire BIM model can now be visualized in a geographic context, providing more transparency to GIS users of what is inside a BIM model. It will also help to create a deeper understanding of infrastructure in the larger context of both constructed and natural environments, thus expanding the level of information that Smart cites, AEC companies, and others can access.
Though ArcGIS Online can’t read a Revit Model yet, with a simple conversion in ArcGIS Pro, layers of the model can easily be published into a scene in ArcGIS Online. These steps are detailed in this whitepaper.
To be able to add the Revit model into ArcGIS Pro, the Revit model has to have a coordinate system assigned using the Plugin for Revit. After these steps are complete, you will have with your Revit file a .prj file:
Exceptional Autodesk GIS Product Knowledge • Outstanding Experience in Infrastructure Industry
Integration with Business Systems • Focus on Asset Management • Infrastructure Design
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2. C. Alternatively, you can copy the files into a project subdirectory, and then the files will be available from the ArcGIS Catalog, from where you can drag and drop them into the Content Palette.
3. Once the model shows up in the explorer, right click to zoom to its location.
Note: you might need to uncheck the Word Elevation if the model is not in the correct Z.
Exceptional Autodesk GIS Product Knowledge • Outstanding Experience in Infrastructure Industry
Integration with Business Systems • Focus on Asset Management • Infrastructure Design
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Select the layer that you want to convert into a Feature Class and the name that you want to assign to the new Feature Class. Also specify one of the attributes as Grouping Field.
Then press Run.
When this process is complete, the new Feature Class will be added into the Content Panel. If you turn off your Revit layer you will be able to see it:
6. To publish the new Feature Class to ArcGIS Online, you will need to generate a .slpk file. To do this we need to run from the Geoprocessing the Create Scene Layer Package (Geoprocessing>Data Management Tools>Package).
Then Select the Feature Class that you want to Publish, the Name and the location of the .slpk file, and the output coordinate system where the layer will be displayed in the Scene in ArcGIS Online.
Exceptional Autodesk GIS Product Knowledge • Outstanding Experience in Infrastructure Industry
Integration with Business Systems • Focus on Asset Management • Infrastructure Design
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Conclusion
It’s interesting to look at this in the context of buildingSMART and the IFC standards. In previous versions of Revit and ArcGIS Pro, users would perform this task with IFC as the intermediate format. Users would export from Revit to IFC; convert IFC to a geodatabase with multi-patch geometry, possibly using FME; add the geodatabase to your scene.
Now, many of the features of the IFC standard have been hidden from the user, allowing Revit files to be imported directly into Scenes.
As IFC extends to horizontal infrastructure with the IFC Alignment initiative, interoperability between engineering and GIS workflows will become increasingly easy to implement, allowing engineering data to be more widely shared in the broader context of the environmental, political, and economic geography of the site.
Brockwell IT is working actively with Esri and Autodesk to ensure that the building is in the right location and at the correct scale, effectively allowing the Revit model for a building to be dropped into a scene.
