Tips and Tricks – A Complex model in Autodesk Building Design Suite Ultimate

I thought I would share an interesting challenge I recently had for creating some complex geometry and being able to transfer this geometry both to Revit Structure and Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis Professional. I have used my own data just to verify and test the procedures required.

The software used within the Building Design Suite Ultimate package is:

Autodesk Inventor 2015
AutoCAD 2015
Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis Professional 2015
Autodesk Revit 2015

I modelled a Stadium within Autodesk Inventor and used the split command to create the various positions for the truss sections that I wanted to produce. The Inventor model is fully parametric and capable of change relatively quickly.

I then used the XEDGES command in AutoCAD to extract all the wireframe edges. The other option is to output the model to ACIS and then explode the geometry.

This model was then taken into Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis by opening the dwg file. The lines are automatically converted to bars. I then assigned the relevant members and the model was ready to design.

Finally you can then create the Revit model from the Robot model! A lot of Autodesk software used here but if you have the Building Design Suite Ultimate then this could be a viable workflow.