Monday, March 24, 2014

Errors when xporting elements from Revit to FEM-Design


Why some elements are not exported from Revit to FEM-Design?

There are two main reasons why some elements are not exported from Revit to FEM-Design:

  • lack of structural material assigned to the element,
  • analytical model is not enabled for the element.
If some elements are not exported, user will be notified about it along with the information of element type and reason why the export failed. In the export dialog user can see a list of all errors. To see the detailed report of exported / not exported elements, one can choose to see the Export Report. Both are shown in the example below:


Lack of analytical model

The first group of errors is about walls that were not exported due to lack of analytical material. You can double click on the warning, and if your model has any open view where the element can be shown, you will be redirected to it. Otherwise, use another method to localize the element mentioned in the warning. 

Below you can see that the three walls listed in the Export Report, do not have analytical model enabled and only physical model is visible. To enable the analytical model, make sure the instance parameter call Enable Analytical Model is checked.


Lack of structural material assigned to en element

The second group of error in the example is about wall foundations that were not exported due to lack of structural material. Let us look closer on those elements. 

Select the physical elements listed in the error messages and check the Structural Material parameter. Remember that for some of the elements the Structural Material is an Instance parameter, and for some elements it is a Type parameter. In case of Wall Foundation it is a Type parameter. As it is shown in the figure below, the Structural Material is set to be <By Category> and that is not a valid material. 


Click on the while field next to <By Category> to display the small square button. Click on it to be redirected to the Material Library.


Select a valid material and press OK.


The chosen material will now appear as the Structural Material parameter.