Tag Archives: Vasari

Vasari 2.5

So I was waiting to post about Vasri 2.5 until it was officially released, well that happened today.  For those of you who haven’t downloaded Vasari yet or know what it is I highly suggest you do it.  Vasari is based on Revit and allows users to create masses, adaptive components and curtain panel by patterns.  But that is just the beginning users can also do early analysis on the masses including: wind analysis, solar radiation plus energy and carbon analysis.  All of which are extremely helpful in the early conceptual design of a project.  Once the final decisions are made the Vasari file can simply be brought into Revit and developed further.  Release 2.5 adds Editable perspective views, Improved automatic zoning for energy models and New extrude face tool. 

Download and read the information here

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Vasari/enu/TP25/Help/0000-New_in_P0

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Vasari/enu/TP25

or visit http://projectvasari.com/ for discussion forums and other items.

Space Frame Panel by Pattern

In a previous post I added a curtain panel by pattern to a mass family, this family was set up to be a space frame.

In this post I will get into how this family was created by using the curtain panel pattern based (CPPB) family template.  With any CPPB family it is crucial to pay attention to the workplanes that are being used, most of the times these will either be points or reference lines.  My first few attempts at CPPB families I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have and struggled getting the results that were needed, by paying attention to that little detail would have saved a ton of headaches.

When a CPPB family is open there will be some default ref lines and adaptive points, depending on what the tile pattern grid is set to will determine how many of each there are.  By default it starts with Rectangle, if a different pattern is needed then select the perimeter of the blue grid on the screen and change it in the type selector.

In the space frame family Rectangle is what I needed, so no changes were necessary.  The first thing that was required with this family were some reference points.  These reference points need to be related to the Adaptive points, to do this the workplane of each adaptive point must be selected before placing the ref points.

Once the workplane is set place the ref point directly ontop of the adaptive point, do this for all four corners, or adaptive points.  One that is done select the ref points that have been placed (filter is a great tool for this) and  add a parameter for the offset property.

The end result should look like this…

The next step was to draw a reference line from point to point.  The critical step in this is to make sure the 3D snapping is turned on while selecting the the reference points.

Next draw another ref line between the two new ref points.  Again making sure that 3D snapping is turned on.  Add another ref point to the middle of this line.  Draw 4 new ref planes from the corners to this ref point. 

Now that the rig is done m1ake sure to flex it, move the adaptive points up and down, also select the tile pattern grid and change the properties of the horizontal and vertical spacing.  At this point in time this rig could be applied to a mass, although nothing will be displayed since only reference objects have been used. 

Now sweeps will be needed to represent the frame itself, this can be done in many different ways, this post is just going to use model lines swept along the ref-planes. To do this I will keep making one of the ref-points my workplane then draw a circle on that plane (paramatize as needed), select the circle and the appropriate ref-planes, then select create form.

 Note:  When a sweep follows only a single path, and there are parameters assigned to the shape, the shape can vary along the path.  For these instances select the sweep and select the Lock Profile button.

Please post any questions or comments if you have any.

 

 

 

 

 

Parametric Massing with Ellipses

The BIM TroubleMaker posted about making a parametric ellipsoid in Revit/ Vasari and Zach Kron posted his version of this.  It was great timing as I was doing a comparison take on a similar type issue.  Dezi was creating an elliptical shaped form in Rhino/Grasshopper that could represent an arena or stadium for her company and I thought I would do something similar in Vasari at the same time so we could compare.

I started with a generic adaptive component family, and created an ellipse family similar to the one Zach had shown.

I then loaded that into a mass family.  In the mass family I created two splines, one on the XZ axis and one on the YZ plane.  To create the splines I used Reference Points hosted to the two different vertical ref planes. I then used Spline by points to create the splines. I then created a vertical reference line at the intersection of the two reference planes.

When placing the ellipse family I hosted it to it to the vertical reference line created earlier.  I then selected the placement points of the ellipse and picked the splines as new hosts.  To copy the ellipse up I selected the adaptive point at the center of the ellipse.   After copying that family up a few times I had the frame work for my mass building shape.

I decided that it would be nice to use the Vasari Sliders to adjust the mass so I added parameters to the reference points that made up the splines.

Once this was finished I created a Curtain Panel Pattern Based family that kind of represented a space frame, loaded that in to the mass and divided the surface.  Another post on this later…

That is what I came up with.

I quickly changed the ellipse shape to a rectangle but kept all the same parameters, loaded that into the mass family and changed every other family to a rectangle added my space frame pattern to only a portion of the mass and came up with this shape…

Ran the wind loads from Vasari onto the entire mass and got this…

Vasari Sliders part 2

I briefly posted about the Vasari Sliders earlier this month letting everyone know they were available for download again.  Well they have updated them and fixed some minor bugs, and added some nice features.

Recent Updates 
January 2012:
1.Whole number increment snaps while sliding
2.Tooltip displays current slider value during drag
3.Angle parameters display as degrees
4.Bug fixes for family editing

 

Known Issues
•Reporting Parameters and formula-driven parameters will appear as sliders, even though they are not editable.
 

I was really happy to see the whole number increment snaps.  This is one thing that I was complaining about and when I was doing a demo for a client they seemed to have the same issue as I did.  I really like the sliders and I am waiting for someone to post a hack so I can add them inside Revit as well.

Vasari Load Family

While playing back and forth with Revit and Vasari this weekend I noticed a small little quirk (at least for me it’s a quirk).  Vasari doesn’t have an Insert tab on the Ribbon, so there isn’t a way to load a family into the current file.  You have to open the file and then hit “Load into Project”.  This is frustrating to me because in Vasari pretty much everything I am doing is a nested family.   I do know that I could always drag and drop the files from Windows Explorer but for me it was easier to the majority of the work in Revit and then open Vasari when I needed specific tools from it.  If I am missing the button or there is another way I would love to know.