IMPORTANT: In order to complete the following steps, you will need to have at least a Project Editor role on the related HoloBuilder project and the project needs to have an active license.
In order to export your Revit viewpoints as Location Markers for your sheets on HoloBuilder, make sure to have the latest HoloBuilder Add-In for Autodesk® Revit® installed correctly. To confirm the successful installation, check for the HoloBuilder toolset in the “Add-Ins” section in your Revit working environment.
Export your viewpoints as Location Markers only to an existing HoloBuilder project only containing the floorplans automatically for all rooms defined in the 3D model in Revit.
Automatically name the Location Markers according to the defined room names in your 3D model - no post-editing required.
Map your Revit floor plans with the plans used in HoloBuilder to keep using these.
Uploading Location Markers of your 3D model viewpoints for easy JobWalk planning from Autodesk® Revit® (no sheet/no 360 renderings exported)
There are 3 steps to create and upload Location Markers for an existing HoloBuilder project only containing the sheets for the JobWalk planning from Revit:
Switch to the sheet view: Open the in Revit already available 2D Floor Plans of your 3D model to later place the viewpoint locations on - jump to section.
Add 360 viewpoints: Set the locations on the sheet view to determining where you want to place the Location Markers for future capturing on the 2D floor plans in Revit - create each location manually or generate them automatically - jump to section.
Link to HoloBuilder Sheet: Map the 2D floor plan from the Revit model to the floor plan in your HoloBuilder project - jump to section.
Export to HoloBuilder: Upload the sheets and Location Markers to HoloBuilder as a new project - jump to section.
Optional - View/edit project in HoloBuilder: Edit, share, and view your project in the web editor, web viewer, or with the JobWalk app, e.g. to add on-site progress documentation -jump to section.
Step 1: Switch to the sheet view
Open the 3D model in Revit.
In the model, open the 2D floor plan of a floor
Note: These 2D floor plans will also be used in the HoloBuilder project as sheets.
Step 2: Generate the 360 viewpoints for the Location Markers
The Revit viewpoints can be generated automatically for each defined room of the 3D model. In addition to this option of automatically creating viewpoints, it is quite useful to add extra custom viewpoints, e.g. for larger rooms.
1. Select the tab ‘Add-Ins’ at the top.
2. In the HoloBuilder section, click the button ‘Add 360 Viewpoint.
3. A dialog box opens. Choose the option for your needs:
‘Automatically place views in all rooms’ - This option will automatically generate the viewpoints for all defined rooms of the selected 2D floorplan of the 3D model. The viewpoints will be automatically placed in the middle of the defined room boundaries for each room.
Note: If needed, the viewpoints can be manually dragged to a different position in Revit or later as Location Marker in HoloBuilder.
Optional: Choose whether you want to automatically name all viewpoints according to the in the 3D model predefined room names.
Note: This will save you time later in HoloBuilder as all your waypoints will already be correctly named (according to the names of the rooms in your 3D model in Revit).
'Start manual placement (PRESS ESC to exit) - This option allows you to manually place the viewpoints for generating the Location Marker positions on your 2D floor plan. You will need to select each location individually.
Note: This is a nice addition to the automatic viewpoint placement, however, it can also be used as a standalone solution without prior automatic viewpoint placement.
4a. Option 1: Select ‘Automatically place views in all rooms’ - no further steps are required.
Select this option to have the add-in create a 360 view for each defined room on the sheet.
The views will be created automatically and placed on the sheet accordingly.
Once all views have been created, you can find the list in the Project Browser panel. All 360 views of a sheet are listed below the sheet under 3D Views.
Depending on the number of rooms, your sheet has, this process can take a while to create the 360 views.
4b. Option 2: Select ‘Start manual placement (Press ESC to exit)’
Select this option to determine each location for individual 360 views manually.
On the 2D sheet, click each location you want to be captured as 360 view. No visible marker will be placed on the sheet. You can check the locations afterward if you are unsure about them (see step 7 below).
Each newly captured 360 view will be listed directly in the Project Browser panel below the selected sheet under 3D Views (if the option ‘Automatically resize crop-box of active view to include all rooms’ is selected).
When all 360 views have been placed for this sheet, leave the editing mode by hitting ‘ESC’.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for any further floor plans you want to place Location Markers for future JobWalks on.
7. Optional: Check the locations for your 360 views by enabling the camera marker on the sheet.
Right-click a 360 viewpoint in the Project Browser panel to view the location of the camera on the floor plan.
Select ‘Show camera’ from the menu.
The location of the 360 viewpoints in the 3D model will be marked with a pink camera icon. Note: The marker icon for the camera might differ depending on your Revit version.
8. Optional: Edit viewpoints in Revit before uploading to HoloBuilder:
E.g.
Rename views by right-clicking the image in the Project Browser panel and selecting ‘Rename…’.
Remove 360 views so that they won’t be exported to the HoloBuilder project.
Note: You can always add more (manual) viewpoints if needed (see steps 1-5 above).
Step 3: Link the floor plans
The Revit viewpoints can be generated automatically for each existing Location Marker in your HoloBuilder project. For this, the floor plan in HoloBuilder and the floor plan in Revit need to be linked:
1. Select the tab ‘Add-Ins’ at the top.
2. In the HoloBuilder section, click the button ‘Link to HoloBuilder sheet'.
3. A dialog box opens. Proceed with 'Continue'.
4. Select the 2D floor plan in the ' FloorPlan' folder from your Revit model that you want to link to your HoloBuilder project.
5. The HoloBuilder Uploader starts - On the lefthand side, choose the project you want to link the Revit sheet to.
Note: Make sure to log in to your account and that the project you want to link to has an active license. You can log in or switch your account in the upper right corner.
6. When the project was selected, the available sheets in the HoloBuilder project will show on the right side. Choose the floor plan the 2D Revit plan should get linked to.
7. Map the 2D Revit floor plan with the selected sheet of your HoloBuilder project.
Use the 2-point-alignment (recommended): Select one point on the first and then the second sheet, and then a second point on the first and then the second sheet to automatically map the floor plans. Proceed with 'NEXT' to use this option and follow the instructions.
Manually align the sheets: Alternatively, you can choose 'skip' to move to the manual alignment of the sheets where you can scale, rotate and move the 2 sheets until their outlines are mapped correctly.
8. Confirm the mapping in the 'manual alignment' view - use the transparency scale to check on how the sheets are aligned. Drag and scale the top sheet to adjust.
Note: The sheet from HoloBuilder is usually on top being the one that gets scaled and adjusted.
Note: No viewpoints will be imported as the HoloBuilder does not have any location marker or waypoints yet - you will only use the locations generated in Revit in the previous step (2).
Step 4: Export as HoloBuilder project
Once you generated all viewpoints for the selected 2D sheets of your 3D model, you can export it as a HoloBuilder project. The export will NOT include the 2D floor plans ONLY the set viewpoints as Location Marker flags in HoloBuilder.
To export the project to HoloBuilder:
1. In the HoloBuilder menu, click the ‘Export to HoloBuilder’ button to trigger the upload.
2. Configure the "Upload settings".
"Export only the currently active plan view as a sheet (skip sheet selection)"
Optional: If you only plan to export the currently selected floor plan with its renderings, tick this option.
If you want to export all sheets of the model, untick it."Override visual style of all 360 views to 'Consistent colors' "
Recommended: (Not relevant for Location Marker export only) Get a consistent view of your 360 renderings by choosing this option - untick to have personal settings applied for the exported renderings in HoloBuilder."Export only Location Marker instead of the rendering of the 360 views"
Must: Tick to NOT also export the 360 renderings as we only want to have the markers for the locations on the floorplans."Adjust visual style of active sheet to Hidden Line (Improved Performance)"
Recommended: Get better performance for upload, loading, and visualization by using this setting for your exported floor plans.
3. In the settings pop-up, proceed with "Select Views to export".
4. Checkmark the 2D floor plans that you would like to export.
Note: This step gets skipped if you selected "Export only the currently active plan view as a sheet (skip sheet selection)".
5. Select which 360 views to export as Location Markers with your floor plan(s).
Choose either "Select all" or selective viewpoints.
6. Select "Next" to proceed to the next step for exporting your project.
7. The HoloBuilder Uploader opens. Choose whether you want to upload the 360 renderings as new images on your HoloBuilder project or replace previous 360 renderings.
Set a new label to categorize your 360 Revit renderings on HoloBuilder or use a previous label to replace a previously uploaded set of renderings.
Note: The labels will be used to identify your renderings later in the TimeTravel menu of your HoloBuilder project. You can use them to e.g. highlight different time iterations/progress captures of your renders, different views for the same position like 'above the ceiling', etc.
8. The project upload starts - The processing of the project for export might take a few minutes depending on the number of renderings and floorplans in your project.
9. The finished HoloBuilder project will be opened in your browser after the upload is done. - "Close" the HoloBuilder Uploader or directly "Return to Revit".
NOTE: Repeat the above steps for any additional sheets in your HoloBuilder project.
Step 5: Optional - Edit the project
A HoloBuilder project created from Autodesk Revit export can be edited as any other project in HoloBuilder with both, the web editor as well as the JobWalk app. Simply log into your HoloBuilder account [COM or EU] to access the project on the web or download it to your mobile device to continue capturing progress with the JobWalk App.
View the HoloBuilder project
Once the upload of the exported Revit project was completed, the project will automatically open in a new browser tab. View and navigate the project through the waypoints on the sheets or the Project Panel on the left side of the screen.
Once you have added the TimeTravel scenes, you can also use SplitScreen to compare your 360° rendering from Revit with the real-life captures of the site.