Revit Plug-in Overview

The BIMHawk Revit Plug-in automatically and instantly binds the set of parameters defined within a CIBSE Product Data Template (PDT) to a Revit Family or Project. When binding the parameters to a family the Plug-in will also include the correct IFC export category.

 

Installing the Revit Plug-in

The BIMHawk Installer & Updater requires:

If the above component (or a later version) is already installed on your system you can run the BIMHawk Installer (If using Revit 2019 or later .NET 4.7 will already be installed). If you only have an older version of .NET installed you can either update .NET [update .NET] or install the BIMHawk plugin manually by downloading the respective .zip file below and following the simple instructions in the readme.txt file included in the archive.

ClickOnce          
Revit 2020
Manual Install
Revit 2019
Manual Install
Revit 2018
Manual Install
Revit 2017
Manual Install
BimHawk Installer/Updater        

 

Using the Revit Plug-in

Once installed the BIMHawk Plug-in will add a new Ribbon Bar (as below) within Revit. (Note: At present the number of bimhawk utilities are limited, more features will be added in future updates.

Clicking the "Bind CIBSE PDT Parameters" icon will present you with a dialoggue box listing the published PDTs available on the BIMHawk System.

Select the desired Product Data Template from the List and Click the "Select PDT" button.

If the document you are currently working with is a Revit Family the PDT parameters will be instantly bound to the object. The BIMHawk Plug-in will:

If the current document is a Revit Project, the Plug-in will prompt you to confirm whether it should bind the parameters as Project Parameters.

If you select the "No" option the function will be cancelled. If you select the the "Yes" option you will be prompted as to which Revit Categories you would like the Parameters to be bound to. (Your selections can be changed afterwards using the standard Revit editing functions)

 

Additional Parameters Added to Families by BIMHawk

If the current document is a Revit Family the following three parameters will be automatically added by the BIMHawk plugin:

  1. IFCExportAs
  2. IFCExportType
  3. Uniclass2015

BIMHawk will populate the parameters with data taken form the PDT definition. This data will be written to the parameters 'formula' field to avoid users inadvertantly editing it.

 

BIMHawk Plugin Configuration Settings

The BIMHawk plugin has a number of configuration options that control how it behaves when binding parameters to a family object. The options are only applicable when the family is already using parameters that have the same names as those defined in the CIBSE Product Data Template. This feature also allows users to update existing Revit Family Libraries to the PDT standard. It is extremely useful for standardising Shared Parameter GUID's accross familily libraries that have been created by various authors using different Shared Parameter files.

Shared Parameters cannot be switched (ie: their GUID's changed) if the existing and new parameters have different data types. In this scenario the BIMHawk Revit plugin can either delete or rename the existing parameter. An additional option to delete only if the parameter does not contain any information is also available. Renamed parameters are prefixed with "Renamed_".

In Revit parameter names are case sensitive. The case insensitive match option would for example replace a parameter named "IFCExportAs" with "IfcExportAs". It is possible (although highly unlikely) that many variations of this parameter name could exist using different combinations of upper and lower case characters. If this was the case the plugin would operate on the first match is finds.

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