Revit Sustainability Design and General Productivity tools

A while back we were talking to a company that is extremely active in sustainable design and does 100% of their work in Revit. They uses it extensively during all stages of the project life cycle. During our conversations with them we noticed that they were not using any Revit add-ins to improve their productivity even though many of these items were free to them through subscription. So we put together a list of add-ins that we thought they would find helpful and I wanted to share the list with readers of this blog incase it was helpful to a wider audience.

Helpful Links:

Sustainable Design: Link

BIM Apps: www.bimapps.typepad.com

Performative Design: http://andrewmarsh.com/

Inside the System (Revit MEP and Sustainability): http://inside-the-system.typepad.com/

Sustainability related Add-ins:

Product Name	Company Name	Product Link	Comments
Green Building Studio	Autodesk, Inc.	Link
Ecotect	Autodesk, Inc.	Link
Conceptual Energy Analysis	Autodesk, Inc.	Link
Tools4Revit	AGA Cad Ltd.	Link	Large collection of Revit productivity tools including tools for sustainability analysis
ARCHIWizard	Ray Creatis	Link	Various thermal calculations incl. French building regulations energy conversation code RT2012
ElumTools		Link	Reduce artificial lighting requirements for your building.
IES Virtual Environment	ies	Link	Full-fledged detailed BPA Platform with gbXML consuming add-in.
DesignBuilder	Design Builder	Link	Their add-in is similar to IES’, but still in beta.
SOLAR COMPUTER	Solar Computer	Link	German company that delivers loads and energy analysis capabilities based on Revit.
Autodesk Simulation CFD	Autodesk, Inc.	Link	(formely CFDesign) -> Revit Add-in that consumes model geometry for CFD, which can be used to optimize ventilation for buildings (a huge energy consumer).
3ds Max Design	Autodesk, Inc.	Link	Natural Lighting Analysis via FBX transfer workflows.

General Productivity Tools:

Product Name	Company Name	Product Link	Comments
Autodesk Subscription	Autodesk, Inc.	Link And Blog Post	Many productivity tools. Should check out Revit DB Link – Linking Revit to a relational database Model Review – checking the BIM model including checks before sustainability analysis is performed
Ideate Explorer for Revit 2012	Ideate	Link	Model data explorer
BIMLink	Ideate	Link	Revit model link to MS Excel
Project Photofly	Autodesk Labs	Link	Use photographs to create 3D Revit Models
IMAGINiT Utilities for Revit	IMAGINiT	Link	Productivity Utilities
Affinity for Revit	Trelligence	Link	Space Programming tool
Family Browser	Kiwi Codes	Link	Powerful Content Browser
Scan to BIM	IMAGINiT	Link	Using point clouds to model in Revit
Siteworks for Revit	Eagle Point	Link	Site work productivity tool/vertical product
dRofus	dRofus	Link	Another Program Management tool
QTO	Autodesk	Link	Quantity Takeoff tool

 

Which ones have you used and are there any others that would fit well in this list? Thoughts and comments welcome.

Comments

[Tore I. Marthinsen]

I would recomend this tool that covers and optimizes the BIM flow for all the Revit verticals in addition to C3D and Inventor. A complete chain. http://www.cad-q.com/sv/Produkter/cqtools/

Cheers,
Tore
Product Development Manager, CAD-Q