© 2016 PROKON SOFTWARE CONSULTANTS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Probar for Autodesk® Revit®

3D Reinforced Concrete Modelling, Scheduling & Drawing Generation with Probar for Autodesk® Revit®

As BIM (Building Information Modelling) is becoming increasingly

popular for design, it is essential developing ways to improve

workflows for users. More and more engineering companies are

taking the step towards 3D reinforcement modelling and adopting

Autodesk® Revit® as their software of choice. This white paper looks

at the benefits and processes of using Probar. Probar is a

reinforcement detailing and scheduling add-in for Autodesk® Revit®.

Probar produces reinforced concrete models, creates schematic

drawings and generates reinforcement bending schedules.

Figure 1: A typical 3D reinforced Concrete Detail View with the Probar generated bending schedule.

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Table of Contents Business challenges ................................................................................................................................. 3

Overcoming challenges with Probar add-in for Revit ............................................................................. 3

Project and Template Setup ............................................................................................................... 3

Reinforcement Modelling and Annotation ......................................................................................... 4

Rebar Visibility .................................................................................................................................... 5

Bending Schedule Generation ............................................................................................................ 6

Flexible and Customisable Environment............................................................................................. 7

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 8

About the Author .................................................................................................................................... 8

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Business challenges As it remains imperative for companies to remain innovative, especially in view of the dilemma facing

the construction industry, minimal expenditure for civil engineering projects. Thus, business needs to

remain resilient and think laterally to survive. This causes many challenges for the civil engineering

industry, for example:

• More than ever before people want everything that is built to be represented in an intuitive

3D model. This high-detail 3D model should also enable you to order and deliver materials on

site. It is thus becoming less surprising to see engineers, detailers and contractors

communicating reinforcement layouts using 3D models.

• The civil engineering and construction sector is under a vast amount of pressure to fast-track

projects and reduce costs wherever possible. It takes a lot of time to create a 3D model only

to then spend more time setting up a 2D view to export to Autodesk® AutoCAD® for

reinforcement detailing.

• If any changes are made on the project the whole 3D to 2D process has to be repeated. Thus,

updating the 3D model and exporting to 2D again for adjustment reinforcement detailing,

before finally reissuing drawings and schedules can waste a lot of costly time.

• The 3D to 2D process makes a lot of room for errors and inaccuracies to creep in, causing re-

work to be done, which ultimately leads to a loss of even more valuable time.

Overcoming challenges with Probar add-in for Revit

In order to overcome these challenges, many structural consultants and contractors have already

realised the value of working within Revit’s 3D environment to detail reinforcement and are delivering

large, complex projects.

This is the reason why Prokon Software Consultants created Probar, the add-in for Revit. Probar

harnesses the power, BIM capabilities and, already intuitive and easy to use, rebar functionalities of

Revit to produce concrete reinforcement models; but adds a layer to the platform which makes

bending scheduling and bending machine automation possible.

Project and Template Setup

Probar has a flexible environment which ensures that local standards and a customisable output can

be achieved. This includes localised templates, reinforcement parameters and tolerances for

calculations. Probar is installed directly onto Revit and has its own tab and ribbon commands allowing

easy access to all its features.

Figure 2: Probar tab and ribbon commands installed directly onto Revit.

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In the settings dialog box, you can quickly set up a template to use for reinforcement modelling. Probar

lets you select your Rebar shape families and load them into your project. Probar already includes

standard South African, New Zealand and Australian shape code families.

It also comes with its own styles document as well as shared project parameters set up tools which

can easily be loaded into your project. This will allow you to incorporate drafting standards.

Reinforcement Modelling and Annotation

When adding rebar to elements in Revit, Probar assigns member properties to these rebar elements,

thus maintaining the relationship between these elements and the components that they belong to.

These rebar properties can also be edited in the properties palette and any changes made will

automatically update in the model.

Probar includes South African Standard Rebar tag elements as well as the South African shape code

families that weren’t previously supported by Revit. The rebar annotation that is set up with Probar

also supports Revit’s Multi-Rebar Annotation commands, which allows you to tag multiple elements

with a single annotation that displays aligned dimensions between references as well as parameters

from the referenced elements.

Figure 3: Rebar Shape Families Specification (all standard shape codes already included with Probar)

Figure 4: Easily incorporate drafting standards using a Style Template.

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Rebar Visibility

In the past controlling the visibility of reinforcement within views in Revit had to be done manually with

the View Visibility States in the properties. This may take some time to do when you have a large amount

of views set up. The Rebar Visibility Management tool in Probar allows you to instantly display rebar as

Solid, Wireframe and Unobscured in the current 3D or 2D view. You can also choose to only apply this to

bars that are to be scheduled.

Figure 6: Reinforcement visibility changes with Probar

Figure 5: Rebar annotation with Probar and member parameters assigned to rebar in properties palette.

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Bending Schedule Generation

Probar allows you to effortlessly set up calculation methods based on your specific modelling

approach and set up tolerances. For less experienced Revit users setting up Reinforcement Schedule

calculation methods and Cut Length Calculations could take a while to set up but takes only a few

seconds with Probar.

The Probar Member Naming and Rebar manager tools allow you to set up the order in which Probar

will search for rebar through your model and number them accordingly. You can also view and assign

new names for members and pick up any errors.

The Probar Bending schedule can either be published in the Revit Drafting view, a linked .dxf, as well

as saving it as a .xls file after publishing. In the scheduler, there is also a member filtering option

available, allowing you to filter out host members and their rebar to be displayed in the scheduler.

Figure 6: Specify calculation methods based on modelling approach and specify tolerances.

Figure 7: View and rename rebar hosts with the Rebar Management tool and set up rebar search order.

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Flexible and Customisable Environment

Bars can also be edited with custom bending radii and minimum hook length requirements. The

default values on Probar are according to the South Africa, New Zealand and Australian design codes.

Probar lets you apply conditional formatting within the scheduler to highlight values within a specified

range. You can also force certain bars, even though they behave like a certain shape code (e.g. 65)

they will be represented by another shape code (e.g. 20) in the Probar scheduler. This is especially

useful when bars are to be bent on site. It also supports any Revit rebar object, including custom-

drawn shape codes.

Figure 8: A Bending Schedule generated from a model and placed into a Drafting View in Revit.

Figure 8: Customise rebar bending radii and minimum hook length requirements (defaults for South Africa, New

Zealand and Australia ships with Probar).

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With a free IFC viewer, you can generate 3D BIM models for construction contractors which will enable

them to navigate the Reinforced model in 3D as well as perform search queries based on rebar

properties and perform a model revision change analysis.

Conclusion

Probar for Autodesk Revit increases the productivity and efficiency of Revit’s reinforcement tools.

Probar allows you to easily produce schematic drawings from dynamic 3D models, using automated

reinforcement population or manual rebar placement.

With simple check boxes that enable rapid results, Probar should help reduce some of those repetitive

tasks, enhance the functionality of Revit’s reinforcement tools as well as help you work more

efficiently.

Probar for Revit is easy to use and requires basic to intermediate Revit skills to implement.

About the Author Company: Prokon Software Consultants

Author: Annemie Pretorius I annemie@prokon.com

Contact Information: www.prokon.com I www.prokonbuild.co.za

Figure 9: Probar Reinforcement Model BIM Vision (Free IFC Viewer)

Figure 9: Probar Reinforcement model search query from within BIM Vision (Free IFC Viewer)