We hadn't originally planned on another update to Earth Connector for Revit (connecting your Revit BIM model to Google Earth) - primarily because Autodesk has released their version of this tool.
The Autodesk tool, however, seems like it is in pretty limited release - I still haven't been able to find it on the subscription site.
Recently, we released the Avatech Revit Utilities - a set of productivity tools for Revit users - and we thought that we might give Earth Connector a little enhancement.
Some time since our last release of Earth Connector for Revit happened, a small but powerful change happened with Google Earth - the TimeSpan feature, which had been limited to the Professional version - moved down into the basic (free) version. That's when it hit us - why not incorporate the building phases into our Google Earth KML file as a TimeSpan.
When a KML/KMZ file has a TimeSpan, it adds the Timeline slider to the upper right, as shown above.
The Autodesk tool, however, seems like it is in pretty limited release - I still haven't been able to find it on the subscription site.
Recently, we released the Avatech Revit Utilities - a set of productivity tools for Revit users - and we thought that we might give Earth Connector a little enhancement.
Some time since our last release of Earth Connector for Revit happened, a small but powerful change happened with Google Earth - the TimeSpan feature, which had been limited to the Professional version - moved down into the basic (free) version. That's when it hit us - why not incorporate the building phases into our Google Earth KML file as a TimeSpan.
When a KML/KMZ file has a TimeSpan, it adds the Timeline slider to the upper right, as shown above.
For now, because Revit phases don't natively have dates and times on them - we're doing a fairly arbitrary job of transferring phases into the calendar... but we figure that this will get people interested and talking about how we might improve from here.
Below is a sample of a building with 7-8 Revit phases. Who knew that Google Earth could be a 4-D construction tool!?!
-Matt
P.S. The newest Earth Connector Revit is available only on the Revit Utilities page.
