Revit and Sharepoint

One of the topics I do feel I can talk about is some work that we've done surrounding Revit and Sharepoint...

One of our clients REALLY likes Sharepoint sites for collecting project data, issues lists, etc. So the question came up - could Revit become more integrated with Sharepoint?

The answer is yes - pretty easily... Sharepoint has a Web Service API (and we've become reasonably comfortable with web services thru all the Vault and Productstream work we've done)... The API covers a lot of territory, but when you talk about publishing or synchronizing BIM data, you're pretty much correlating with SharePoint "lists" - lists are tables which can be defined by an administrator.

So we've done some prototype work to Integrate the Sharepoint Design Issues list with the Revit Elements that are related to each issue... And also publishing schedules (such as Room Schedules) out to Sharepoint - a neat FM-flavored prototype. Now all we would need to do is tie the data in Sharepoint to the corresponding DWF, and you'd REALLY have something.

So while the Revit API is still pretty limited, systems integrations applications like this are ready for prime-time...

What I can't talk about...

This blogging thing is tougher than I thought - at least in my particular situation... All day long I think of interesting topics to blog about, but I have to reject 3 out of 4 because of:

• Client-specific: I can't share things that are effectively proprietary to our clients
• Autodesk Internal: We wind up being on the inside of a variety of Autodesk product information, which we can't talk about.
• Avatech Proprietary: When we think an idea is so cool that we'd like to make a product out of it - but don't want to share the underlying info...

So - all in all - it's tougher than I thought to come up with interesting stuff to talk about...

Beyond the Paper

Whoa! Way beyond the paper, as the man says...
We've been exploring doing some work with Revit DWF for systems integration, similar to some of the stuff that we've done with Vault and Productstream - and the possibilities are amazing...
I've been working with a customer that has big visions of how BIM data can be tied to their back end systems, inside Revit, inside DWF, etc... And I'd like to say that as of 9.0, it's a reality...
Not only are all the objects there, not only are all the regular parameters there, but in particular two things show me that they went the extra mile (ok, it was probably only an extra 10 feet - but from a System Integration standpoint, it's the last mile).

Shared Parameters and User-Defined Project Parameters
It would have been so easy for them to leave this out - the parameters that the CUSTOMER thinks are important, beyond what is built in... They're in there.

The Revit Element ID
This REALLY blows me away... Each object in the DWF carries the ElementID that it was generated from, allowing you to cross-reference between what was in Revit and what was created in DWF...
I think that the door has been opened to real integration - and between what's there now, the new DWF Composer (Design Review) and the Constructware merger, I'm excited to be a part of where it's going.