Clone Drawings for Rebar: Revit Functionality Engineers Have Been Waiting For

If you’ve been using Revit for concrete projects and wished you could speed up your concrete reinforcement (RC) detailing by using a default template or something similar that would standardize your drawing creation without having to replicate each RC drawing manually, you are going to want to pay very close attention to this one-of-a-kind functionality, aptly named Clone Drawings.

After leveraging the purpose-built tools in PowerPack Rebar Detailing for Revit that accelerate and automate rebar cage modelling in Revit, when the time comes to produce RC detailed drawings, Clone Drawings steps up.

It allows users to create a single drawing to their preferred company layout and with the high level of detail they require, with all the views, dimensions, tags, etc. needed for a given structural element. And Clone Drawings uses this ‘drawing created on the fly’ as the base template by which to automatically create detailed drawings for the other structural elements.  This level of real-time automation for drawing creation is unprecedented in Revit. Least of all, that’s because it is not using a hard-coded template, eliminating any configuration overhead and achieving consistency, accuracy, flexibility, and simplicity in an otherwise laborious process.

Imagine unlocking the potential to produce a single RC detailed drawing to your exacting company standard and then sitting back in amazement as Clone Drawings produces 100’s of drawings in minutes to the exact same standard. This is efficiency and time savings at a whole new level.

The wizardry of Clone Drawings lies in its intuitive ability to interrogate the base drawings created by the user and understand how it has been constructed, with the position of the views, dimensions, annotations, and so on for a given structural element, automating the assignment of roles to existing rebar based on their shape and position relative to the element.

Additionally, it organizes annotation elements dependent on the element or the rebar hosted by the element, ensuring a comprehensive and cohesive representation of the design, leading to consistent, accurate replication of the base drawing. Check out these examples:

Clone Drawings offers immense benefits. It saves professionals from the tedious task of individually replicating RC drawings for each element within the group, which can be time consuming and prone to errors. Instead, with a single action, the tool efficiently clones the relevant views onto the entire group of elements, ensuring consistency and accuracy across the RC detailed drawings in Revit.

When it comes to groups of elements, such as multi-span beams or multi-level columns, the tool handles the drawing replication process intelligently. It considers all the elements within the group and establishes associations based on predefined conditions. For a view to be linked to a group of elements, all elements within the group must adhere to specific rules.

These rules include conditions, such as the presence of tags on the elements, tags on rebar hosted by the elements, multi-rebar annotations, or bending details. By analyzing these elements within the views, the tool identifies the connections and dependencies necessary for accurate drawing replication.

By leveraging this information, Clone Drawings seamlessly recreates the views and annotation elements onto a new element of the same category, regardless of its varying shape or hosted rebar cage. This “many-to-many” relationship capability allows for the efficient cloning of RC drawings between multi-span beams or multi-level columns, expanding its versatility and usefulness across various design scenarios.

To put this powerful feature to work for you, you’ll conveniently find it within the PowerPack Rebar Detailing for Revit Design Ribbon. The user-friendly interface and intuitive functionality make it accessible to professionals with varying levels of technical expertise.

RC detailers and structural engineers can achieve consistent and precise results across their projects with this enhanced RC drawing replication feature. The automatic assignment of rebar roles, the linking of views to structural elements, and the cloning of annotation elements contribute to a streamlined and standardized RC drawing creation process.

You can embrace the convenience and precision of this automated linkage feature and experience enhanced efficiency in the creation workflow of RC detailed drawings in Revit. By incorporating this advanced tool into your rebar in Revit design process, you can save time, reduce errors, and achieve consistent results across your projects.

Contact us today to see “Clone Drawings” in action. Witness firsthand the time savings and accuracy PowerPack Rebar Detailing for Revit brings to your projects. You can unlock the potential for enhanced efficiency in your drawing creation workflow and embrace the future of design when you incorporate this advanced feature into your repertoire.