How can I ensure that members are analytically connected in Revit before exporting to Tekla Structural Designer?

Environment

Not environment-specific

Question

I have a model which I have created in Revit, when the model is exported to Tekla Structural Designer we are experiencing issues with member connectivity. Can the connectivity of the model be corrected prior to exporting? Can the unconnected members be identified?

Answer

At each end of an analytical member in Revit there are analytical nodes. In Revit 2014 or later, there are settings which allow you to:

Turn on the Analytical Nodes
Create filters to identify whether a node is analytically connected or not
Create a colour coded view of the node connectivity
Adjust the location of the Analytical Node

Based on the points above, the connectivity of the members can be reviewed and edited so that all nodes are correctly connected before exporting.

Turning on analytical nodes in view

To turn On the Analytical Nodes open the Visibility/Graphics Overrides window by pressing [ V V ] on the keyboard. Under the Analytical Model Categories ensure Analytical Nodes are turned on by ticking the corresponding box. You will need to ensure the Show analytical model categories in this view box is ticked. Click OK to apply the changes.

You can go into the Model Categories and turn off the Show model categories in this view to isolate only the analytical model in the view.

Turning off the Model Categories will isolate the Analytical Model Categories as shown, in this example going further the Analytical Floors will be turned off to allow for clarity in the screenshots.

Creating Analytical Node filters

To create the filters in the Visibility Graphics Overrides window Select the Filters tab and click on Edit/New...

A new window will appear where a new filter can then be created. A minimum of two filters are required which are a Connected and an Unconnected filter.

To create the filter the process is as follows:

Click the New button and assign an appropriate name to your filter
Under Categories ensure you have Structure ticked in your filter list and tick Analytical Nodes
In the Filter Rules set the Filter by to Connection Status and set the values to equal the status used as your filter name

In this screenshot a filter called Connected was created, in this case the filter rules will be:

Equals
Connected - Auto-detect = this setting looks at nodes which are connected without edits

In this example two more filters are created which are:

Connected - Manual = user edited node to where it is connected
Unconnected

Both of their filter rules will use the same properties. Once all of the filter have been created click OK.

Colour coding the filters

Back to the Filters window click Add and select the filters created. You can hold CTRL and select multiple filters. Click OK to add the filters.

Editing Lines > Override... is where the colours are set, please ensure you pick the Solid pattern to ensure the nodes are clearly visible. Click OK.

You can now click on Apply and see the setting changed in the background. You can now see that some of the nodes are green which indicates that the members these nodes define are connected to another member at that point.

Different colours can be assigned to the different status. We will use the red nodes to show the unconnected nodes. We can see that in this example there are nodes which are not correctly connected, the issues are as follows:

1 - 4 = the top of the columns fall slightly short and do not meet the floor level
5 - 6 = the beam ends do not meet the columns

Note: The bottom of the columns are all shown as unconnected as they are not supported by anything, these can be ignored

Tip: Use the Thin Lines toggle to reduce the width of the analytical members which will make the nodes clearer when zooming in

Adjusting the location of the Analytical Nodes

Under Analyze > Adjust you can edit the location of the Analytical Nodes without affecting the graphical model.

Using this function, select the member you wish to edit, click and drag the node to the target location. Click Finish to end the process.

Conclusion

You will now find that when exporting the model to Tekla Structural Designer the number of connectivity errors will be greatly reduced.

Please note that this will not resolve all the connectivity issues, there may be times where members are connected to one another which are not correctly supported, examples of where we see this are where two roof bracing members meet a column and beam intersection. If one of the bracing members is connected to another member it will show these two members as connected whether they are connected to the supporting beam and column or not.