I am testing out Helix for my company and am experiencing an error when importing doors and windows where the revit families are hosting to he wrong elements. In the image below, you can see that I have doors hosted to the interior walls, however, in Revit one door decided to host to the exterior wall for some unknown reason. Is there any logic or reason that this could be happening?
Also, the wall openings on the brown wall did not transfer into Revit. Again, I am not sure why this might have happened since the openings in the grey walls transferred as expected.
I am also experiencing an UI issue where if I minimize the Helix SketchUp dialogue window, it cannot get it back not matter what I try. I generally have to close out of SketchUp and restart to get it back.
@Elliottk Thanks for texting out Helix, and thanks for the feedback.
It sounds like you’re running into the following issues with your test:
Some doors from SketchUp hosting to incorrect wall in Revit
Some wall openings from SketchUp not appearing in Revit
Cannot re-open SketchUp’s Helix window after minimizing
Let me take a look into all three of these and get back to you!
If you’re able to share that the test SketchUp model, and the Revit model you are importing it into, with me It could help get to the bottom of these issues.
How would you suggest I share the Revit file. I stripped out everything I could and can only get it down to 7MB (4MB limit). I can upload the SketchUp file since it is small enough.
@Elliottk THank you for uploading the SketchUp model.
To share the Revit model, you can use WeTransfer (free up to 2GB I believe, just ensure you arent sharing any sensitive information), or email it to me (I’ll send you my email via a private message.
In regards to the first issue: Some doors from SketchUp hosting to incorrect wall in Revit
I have discovered the cause, and am working on a fix.
In short, the cause is that Helix currently uses rectangular axis-aligned bounded boxes to associate a door with a wall. In this particular case, the door that is hosting to the wrong wall is doing so because that door is inside the axis-aligned bounding box for that wall:
In actuality, that door is also located inside the axis-aligned bounding box for the correct wall. However, it still gets hosted to the wrong wall because Helix collects all the walls in the model, and iterates through them in a random but deterministic order. It’s just bad luck that in this case, Helix checks the exterior wall first, sees that there is one door inside it’s axis-aligned bounding box, and hosts that door to that wall.
To further test this, I actually moved the problematic door, and the wall it should be hosted too, back outside of the exterior wall’s axis-aligned bounding box, and it then hosts to the correct wall. I also moved a different interior door a bit so that it now fell inside the exterior wall’s axis-aligned bounding box, and as predicted that door now incorrectly hosts itself to the exterior wall. Check it out:
I don’t have a solution yet, but I’ve pinpointed exactly where this is happening in our code. I’ll take a look, and update you again once I have found a solution to this issue.
@Elliottk Glad it helped! I’m still looking into a solution for this, as well as the cause for the other two issues (and the doors not appearing issue from your other posts). I’ll post more updates once I have them, and hopefully, an updated installer once we get some of these bugs fully fixed.
@Elliottk Just an update - I’m still working on the first issue you mentioned. I’ve got the door hosting to the correct wall, but this update is causing some other errors. I’ll post an update once get it all worked out and fixed!
I’ve managed to fix issue #1 (Some doors from SketchUp hosting to incorrect wall in Revit), and the fix might have also fixed issue #2 (some wall openings from SketchUp not appearing in Revit).
Here’s a gif to the SketchUp to Revit transfer working correctly, showing both the door in the correct wall, and the all the wall openings:
I’ll let you know when we release an updated installer that includes this fix, and I’ll keep looking into issue #3 (can’t unminimize SketchUp Helix window).
I believe I’ve fixed issue #3 too (Cannot re-open SketchUp’s Helix window after minimizing).
The way SketchUp Extension dialogs work by default, when minimized they can become very difficult to find, hidden behind other windows or even offscreen. I’ve updated the SketchUp Helix extension so that when you click on the ‘Helix’ button, the window will un-minimize. Here’s a gif:
I’ll make a post here, and in the Helix Release forum, when these two fixes have been approved and released!
Thanks again for helping us identify and fix the above Helix issues!
