Live PDF experimentation
As mentioned previously, I wanted to create a PDF that is live in FLUX or another online platform. This will allow people not working on the design to see the changes as they happen.
Firstly, I tested if I could send the PDF using Revit and flux only.
I created the sheet and selected all.
Then I went to send it and I received an error stating that the view port and title block is an unsupported element.
From here, I attempted to print a sheet to PDF from Dynamo.
I followed the steps on this website: http://archi-lab.net/printing-pdfs-w-dynamo/
- Must have the ARCHI-LAB package downloaded for the other nodes.
I ran into trouble with the ‘View Sets’ node, as it couldn’t find anything. I attempted to fix the issue with a string and writing the name of the sheet in the string, this also achieved no result.
After some research I found out I had to create a set in Revit. I created the set through the print setup.
I was then able to find the set, but receive a NULL result.
ARCHI — LAB gave 2 methods for the printer name setting, so I tried the 2nd method to see if this would make a difference.
This fatal error occurred 3 times.
After coming back to the script after half hour I was able to see that it was human error. I hadn’t closed the PDF document for the file path. I then ran the print and it was a success. Below is the two sheets it printed to PDF.
From this I moved onto creating this PDF live in a cloud. After a small amount of research I thought that FLUX would not support the PDF’s, after testing it, I was found it to be correct.
In flux, it just tells me that the print was successful, as shown in the image above. I communicated with the group and they said that they are happy with the PDF’s being sent to the group dropbox link every night for now, I feel that it is really important everyone can see the current design in this critical time and this method is a quick fix.
I originally tried to import the model through Revit and received an error.
This is because revit needs proper properties set to each element. This model was made in grasshopper and therefore has nothing assigned. I felt this process may take too long, so I imported the project through dynamo.
I believed this may be difficult to understand, so I imported the geometry into revit from dynamo to achieve a much clearer result.
From here I printed PDF’s as shown above and sent them to the group dropbox.
The revit document will automatically update throughout the day, however, I will need to ‘send’ the PDF’s to the dropbox every night. I will aim to do so before 9pm every night and will date the documents.
This is the link to the dropbox folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/b8d7o0ww0qoga01/AAC50WUMOFpUfjje9RYI6Rqja?dl=0
