Managing and Visualizing Your BIM Data: Understand the fundamentals of computer science for data visualization using Autodesk Dynamo, Revit, and Microsoft Power BI

✍ Scribed by Ernesto Pellegrino, Manuel André Bottiglieri, Gavin Crump, Luisa Cypriano Pieper, Dounia Touil

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 436
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Learn how to make optimum use of your BIM data using Dynamo to make better design decisions and create feature-rich dashboards using Power BI to track your model's data

Key Features

• A go-to guide for AEC professionals to analyze and manage their data
• Explore popular use cases and best practices from experts around the world
• Create efficient dashboards using Dynamo and Power BI

Book Description

Business intelligence software has rapidly spread its roots in the AEC industry during the last few years. This has happened due to the presence of rich digital data in BIM models whose datasets can be gathered, organized, and visualized through software such as Autodesk Dynamo BIM and Power BI.

Managing and Visualizing Your BIM Data helps you understand and implement computer science fundamentals to better absorb the process of creating Dynamo scripts and visualizing the collected data on powerful dashboards. This book provides a hands-on approach and associated methodologies that will have you productive and up and running in no time. After understanding the theoretical aspects of computer science and related topics, you will focus on Autodesk Dynamo to develop scripts to manage data. Later, the book demonstrates four case studies from AEC experts across the world. In this section, you'll learn how to get started with Autodesk Dynamo to gather data from a Revit model and create a simple C# plugin for Revit to stream data on Power BI directly. As you progress, you'll explore how to create dynamic Power BI dashboards using Revit floor plans and make a Power BI dashboard to track model issues.

By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to develop a script to gather a model's data and visualize datasets in Power BI easily.

What you will learn

• Understand why businesses across the world are moving toward data-driven models
• Build a data bridge between BIM models and web-based dashboards
• Get to grips with Autodesk Dynamo with the help of multiple step-by-step exercises
• Focus on data gathering workflows with Dynamo
• Connect Power BI to different datasets
• Get hands-on experience in data management, analysis, and visualization techniques with guidance from experts across the world

Who this book is for

This book is for BIM managers, BIM coordinators, design technology managers, and all AEC professionals who want to learn Autodesk Dynamo to analyze, manage, and visualize their BIM data as well as understand some associated computer science topics. You need to have a background in BIM and knowledge of what a BIM model is to make the most of this book.

Table of Contents

1. Introducing Units of Digital Information
2. Understanding Data Centers
3. Warming Up Your Data Visualization Engines
4. Building a Data Bridge between BIM Models and Web-Based Dashboards
5. Getting Started with Autodesk Dynamo and Data Gathering
6. Importing Revit Plans in Power BI Using Shape Files
7. Creating a Revit Model-Check Dashboard Using Dynamo and Power BI
8. Deep Dive into Dynamo Data Types
9. Using Dynamo to Place Family Instances
10. Gathering a Revit Model's Data from Multiple Models at Once
11. Visualizing Data from Multiple Models in Power BI
12. Having Fun with Power BI

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title page
Copyright and Credits
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Section 1: Overview of Digitalization and BIM Data
Chapter 1: Introducing Units of Digital Information
Exploring the beginning of the digitization era
Learning how simple digital data is
Getting to know types of digital data
Understanding how much data we produce
Learning about hybrid jobs
Summary
Chapter 2: Understanding Data Centers
Understanding data centers
Learning the different types of cloud solutions
Introducing the first data center in history, ENIAC
Learning about The Citadel and Project Natick
Getting started with Power BI
Setting up Power BI and exploring the World Happiness Report
Creating your first dashboard
Customizing and filtering the chart
Summary
Chapter 3: Warming Up Your Data Visualization Engines
Getting started with data visualization
Scatter plot
Column chart
Bar chart
Stacked bar chart
Line chart
Pie chart
Radar chart
Waterfall chart
Why analyzing BIM data is important
Exploring Microsoft Power BI charts
Downloading and importing the dataset
Formatting the other values
Creating the column chart
Creating a waterfall chart
Creating a line chart
Summary
Section 2: Examples and Case Studies from Experts around the World
Chapter 4: Building a Data Bridge between BIM Models and Web-Based Dashboards
Technical requirements
Installing Visual Studio Community
Identifying the problem
Creating your first Revit plugin
Understanding the environment
Configuring dotnet framework and PresentationCore.dll
Installing the Revit dll
Updating your local repository
Updating the RibbonBar.cs file
Testing the plugin startup
Exploring the toolbar
Preparing Microsoft Power BI
Building the Power BI report
Visualizing the data in Power BI
Publishing and sharing your final report
Summary
Chapter 5: Getting Started with Autodesk Dynamo and Data Gathering
Technical requirements
Understanding visual programming
Introducing Autodesk Dynamo BIM for Revit
Understanding the Dynamo UI and its basic components
Menus
The upper-right corner
Library
Execution bar
Nodes
Node states
Types of data
Setting up the environment
Exporting data from Revit
Updating data in Excel
Importing data back into Revit
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 6: Importing Revit Plans in Power BI Using Shape Files
Technical requirements
Setting up Dynamo
What are shape files?
Writing our data sources for Power BI
Understanding the script UI window using the Data-Shapes package
Collecting and filtering all the Revit rooms
Exporting room data to Excel
Processing room boundary geometry
Generating the Shape file
Manipulating the shape file to include metadata
Setting up Power BI with the Synoptic Panel
Visualizing our data in Power BI
Summary
Chapter 7: Creating a Revit Model-Check Dashboard Using Dynamo and Power BI
Technical requirements
Identifying what data to track in Revit
Criteria
Potential data to track
Collecting and exporting data using Dynamo
Collecting data
Dynamo script
Exporting data
Building the Power BI dashboard
Importing Excel data
Creating visuals
Inserting a project illustration
Exporting and sharing the dashboard
Updating the dashboard
Summary
Section 3: Deep Dive into Autodesk Dynamo
Chapter 8: Deep Dive into Dynamo Data Types
Technical requirements
Introducing lists and indexes
How to select elements
How to use levels to select elements
Learning IF statements and variables
Concatenating strings
Working with strings (searching and replacing)
Getting to know regular expressions
Summary
Chapter 9: Using Dynamo to Place Family Instances
Technical requirements
Creating the first family placement script
Creating the second family placement script
Environment setup
Introducing the second script
Placing a family instance on each window
Summary
Chapter 10: Gathering a Revit Model's Data from Multiple Models at Once
Technical requirements
Creating the data collector script
Collecting information from multiple models
Collecting information about Rooms
Collecting data from Levels
Collecting information from Sheets
Adding the filename to each list
Exporting the datasets to Excel
Adding the user interface
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 11: Visualizing Data from Multiple Models in Power BI
Technical requirements
Importing and formatting the datasets
Importing the datasets
Formatting the datasets
Creating the charts
Creating the table chart
Creating the stacked column chart
Creating the donut chart
Creating the scatter plot chart
Creating the map
Summary
Chapter 12: Having Fun with Power BI
Technical requirements
Building the form
Understanding how to publish the dataset
Connecting the cables on the Power BI side
Completing the Google form
Importing the data and creating the charts
Importing the dataset
Creating the charts
Summary
Other Books You May Enjoy
Index