Revit Place Holders with Revit Materials!!!

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    Revit Place Holders with Revit Materials!!!


    I have been playing around with the Enscape place Holders to see if I can assign Revit materials so they look a bit better within Revit and not just grey lumps and think I may have come up with a workaround albeit a bit longwinded. I have listed out the process below and attached a couple of image files (one from Revit and one from Enscape). I would be interested if this works for others as I am not sure how I've actually managed to get it to work.


    Basically what I have done is this:


    • Placed the Enscape Oak 3 Place Holder into a new project and then exported it to a .dwg file.
    • Opened up the .dwg file in AutoCad and created 2 new layers - Canopy and Trunk and put the geometry in the .dwg file onto the relevant layers.
    • I have then gone back to the project with the Enscape Oak 3 Place holder in and opened up the Place Holder Family, you then need to do the same in this family to get to the base geometry for the Place Holder.
    • Once in the base place holder geometry I have loaded in the .dwg file (make sure you unpin this) and overridden the object styles for the imported Geometry - i.e.. Canopy and Trunk (don't forget to delete the original Enscape Place Holder Geometry).
    • Once this is done load back into each family all the way back to the project.
    • I have then renamed the Enscape Place Holder family, crated several types at different sizes (but you can still set at whatever size you want as the place holder still scales), and saved off the family.


    I would appreciate if others could have a go to see if it was just a fluke or if this is a workaround for getting some Revit materials into the Enscape Placeholders.




    Link to dropbox below containing the following files (please note all files created in Revit 2021):


    Enscape AssetDefinition - Oak 03 - 3D View - View 1.dwg

    ENSCAPE TREE TEST.rfa

    Enscape-Tree-Test-Project.rvt


    Click here for Dropbox

    Interesting! Not sure how useful this would be, since putting materials on the placeholder objects would still look pretty out of place I think in native Revit views. Though I could see the benefit if your work actually does revit shaded/realistic views in addition to enscape 3D views.


    A possibly cleaner method to getting better looking enscape assets inside Revit that will look 2D-correct is a similar workflow you've done here - but instead of exporting out a DWG you edit you can simply delete the placeholder geometry once inside the family and replace it with your own, either by tracing over using 2D masking/symbolic lines (then setting the enscape placeholder 3D to only be visible in 3D views), or by "tracing" the placeholder with revit modeling tools, then deleting the placeholder once you're done.


    I suppose though tracing the placeholder could take more time than just doing your DWG edit once you get the workflow down.

    Quote from skhayward

    Though I could see the benefit if your work actually does revit shaded/realistic views in addition to enscape 3D views.

    We do need to produce building elevations directly from Revit as we need to output elevations that are to scale (and not just illustrative), these are required for planning submission drawings etc. We need a way to show some of the surrounding context in order to help soften the Revit elevations and are tying to avoid doubling up workflow.


    The visuals we are able to get out of Enscape look great (and get better with each update) but the lack of control of the Enscape place holders within Revit is the single biggest issue we currently have with Enscape. Hopefully in the not to distant future we will have better overall control over the place holders within Revit with material control as standard......