Proxies suggestions

Whenever you encounter any issues with Enscape or your subscription please reach out to our dedicated support team directly through the Help Center or by using the Feedback button as detailed here.
  • Very excited proxies are now being worked on!


    I wonder what options are being considered to save/show these types of objects in Revit?


    1. It would seem they have to be saved inside the (workshared) project, so the most logical candidate would seem you might use a custom family to save the information in? That might actually be helpful because that would mean we can add custom parameters to the proxies and use those to filter (hide/override) them in the floorplan/elevations etc.
    2. A common problem we have here is that we want to show furniture in full detail in renders (think: cushions, sofa's with fabric folds etc). These are things that are impossible to model in Revit. It would be great if we could have a family in which we place a simplified sofa that would show up in plans/elevations/3d views etc, but have a fully detailed proxy (perhaps an .fbx / .obj) render in Enscape. So basically: have an option to create the "placeholder object" in Revit ourselves so that we can pick how the object looks in Revit (plan, elevation, ...) VS enscape

    Perhaps the Enscape team could elaborate a bit on what the current plan is?

  • Yes to both questions. They will be saved in the project as a Revit family object and contain a simplified low-detail representation to be shown in the Revit viewport and floor plans. We will release an increasing library of objects for you.


    For custom model imports (FBX etc) this is much more complex, which is the reason why we postponed the custom model import.

  • Hey Thomas,


    - Will we have a way to change the category for these families?


    - Will we have a way to change the low-detail representation? The auto-generated representation might not look right in plan for example (a triangulated sofa), so a way to manually fix that would be much appreciated!

  • Thomas Willberger / someone from Enscape team


    Any comments/ideas on this last part. I've been working on visualizing a project in Enscape last week while at the same time creating the drawings. In a lot of cases, we wanted to use a detailed proxy in Enscape but the exact same object needs to show up in the drawings, and we would need to be able to define how it looks. An autogenerated collission model is not going to be workable. We can't have a triangulated sofa showing up in the drawings.


    Let me know if this makes sense or whether you need more examples.


    I know we can use proxies in Sketchup and then replace the placeholder object with something else. Enscape will just ignore the placeholder object. We need a similar option in Revit.


    (edit) Also: meshes can make Revit very slow, even if they are very low poly. So I would be inclined to change the proxies for plants etc with simple Revit-native geometry (for example cylinders with a sphere on top of it for a tree), so that we have a fast symbolic representation while modeling.

  • Pieter a simplified Proxy preview as placeholder is on our agenda. Our current vision is to display the geometry without details for e.g. the placement as an automated simplifications ont he fly isn't easy.

  • No I mean the exact opposite. Not automated but manual placeholder.


    Like I said, the objects will also be part of the drawing set and we need to be able to model and/or draw how the proxy will look in plan


    So if you are using a family for the proxy placement, we would need to be able to hit 'edit family' and draw a nice looking sofa in plan.


    Let me know if you need more examples

  • Pieter The version we are currently working on uses normal revit families, with some 3d geometry automatically filled in (but content is completely ignored by the Enscape renderer). So in theory you should be free to change these families to your liking.


    You still need a little patience until we show our work in the preview version.

  • Pieter The version we are currently working on uses normal revit families, with some 3d geometry automatically filled in (but content is completely ignored by the Enscape renderer). So in theory you should be free to change these families to your liking.


    As long as we are able to delete that auto-generated geometry and replace it with our own, that would be perfect!


    Quote

    You still need a little patience until we show our work in the preview version.


    Of course! I just wanted to provide feedback before it comes out. I imagine changes are easier to make beforehand than after most of the programming has been done :)


    Revit has an extensive beta program in which they show the design of a new feature before any programming starts (they will discuss workflow, dialogs and UI, limitations, .....) That way people can weigh in with comments before the team gets heavily invested in the code. Of course people have to understand that not every suggestion can be implemented BUT for pretty much every feature customers have brought up issues that hadn't been considered yet. It might be an idea to create a closed beta test forum in which Enscape can gather feedback like that.

  • Another thought I had: on the longer term it would be very helpful if we could convert existing families to a proxy.


    Usecase: we are working on a model of a office. At a certain point we decide to step up the quality of the renderings so we want to use more detailed proxies for the chairs. It would be helpful if we could 'link' that family to an external proxy, and not have to replace all the chairs (the might already be tagged for example).