Limitations and recognized issues

Structural material given to adjacent object

If a single linear object (beam, columns) does not have a valid structural material (is set to <By Category>), it cannot be exported due to lack of material. Also the Structural material search tool will recognize it as object without a valid material.

But, in some situations when this linear object is connected (in a certain way) to another object e.g. floor that has a valid structural material, Revit will by default apply this material to our linear object. This is however, not clear from the user interface – our object’s material will still be set to <By Category>. In such case, the linear object will not be recognized as one without a material and will be exported with the material given by the adjacent object.

It is not known to us what the exact situations are and when the adjacent object’s material will be given by Revit to a connected object without a material.

Eccentricity issues in export of (some) mono-symmetric profiles

Some of mono-symmetric sections families in Revit (examples shown below) often have a reference line defined in the middle of section height, which is not a center of gravity of that section. 

When such section is exported to FEM-Design with the option to export beams eccentricity, the center of the gravity is applied correctly, but the eccentricity settings (how a physical section is located in relation to the beam’s analytical model) is not read correctly due to the difference between Revit and FEM-Design’s approach.

Example of such is shown in figure below. The physical eccentricity should be set to top, but instead is placed outside it the section.

The solution is to:

• adjust the physical eccentricity manually in FEM-Design,
• or do not export beam’s eccentricity - in such case the physical eccentricity in FEM-Design will be applied to center of gravity of a section). This is the default option in export settings.

Mirrored section issue in export of asymmetric and (some) mono-symmetric profiles

Example of asymmetric and mono-symmetric profiles in Revit:

This is how these sections will looks like after importing them to FEM-Design: the sections are mirrored.

Rotation problem in export of asymmetric and (some) mono-symmetric column profiles

Example of different column profiles in Revit and the result of exporting unmapped sections to FEM-Design. As visible, the asymmetric and mono-symmetric profiles are not exported with the correct rotation.

At the moment we are not able to solve any of the issue, but we will do our best to provide some solution in one of the coming Add-In releases.