Evac4Bim

A Revit add-in that improves the integration of Fire Evacuation into te BIM worklfow.

This add-in was developed as part of a master thesis and in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of The International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE). The full text of thesis will be published shortly.

This repository hosts the source code and assemblies.

Revit version

This add-in can run on Revit 2022 or later versions

Features

• Extract information required to perform assessments of fire evacuation performance or compliance (e.g number of exits for a space, width of stairways on a storey). The user can also edit/include additional information (occupant profiles, number of occupants, room function/usage, etc.).

  

• Feed the extracted information to evacuation assessment tools such as evacuation simulators (by exporting into an enriched IFC file).

• Capture results from evacuation assessment tools (such as evacuation simulations or prescrpitive reviews)

• Display assessment results to the user within the Revit interface and store in the model.

• Animate evacuation simulation results which are provided as time distributions

• Generate enriched IFC files supporting the fire evacuation data requirements of the new draft MVD for FSE.

• Perform automated prescription reviews based on the IBC code.

Installation Instructions

• Download the latest release from here
• Unpack the content of the zip package into Revit's addin folder e.g C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2022

• Launch Revit

Build Instructions

If you wish to build the source code, you can clone/download the repository.

Note: The source code for the extended IFC exporter is hosted on a different repository (Revit-IFC-Master) and has to be built separarelty then deployed along with this add-in. However, the release version (presented in the previous section) includes all the assemblies in one.

• Open the project solution (Evac4Bim.sln) in Visual Studio The solution and its sub projects are already configured but ensure your local environment meets the following requirements before attempting to build:

• .NET FRAMEWORK version 4.8 in Visual Studio

• A local installation of Autodesk Revit (since the solution references several dll files from it)

• In the project solution, ensure the path to each referenced dll is correct (do this for every sub project)

• If the target path does not match the local installation folder of Revit, you can add the reference manually and overwrite the previous one.

• In addition to that, you need to install the following dependencies from NuGet

• Once you setup the environment, build the solution
• To deploy the solution, copy the assemblies into Revit's addin folder e.g C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2022

Note 1 : the project solution is configured to autmatically copy the assemblies and dependencies into the add-in folder as a "post-build" event. You can adjust the path to the folder in project properties or disable the post-build event.

Note 2 : In any case, you have to follow the same folder structure as the installation package provided in the release (see above).

Note 3 : Do not forget to add manifest files (.addin). You can use the manifest files included in the installation package of the release.

Note 4 : Do not forget to add the assembly dlls for the dependecies (please refer to the installation package of the release - see above).

Case Studies and Sample Projects

You can find sample project files on this repo. It includes Revit models, IFC files, Pathfinder models as well as the Solibri ruleset used for validation. Additionally, video recordings are included.

Known Limitations

The following limitations should be considered regarding the prototype code reviewer:

• Only starting number of occupants is considered for evacuation capacity check (i.e., rooms discharging to another room are not considered)
• Path of travel: only one per room. Alternative paths are not considered.
• There can only be one discharge level in a multistorey building. At the discharge level, discharge exits are sized for all occupants from all other storeys (including the discharge level itself).
• Spiral stairways not considered
• Stair landing path is computed following the Predtechenskii and Milinskii method.
• Refuge areas are not considered.
• Project units should be set in SI units.
• Only gross area is considered. Net area is not deducted.
• High rise buildings are not considered.
• Prescriptions related to corridors are not checked.
• Doors must be oriented outwards.
• Paths of travel are generated as direct line-of-sight, for illustration only. IBC-compliant pathways should be L-shaped.

Code reference

An overview of the code is given in this wiki

Acknowledgments

• Dr Pete Thompson and Dr Enrico Ronchi (Lund University) : for their support throughout my thesis work and for introducing me into this research topic.

• Jimmy Abualdenien (TU München) and Dr. Asim Siddiqui (University of Greenwich) : for their guidance and research on the Fire Safety Engineering MVD for BIM.

• Thunderhead Engineering : for their technical support and input on working with the Pathfinder and for developing a demo version which supports the draft IFC schema for fire evacuation.

• The IMFSE consortium : for allowing me to pursue this MSc in Fire Safety Engineering and the financial support which made this thesis possible.

• IFC for Revit and Navisworks (revit-ifc) by Autodesk (available on Github)

• Icons from https://www.flaticon.com/

Revit-IFC-Master

This is a fork of the open source Revit IFC exporter allowing to define custom Ifc properties. It can be found on this repository : Revit-IFC-Master