Creating Conveyor – Real-World Project Influences

Posted on by Nate

Interoperability has been a foundational concept in the formation and continued operations of Proving Ground. In a blog post from 2016, I positioned interoperability as a ‘wicked problem’ for the building design and construction industry that is situated at the intersection of “interdependent issues of the marketplace of tools and our execution processes.”

While the landscape of design and construction software has made shifts towards improved compatibility in recent years, many of the same interoperability challenges are as present today as when I penned this article. However, today’s interoperable landscape has made important advances in remedying the process waste that has long accompanied the orchestration of multiple tools use among teams of project stakeholders:

  • Skills: Teams have become more savvy in how they plan and navigate the complexities of data exchange between the walled gardens of proprietary applications. 
  • Core Platforms: The tools themselves have made notable advances in enabling better interoperable connectivity – including new APIs and other novel integrations.
  • Tool Extensions: Numerous workflow-oriented solutions have come into the AEC marketplace with a core objective of connecting together various platforms into more cohesive workflows.

For the past four years, Proving Ground has been developing and supporting a product called Conveyor which is situated as a simple direct connectivity plugin for Rhino and Revit. One of the aspects of Conveyor I feel is very special is how it evolved out of learned experiences working on exciting, landmark architectural projects. Two specific projects greatly informed our early exploration of Rhino and Revit interoperability:  The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation.

These projects shared a similar geometric language and also possessed similar documentation needs. Proving Ground’s objectives were:  

  1. Establish simple, repeatable workflows to transfer Rhino objects to Revit with supporting BIM classifications and attributes.
  2. Enable better Revit support for mesh-based geometry which would be required to represent highly complex geometric objects.
  3. Make the workflows usable by team members that do not have a background in computational design, data management, or scripting.
  4. Provide compatibility that is ‘low overhead’ – it should be easy to deploy as a local plugin and not depend on additional platforms or services (e.g. cloud services).

Interested in trying Conveyor? Visit apps.provingground.io!

The Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation

IMAGE: The interior canyon of the Gilder Center of Science, Innovation, and Education. Image Credit: Nathan Miller

Designed by Studio Gang, the Gilder Center is now open to the public as part of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The design features an organic interior geometry and rough concrete materiality that is evocative of a canyon that has been eroded over time. This geometric concept posed a novel challenge for the design development and documentation process.

IMAGE: The Gilder Center ‘canyon’ T-Spline Rhino surface model created during the early Design Development stage. 

The concept was originally developed using T-Splines for Rhino 5 back in 2016 – well before SubD object types were introduced in Rhino 7. The resultant organic forms presented a number of challenges for creating clean geometry for use in Revit documentation. Proving Ground worked with the Studio Gang team to implement a novel mesh refinement conversion process from Rhino to Revit. This process was documented fully in an ACADIA research paper published as part of the 2017 conference proceedings.

IMAGE: A mesh-based Rhino-to-Revit conversion plugin was implemented to facilitate the transfer of the complex geometry for use in design documentation. The translation produced ‘cuttable’ objects that could have styles and hatch patterns applied.

In summary, the process involved developing the ‘T-Splines’ geometry into a set of refined Rhino mesh objects that possessed adaptive triangulation and thickened to represent understood material constraints. A simple Revit addin was deployed to the team that would allow Revit to read the Rhino mesh geometry using OpenNURBS and construct 3D family objects.

IMAGE: A detail cutaway showing a solid mesh imported into Revit from Rhino. The Rhino mesh was composed of multiple ‘thickened’  layers. Styles and patterns and patterns are able to be applied in Revit. The mesh triangulation is able to be hidden for object legibility within the Revit documentation..
IMAGE: The Rhino-to-Revit conversion process allowed for special linework to be embedded with the mesh with visibility controls in Revit. This example shows a custom line-based surface pattern that was developed in Rhino to be transferred with the mesh object.

The mesh conversion process developed by Proving Ground also possesses the novelty of producing ‘cuttable’ Revit objects that have ‘hidden edges’ to the mesh triangulation with control over ‘crease’ appearance. This enabled the team to represent their design intent within Revit in a manner that convention importing of solids would not allow.

Ultimately, the conversion of meshes into Revit family objects would continue development and become an important feature of Conveyor.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

IMAGE: A drone aerial view of construction progress on the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Image sourced from drone footage. Credit: John Kay, YouTube

In 2016, Proving Ground was also contracted by Stantec – the executive architect – to support the implementation of advanced geometry management workflows for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Designed by MAD Architects, the project design is composed of highly organic architectural geometry designed initially using subdivision surface modeling techniques in Maya. While the geometric language has some commonality with the aforementioned Gilder Center, the project geometry utilized a language of discretized panels on the interior and exterior.

IMAGE: The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art exterior geometry was defined using subdivision surface modeling techniques. Originally developed in Maya, the model was imported into Rhino.
IMAGE: The Lucas Museum exterior was to be composed of highly unique panels. This view shows the panel edges with a coarse meshing triangulation applied to each panel.
IMAGE: Imported mesh panels possessed thickness and hidden mesh wires. Each panel was individually selectable, schedulable, and cuttable as a Revit family object.

Proving Ground developed workflow methods that would support Stantec in the creation of record documents using Revit. The methodologies would be utilized for design development, construction documentation, and also support model coordination during later construction phases. With these considerations in mind, the geometric workflows required attention to more detailed geometric representations to support the documentation needs.

Rhino initially served as a geometric ‘landing platform’ for the Maya-based geometry. Utilizing similar meshing techniques as the Gilder Center, Proving Ground further developed approaches for representing the LMNA panelized exterior. As opposed to a single monolithic mesh, the Revit conversion needed to account for each individual panel object such that they could be scheduled, tracked, and updated as the project progressed. This process led to the development of family-based conversion logic where individual, unique panels could be converted to Revit family objects inclusive of property information from Rhino.

IMAGE: Exterior panel installation at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Photo credit, Adam Amengual, New York Times

Conveyor – Today’s Product

Conveyor was officially released as a downloadable product in 2020. Version 1 featured an expanded conversion matrix that included novel Rhino-Revit translation logic for transferring Rhino-based floors, walls, meshes, solids, levels, and grids into Revit. Subsequent versions expanded on this integration by attaching Conveyor’s translation control panel to work with Rhino.Inside Revit. The combination of Rhino.Inside with Conveyor provides users with a direct integration for transferring geometry and data bi-directionally between Rhino and Revit without the necessity for using Grasshopper.

Version 5 of Conveyor was released this year in 2024 and adds new support for Revit 2025. The new version of Conveyor introduces expanded workflows for coordinating Rhino and Revit materials. In addition, linework translation is now included which can enable the creation of Revit detail families and the inclusion of Rhino-generated line patterns – like contour topography – into Revit families.

While Conveyor has evolved from a bespoke project-oriented toolkit into a product, the goal of the workflow has largely remained the same. Conveyor provides a low-cost bridge between two popular design software platforms combined with a workflow that is easy to learn for non-computational design professionals. 

Interested in trying Conveyor? Visit apps.provingground.io!