IFC and Revit Readers Updated for 2019+

Introduction

Over the past few years, we have been revamping and overhauling our Autodesk Revit and IFC readers. With these revamps, the readers have been renamed, and this article will cover how these changes affect your workspaces for 2019+.

FME Exporter for Revit

The FME Exporter for Revit is no longer available for FME 2019.0+. This was an earlier approach designed to gather more data than exported through IFC, which turned out to be unnecessary. To export IFC from Autodesk Revit, go to File > Export > IFC.

If you have a 2019.0 or newer version of FME installed as well as the FME Exporter for Revit when opening Revit, you will see the following message:

This message can be ignored, but note that FME Exporter for Revit will no longer be updated. Just use the export method mentioned above.

If you are using FME 2013 to 2018, the FME Exporter for Revit can still be downloaded and used. Please see the FME Exporter for Revit section on our website for more details and downloads.

Previously Exported .rvz Files

If you have older files that have been previously exported by the FME Exporter for Revit that have the .rvz file extension, these can still be read into FME 2019+ using the new IFC with Data Views reader.

Updating Readers in 2019+

Updating the older Revit reader or the IFC reader in workspaces created with FME 2018.1 or older is straightforward in 2019+. Before you update any readers, please save a version of the older workspace in case there is a schema mapping error as these are newer formats.

How to Update a Reader

To update a reader, in the Navigation window, right-click on the reader you wish to update, then click on Update Reader…

Then in the Update Reader dialog, double-check the format name, dataset, and any parameters. Then for Update Options, you can either Update Reader, which will update the Format only. Or you can Update Reader and Feature Types, which will update the Format as well as re-read in the data to use the most recent file of the name dataset name.

Updating the IFC Reader

The Industry Foundation Class STEP files (IFC) reader will be updated in 2019+ to Industry Foundation Class STEP/XML files (IFC):

Updating the Autodesk Revit Reader

The Autodesk Revit reader will be updated in 2019+ to IFC with Data Views (FME Exporter for Revit). Note: In FME 2020.0, this format will only be called IFC with Data Views:

Native Autodesk Revit Reader

In addition to the renaming of formats, we have added a native Autodesk Revit reader which will read in .rvt files directly. This allows you to work directly with Revit files without the need to export to a different format. FME can only read in .rvt files, it cannot write. For more information on this new format, please see the Autodesk Revit Reader documentation.

Any questions or concerns regarding these updates, please contact Safe Support.