Drilling Points

General

Our software and Revit families can be used to export drilling points for surveying equipment like Trimble Total Station or automated drilling robots like Hilti Jaibot.

To achieve this, our Revit families of hangers and supports come with 'Drilling Point' nested shared families. When hangers are inserted using MEP Hangers software, these points are placed right at the intersection with the structural element (floor, wall, beam, etc.).

These drilling points can then be populated with values for their X, Y and Z coordinates into specified parameters.

Drilling Pointsʼ parameters

Visibility of the drilling points in your Revit project can be adjusted as needed. To disable or enable drilling points, go to the type properties of the hanger family and change the 'Drilling Points Visible' parameter value.

Size of the drilling point mark can be changed in the type properties of the 'M_Drilling Point' family (or 'I_Drilling Point' for imperial) using the 'Mark Radius' parameter.

Using Sort Mark to fill coordinate values

To populate drilling points with the values for X, Y and Z coordinates, our Sort Mark tool is provided in a bundle with the MEP Hangers software.

Click here to read more about Sort Mark

The SortMark tool can be found in Revitʼs toolbar under the 'T4R Document' tab.

There are a few ways you might want to have your coordinates written to a parameter.

X and Y coordinates in a single parameter

The quickest way is to use Sort Markʼs 'Calculate Coordinates' command. It will write X and Y coordinates divided by a semicolon to a text parameter. Let's create an 'X Y Coordinates' text project parameter and assign it to the Structural Connections category. Now the 'M_Drilling Point' (or 'I_Drilling Point' in imperial version) families have parameters for coordinates to be written into.

The workflow is as follows:

1. Select all drilling points in the project using Revitʼs 'Select All Instances' -> 'In Entire Project'

2. Hit 'Calculate Coordinates' and you will be prompted to choose a parameter to write values to – letʼs use the 'X Y Coordinates'.

3. Select the type of coordinates (shared or project) and either the start/middle/end point of the family instance for coordinate calculation. Letʼs use the 'Start Point (Shared)'.

All drilling points have now received X and Y values in their 'X Y Coordinate' parameter.

X, Y and Z coordinates in a single parameter

All 3 coordinate values with custom formatting can be written to a single parameter as well. Letʼs create an 'X Y Z Coordinates' project parameter (must be Text type).

Now, letʼs use the Sort Markʼs 'Element Numbering' command. Select the category and then the parameter.

In the Sort Mark window, go to the Filtering tab and set up a filter for drilling points. Otherwise, all Structural Connections category instances in the project will have this value written into as well.

In the Sorting tab, under 'Available items', locate the 'Instance: Element position X', 'Instance: Element position Y' and the 'Instance: Element position Z' parameters and move them to the 'Selected Items' by double clicking on them or by using the 'Add -->' button.

In theSort Mark' tab, move all these parameters to the right and set up prefixes and suffixes to separate data. It might be a good idea to save this configuration for future use. To do that, click 'Save As'.

Run the configuration by clicking 'OK'. All the filtered elements now have their X, Y and Z values written to the 'X Y Z Coordinates' parameter.

X, Y and Z coordinates in separate parameters

Usually, a preferred way is to have separate parameters for X, Y and Z coordinates. To do that, first, letʼs create some more project parameters - 'X Coordinate', 'Y Coordinate' and 'Z Coordinate' as text parameters.

You will need to execute the Sort Markʼs 'Element Numbering' command 3 times – one for each parameter. Steps are the same as before but you only need to select one parameter for element position in Sorting and Sort Mark tabs. For every coordinate, select the respective position parameter.

Below is an example for the 'X Coordinate'.

Set up a filter for drilling points in the Filtering tab, move the 'Instance: Element position X' parameter to the right side in the Sorting tab and then again in the Sort Mark tab. Save the configuration for future use and click 'OK' to run the command.

Now repeat the same for the 'Y Coordinate' and the 'Z Coordinate' but use the respective position parameters.

Next time, since you already have all the configurations, you can run them all at once using SortMark's 'Elements Batch Numbering'.

Results

Every drilling point in the project is now populated with X, Y and Z coordinates in 3 ways:

• X and Y coordinates in a single parameter.

• X, Y, and Z coordinates in a single parameter with predefined prefixes and suffixes.

• X, Y, and Z coordinates in separate parameters.

To use these points in an outside software, create a Revit schedule with needed values, export the schedule, and load it into the outside software in Excel or .csv format.

As for the Sort Mark tool, it is capable of much more than just filling in coordinate values. To read more, go to the overview page.