We recently got the following inquiry: there is a model consisting out of walls, beams, columns and floors.

All of the structural elements are made out of concrete.

We want to draw a random box and get the exact amount of concrete for structural elements by category that is within the box. If an element is partially cut by the box, we want it sliced by the box and the part within the box added to it.

Here is the Dynamo that does exactly that:

Let’s dissect that:

Here we get the user input – the box and the category of elements to take into account

Next we got to do a clash detection between the elements collected and – here I need to emphasize how great I find Bimorph Nodes – the performance difference is dramatic.

Now we check if elements are structural:

Then we pull the geometry of elements, cut them by the box and pull the volume

And – to make things snazzy we try to visualize that in Revit and Dynamo:

In Revit we do that by using the following nodes:

It honestly does not show too much – that’s why we use the Watch3D node as a proof of our results – here we can see that the elements are cut back by the box:

And life is – getting better…