Revit Tip – Using Dynamo to place families at coordinates

Dynamo is a great way of automating tasks within Revit, a question I was asked recently was how could Dynamo be used to place components with coordinates? Of course, this is possible, depending upon circumstance but to place for example, foundation pads at the base of columns is very easy to do with the default supplied nodes.

The sample script will select all family types in a document, obtain its coordinates (X, Y, Z) and then place a specified family at that position using the Familyinstance bycoordinates node. The script will also consider the base offset instance parameter for each pad. This correction value is simply added to the Z coordinate.

The sample script shown works with columns and foundations, but a similar principle can be used to locate service elements like pipe sleeves through walls with a coordinate list built via Dynamo’s intersection nodes. I will discuss that script and application in a future post.