Presenting the Zee
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
We recently received a request to model the Artis Zee Biplane System, and quickly discovered this was not your run of the mill Revit family. Made by Siemens, the Artis Zee Biplane is a cutting-edge, robotic, medical diagnostic device consisting of a bed, a display arm, a ceiling mounted C-arm, and a base C-arm. The arms, or Zees, as Siemens calls them, are each made up of multiple pieces that rotate or spin along different axes, which allows for tremendous freedom of movement. The bed can also rotate around three axes. And of course our client wanted the ability to freely arrange each element’s position. So we’re talking parameters, parameters, and…more parameters.
“Congrats to you and your team for making such a complex model. The manual is also incredibly helpful for understanding how the parameters have been set up.”
Luckily for us, we have an outstanding team of modelers that more than rose to the occasion. They built the system as one family with four nested files. Since the requirements were to make the Zee system fully movable while still looking great rendered, small file size wasn’t a priority for the client. We first modeled the reference lines laced with their appropriate parameters to act as an “armature” for the geometric model.
The main obstacle during the modeling process proved to be the Zees’ electrical conduits, which were supposed to hang freely depending on the movement of the arms. Making smooth curved geometries that change shape through parameters does tend to be difficult in Revit. More so when those changes are angular rather than linear. After some brainstorming, followed by some trial and error, it was decided that to ensure problem-free movement, the cables should have limited movement; they would stay beside their corresponding arms to avoid parameter errors.
Once the separate families were ready (Zee arms and display arm), they were nested inside the bed family. Their parameters were then linked and materials assigned, completing the family for delivery to the client.
The process of building a complex family like the Zee reinforces some basic principles of successful modeling:
1. Make sure you create families on the right plane
2. Name the reference planes explicitly
3. Flex, flex, and flex again
With its multiple free-moving parts, the Artis Zee Biplane was certainly a family more challenging than most. But in the end our modelers really shined and we came away quite happy with the results. This request gave us the chance to experiment with some new techniques, and to create what we feel is a truly beautiful Revit family.
Cristobal Bernal
Project Manager