Creating a Snowman in Autodesk Advance Steel

For this year’s Christmas blog, I have decided to create a snowman using the tools available in Advance Steel and once complete transfer the model to Revit.

For the snowman the body and head were created using the conical folded plate command, these are typically used to create hoppers. Starting from the selected contours, Advance Steel then calculates the shape and creates joined triangular and trapezoid facets according to the selected contour shape.

The arms were created using the “Beam from polyline” command, use this command if you have sections that need to be put through a bending machine as one piece. Simply draw out the profile of your polyline then use the “Beam from polyline” to generate your Poly beam.

The section of the scarf that is fluttering in the breeze again has been created from a 2D polyline, once we have the polyline then we can use the “Plate at polyline”.

For the hat this is simply a section of CHS with the end plate connection used at each end, the lower end plate has had the projection changed so it is 300mm bigger than the tube.

The last part of the snowman is the face, the eyes and mouth were created using a circular pattern of bolts, I then split the bolt pattern so they became individual bolts, this allowed me to delete the bolts I didn’t need and change the eyes to a larger size.

The nose was inserted as a special part, special parts are items that are already manufactured and bought in, these could be glass clamps or other balustrade fixings, cast in brackets for balconies. If you need further information on Special parts you can watch my webinar here.

Now that the Advance Steel model is complete, we can transfer it into Revit, this is done with an SMXL file. You need to ensure your Advance Steel model is numbered, then on the Export & import tab under the Revit panel choose the Export option.

To import this model into Revit you need to have the Advance Steel extension for Revit installed, this is installed either from your Desktop app or Autodesk account (Pre 2019 you need to download it from the Autodesk app store) Once installed from the Add-Ins tab under the Advance Steel extension choose import. You may need to map sections and load them into your template file if they do not already exist.

This workflow is not just for structural members and connections, more complex plate work will transfer via the SMXL format as shown in the images below, the left is the Advance Steel model, the right is imported into Revit.

Watch our video below to see the snowman being created and then transferred into Autodesk Revit.

To learn more about the workflows between Advance Steel and Revit, make sure you check out the on-demand webinars and tutorials on our Advance Steel content portal.

Alternatively, if you would like to enquire about Advance Steel software and training, just get in contact by clicking on the button below.