IMAGINiT Clarity IS A POWERFUL TOOL FOR REVIT automation. Recently during AU 21 (Autodesk University), Architosh sat down virtually with Matt Mason, Director of Software Development, IMAGINiT Technologies, a division of RAND Worldwide. The goal was to review IMAGINiT Clarity and its latest updates.
Clarity—Its Role
Clarity is a product aimed squarely at the BIM Coordinator role in AEC firms using Revit as its BIM platform. The software has had four main functions: automation, model health, business intelligence, and room and equipment data. A new module just released this year addresses programming and space planning.
“This product goes back ten years, says Matt Mason. “We were looking at the people who serve firms in the BIM Coordinator role, and these folks seem to spend a large part of their time doing repetitive tasks.” Such tasks include the generation of DWG exports for consultants or producing PDF sets for next-day morning meetings. These basic tasks that all architects and engineers must do on large jobs can take mind-numbing hours per week.
People in the BIM Coordinator role have it tough; if a lot of staff are working on a project and the coordinator manages five or more projects, it is hard for them to spend much time in the models checking things and eyeballing if best practices are being followed. Clarity’s tools streamline this process.
Clarity enables BIM Coordinators to fully program and automate such tasks. “On just a medium-sized Revit project, this can take a half-hour, says Mason. “On a big Revit project, it can take a lot more time. Clarity is saving people a ton of time.”
Clarity can automate dozens of tasks across multiple functional categories. It can automate both exports and prints, including into file formats like DGN (Bentley), DWF, DWG, FBX, GBxml, COBie, IFC, Navisworks, and of course, PDF. It can also batch datasheet PDF books, send Revit schedules to Excel format, export Revit View images, including Room Images export.
BIM Models—Their Needs
High-functioning BIM models need attention, and dedicated BIM Coordinators best serve this role. Clarity comes with tools to power this process. BIM Coordinators can run Model Metrics, its Model Performance Advisor Report to gain insights into areas of a Revit model that are not meeting good practice standards. More than 60 metrics can be analyzed. (see Image 02 below)
Image 01 — Clarity can fully automate multiple types of tasks it can perform, shown here across its Task Timeline window.
“People in the BIM Coordinator role have it tough; if a lot of staff are working on a project and the coordinator manages five or more projects, it is hard for them to spend much time in the models checking things and eyeballing if best practices are being followed,” says Mason. “Clarity’s tools streamline this process.”
Firms using Revit and experiencing persistent slow-downs on models as the project proceeds through time would clearly benefit from IMAGINiT Clarity.
Another area where Clarity helps streamline tasks is in “model exchange” and management tasks. Clarity can simplify, clean, and fix links in Revit models.
Setting Up Clarity
Clarity installs on a Windows Server on your firm’s LAN. There is also a new cloud version of Clarity that runs on Autodesk Forge. The on-premise server version is one that Mason characterizes as light enterprise software.
Image 02 — Clarity delivers several tools aimed at BIM model metrics, optimizations, and performance advisory reports. These ensure optimal Revit model performance in organizations.
Clarity sends its marching orders to “task servers”—machines on the LAN running Revit (and optionally AutoCAD). The actual Revit models or AutoCAD files can exist elsewhere, including network (LAN) folders, on a Revit Server, Autodesk BIM 360, or Bentley ProjectWise. This flexibility is what is appealing to Revit users. Mason said they still have many customers committed to ProjectWise, for example, while the global pandemic pushed many Revit firms to BIM360.
Clarity has a growing list of “targets” for its output locations. When Clarity generates those PDFs at midnight for the next day’s morning meeting, the output locations include not only network (LAN) folders, BIM360, ProjectWise, and FTP; they also have support cloud players like BOX, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft SharePoint, MS Teams, Procore, and BIMTrack.
During AU with the big Clarity update, the company also announced integrations with Egnyte and deeper integration with Google Docs. They also have a Bluebeam integration which they hope to have active in the near future.
Image 03 — Clarity also includes a 3D Revit model viewer, as shown here highlighting a searched object in the project and providing data viewing of that object.
Clarity Cloud launched back in June of this year. This fully hosted version of Clarity can automate much of the same tasks as Clarity running on-premise. It can handle repetitive Revit, AutoCAD, and BIM 360 tasks, saving BIM Coordinators hundreds of hours every year.
Clarity Cloud runs on Autodesk Forge, which Mason said is still a “relatively young” product. The on-premise version of Clarity is still a more powerful version as Forge itself has limits as to what it can do.
“The Autodesk Forge side, in terms of automation, is still early. For example, you can’t print PDFs well, which is something people want,” says Mason. “Forge is really sitting in for the task server machines that are on-premise,” he adds, “and the benefit of those machines is you know the hardware, you know what they are capable of doing and how they perform because they are just like your production workstations.”
Some small to mid-sized customers may prefer Clarity Cloud, a solution that features a per-usage billing model while eliminating upfront hardware and IT-related costs. As Forge matures and its functionality and tasks are improved, the cloud version may offer new advantages over the on-premise version.
next page: Space Programming Module
Space Programming Module
“The new Space Programming Module now in Clarity is something the company has been interested in getting into for a long time,” says Mason, saying that it has a connection to the room and equipment sheets focus already in Clarity. (Image 04)
“Our room and equipment data sheets capture data about the final Revit model, which is useful, but Clarity was not part of the planning processes that go along with that,” he adds. Mason felt there was a role to play there.
Image 04 — Clarity’s Room Data Sheets capture extensive data, shown in this view.
He characterizes the new space planning features as sitting between an enterprise solution like Nemetschek’s dRofus and the less flexible and less robust solutions that planners and architects often craft in tools like Excel and Dynamo. “We partnered with three firms to help develop this module,” says Mason, adding that this both reduced the risk and costs of development and also assured that the developed solutions truly worked for the firms interested in the space planning module.
Image 05 — Clarity’s Space Programming module from the Clarity menu in Autodesk Revit.
The effort was seed-funded by a partnership with three large firms that needed a better option. This included Leo A Daly, DLR Group, and another large firm that remains anonymous. When I asked how many existing Clarity users were asking for a space programming module Mason said about 20 percent would maybe use it. Of all Clarity users, about 40 – 50 percent are architects.
A Better Alternative
Clarity’s Space Programming Module offers a better alternative than existing space planning workflows in today’s firms. That process often looks like this:
- planners work up the program in Excel
- Excel is “thrown over the wall” to Revit designers
- schematic design is done in Revit
- project managers monitor any deviation between plan and actuals
With Clarity, planners continue to use Excel, but they can define the program in Clarity. Clarity provides tools in Revit that enable it to generate all types of geometry from the entered program. Clarity’s tools help manage actuals versus the plan and check adjacencies requirements.
Clarity provides web tools for tracking the actual versus the program, actual stacking, and room datasheets. The system produces Clarity Room & Equipment Datasheets, Clarity Space Programming Reports, and Space Program History / Change Tracking.
This helps architects understand the history of space programs so they can build the next school using sizing data from the last school in that district, for example.
All spaces in Clarity have Room Requirements operating on the following criteria level: Room Type, Department, Functional Area, Level, and Customer Parameters. Then there are Adjacency Requirements. Finally, FF&E Requirements can be applied.
Mason says that analysis tools in Clarity include stacking, pivot tables, and general reports. (see Image 07) “This helps architects understand the history of space programs so they can build the next school using sizing data from the last school in that district, for example,” he says. (see Image 06)
Image 06 — Clarity’s Space Programming module can track program data against SF data changes in the Revit model.
Clarity Space Programming can auto-generate the mass/generic model/unplaced rooms for the program into your Revit model. “You then arrange them as appropriate,” he notes. You can then synchronize the design back to Clarity as “actual” data.
Future Clarity
I asked Mason if he thought Autodesk itself would at some point incorporate such space planning features into Revit. “We can see Autodesk maybe doing that inside of BIM 360 but not Revit,” he says. He notes that the history of Autodesk working with third-party developers is pretty straightforward. Autodesk will let you know if third-party folks develop features close to what they consider “core” to the program.
“We have a good relationship [with Autodesk], and it just depends on what they feel is really core to them,” he says.
Image 07 — Clarity’s Space Programming can show program and stacking diagrams.
While Clarity is primarily a North American product, the company does have users worldwide. “We do a fair amount of international work, but mostly from multi-nationals,” he adds.
A Clarity license enables 3x task servers but supports unlimited users and projects. “With just three task servers, folks trying to do more will run into limits, so they scale up licenses.”
Recently, the firm added Clarity features to AutoCAD, though it is considered a non-BIM tool. In doing the work for AutoCAD, the company modernized its code in such a way that the future of Clarity could open itself up to other BIM tools. “Yeah, we see the need is there,” he notes. “Bentley has a little bit of their own thing that works with ProjectWise. However, IMAGINiT is so tightly tied to Autodesk customers, so I’m not sure we see it for the Graphisoft side. But because we have re-architected things to work with AutoCAD, we are less tied to one specific system.”
Meanwhile, Clarity marches on building more output targets. There is demand for Aconex in Europe and 12d Synergy in Australia. “The analogy I use for Clarity is that the software is like a robotic intern, willing to work 24×7 and grind out all the boring, repetitive stuff over and over again. That’s a rather lovely advantage for the BIM Coordinator role.”