Streamline Wood Prefab Construction with ONYX for Strucsoft

(MWF has been rebranded to Strucsoft)

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s webinar. My name is Michael James and today we’re going to take a look at the MWF Pro Wood (Now Strucsoft Wood) to ONYX workflow. During the course of this webinar we’re going to look at the following topics. We’ll look at how we can upload our Revit geometry to ONYX, how we can prepare our uploaded components and assign them to cnc machines we can generate our cnc outputs, how we can make modifications to our panels using the cnc editor, and then finally how we can generate cnc outputs using ONYX.
First of all we’ll take a look at our model where you’ll see that we have a fairly decent sized residential model which comprises of two halves. We have the west wing and we have the east wing. For the purpose of today’s webinar we’ll be focusing on the west wing and more specifically on the second floor of the west wing.
Before we can upload our geometry into ONYX it’s important that we first have access to the ONYX upload center which is available via the ONYX web browser. Once downloaded you’ll see it appear as an additional tab inside of Revit where we can then upload our geometry using some of the tools available. What I need to do first is go to show upload manager where I can point towards a project where I want to send my Revit geometry. I’ll first log in. Once logged in we can then point towards a project where we want to send our Revit geometry into ONYX.
I’ll select this project and then there are a couple of ways that we can upload the individual members that make up our overall panels and we need to send that geometry into ONYX so it can understand what the panels are made from. The first option is to say upload sections.
Within the upload sections dialog box you’ll see that we have the option to choose steel, wood, sheathing and hardware. We’re working with a wood model today I’m going to go to lumber where you can see that we have the various member types that we have available in this project. I can simply select one of these members and I could say upload. If I wanted to change anything related to this member, for example the section shape, I could change the profile associated with it and I can also see how many times this has been sent into ONYX previously. As this is a new project this is version one this is the first time this element will be uploaded into ONYX.
If I want to upload all elements at once I can click on the check box at the top and I’ve also got these filter options to allow me to select specific elements when uploading the geometry to ONYX. We have this option. For now I’ll say close and I’ll just demonstrate the second option that we have available.
We can upload the sections which is an important step and we can also upload sections via the upload panels area as in the upload panels dialog box you’ll see that we have a list of our panels and we have the option to filter. We have filters to say select our wall panels. Based on our host as our levels we can choose to load a specific level. We can see that we have all of our second floor panels here for example.
If you’ve associated a level you can then also filter by area and we’ve got the version number based on how many times this panel has been sent into ONYX. If I was to select my external panel here you’ll notice we have a component status related to our panel. This component status will tell us whether or not the members within this panel have been uploaded to ONYX before.
At the moment you can see the component status is showing all. We also have the option to set show me uploaded and show me the elements that are not uploaded. If I have a look at the not uploaded area you’ll notice that it still highlights the panel and tells us that there are elements within this panel that are not uploaded. If I extend this drop down menu you’ll see that we have a sheathing panel and some members within the panel that are still yet to be uploaded.
The red cross tells us that ONYX cannot see these members at the moment and that we need to upload them. I can simply go to the components upload manager where I can then select lumber and we can see the members that are yet to be uploaded. Within sheathing you can see there are elements that need to be uploaded and also within hardware.
I’ll upload hardware first simply selecting the elements in the list and say upload. Now I’ll upload the sheathing elements and the outstanding components. Now all the outstanding components have been uploaded we can simply say close and now when we check this panel against the elements which are not uploaded you’ll see that the list is empty and we can see which elements are uploaded and you’ll see that we have green ticks to tell us that ONYX can now see these elements.
Now we’ve successfully uploaded our panel members into ONYX then we can look at the different ways that we can select panels ready to upload them into ONYX. There are two methods that we can use and I’ll close this dialog box and one of those methods is to upload panels based on the selection. If I select one of my panels you’ll see that when I go to ONYX upload panel it will only load the selected panel.
On the other hand if I don’t select any panels then it will detect all the panel types currently available in the view and it will load all of those panels. If I hit escape and I go to upload panels this time you’ll notice it will load all the panels.
Now those panels are loaded we can then use filters and the search box to find specific panels that we want to load into ONYX. I’m going to go to my filter and I’m going to choose my wall panels. Select all panels and I’ll simply say upload. The selected panels will be uploaded into ONYX and there’s a report just to tell us that those panels were successfully uploaded into ONYX.
I’ll click and the only panels that are remaining are the ones which weren’t selected. I simply close the dialog box and you’ll see in the view now that we have a red overlay over the panels that have been uploaded into ONYX just to give a safe initial indication that something has changed and these are now locked for editing.
What we’ll do now is we’ll jump into ONYX. I’ll just go to my browser and log into my account. Now I’ve uploaded our panel and the panel members, all components into ONYX you can access those members from the component types menu within ONYX on the left hand side as you can see.
I click on component types you’ll notice a list of all of our members we’ve got profiles we’ve got our lumber members all of our members that have been loaded into our ONYX account. The reason I say account is because our ONYX accounts can contain multiple projects and when we upload a panel member that member can be seen by all of the projects which are referencing that member type. That means we only have to upload the member once and if the project’s using the same member it will automatically recognize that member type.
As you can see in the table we’ve got the family symbol we’ve got our family member sizes we’ve got two by six, two by eight, two by ten etc we’ve got family type section shape width amongst some of the values and parameters. On the right you can see our cnc machine value relating to a member and you can see each of our members say do not cut. We don’t want it to say do not cut because when we’re generating our cnc outputs we need to reference these panel members and in order to do that we need to have our machine settings associated with each of these member types.
To associate a machine to our panel members we can simply select one go to assign cnc machine where you’ll see at the top we have our machine type. You can see here I’ve got btl and beneath that we have our machine setting. We currently don’t have any settings associated with our machine type first we need to create our settings. We can then associate them with our panel members.
I’ll click close and I’ll go to my settings. Within the settings menu you can see just beneath settings we have our cnc machines option which is where we can configure our cnc machine settings. Before I do that we need to look at our units. Our units will be used to control the level of precision and also the units of measurement when we’re generating things like our machine settings and any templates that we generate in ONYX. As these are dynamic we can make a change to the units at any point but it’s important that the units are set correctly before we generate any settings or any templates.
For the purpose of the webinar today I’m going to set my units to metric but as you can see we have imperial we have feet and inches decimal and fractional as the level of precision for our construction tolerance and our manufacturing tolerance.
We have the same options for our weight value as you can see we have imperial we have metric and we have pounds and the level of precision. As I said before I’ll be using metric measurements today where we can choose meters or millimeters we have decimal values and we have construction tolerance again. For our weight if I set this to metric it’s in kilograms and we have the level of precision that we can set. I’ll save those settings which will now be available for me to use when I generate my settings and templates.
Now I’ll click on cnc machines where I can set my saw machine and my machine type. You can see my machine subtype is btl and I can say add setting and you’ll see within this menu I have my machine subtype. I can give this setting a name; this is how I’ll identify this machine in a list of other machine settings. I’ll say btl01 just for simplicity. Depending on your naming convention and maybe the machine type that you’re using and the members it can produce you might want to name this after your machine type or model or however you need to in order to identify it.
As you can see our units are read only and you can see it’s using our metric decimal millimeter measurements and we’ve got the manufacturing tolerance and format already pre-configured here. We’ve got some machine options where we can set a starting offset when we’re generating our panels we can have a starting offset for our tool. I’ll just set that to zero and we can have an end offset as well. As an endpoint it can be offset by a certain amount.
We have saw tolerance based on the width of our blade. We can set that value there and we can choose to use the position name. If we’ve run member positioning we can use the position value in our naming convention inside of ONYX. We can output the selected files in one file. If I select multiple elements and download cnc we can output those selected elements in one file rather than have them in individual files. And we can also choose to exclude tracks and exclude verticals in our panels.
I’ll simply say create and you can see some information referring to these settings I’ve just generated. If I quickly wanted to generate more settings or any new settings I can duplicate my existing settings where I can make minor changes and then save it as a new option. That will just speed up the process.
Now we’ve generated our new machine settings I’ll simply go back to the component types menu where you can associate these settings with our member types. Within lumber we’ll select all members. You can set multiple settings for all of your different member types depending on the capabilities of your machine and the members it can produce. But in this case we’ve got 2 by 10, 2 by 8 etc. And I’ll say assign cnc machine where I can choose my machine type and the settings for that machine. As you can see it’s associated those machine settings with all the selected member types and it’s just as simple as that. Now I can produce my cnc outputs with the settings that I’ve configured.
In order to do that I need to go back to my project and once I click into my project I’ll be taken into the panel manager where I can see all of the panels that are now part of this particular project. The panel manager is a great place to find information related to all of our panels that have been uploaded to ONYX. And as well as finding our panel information we can also see information relating to the members that are associated with the selected panel. As you can see when I select a panel, at the bottom here we have members where you can see we have our top tracks, bottom tracks, headers and any other families that make up our panel.
Within the panel manager there are quite a few things that we can do as well as generate reports and also generate outputs. But maybe before we decide to do any of those things we want to do a visual check on the panel and maybe add a last minute operation to the panel. When it comes to making modifications to our panels we can’t carry out modifications to the physical members of the panels. If we need to add an additional member that’s something that would have to be done inside of Revit. But we can add operations and additional operations to the panel.
Once we get into the cnc editor we’ve got a filter that we can use to specify the panels that we want to load into the view and I want to focus specifically on level two. I’ll just uncheck level one and say load panels. On the left you can see we have a list of all of our panels and I’m just going to focus on the external panel 13. For this particular panel we don’t want to look at the sheathing; we can uncheck the sheathing in the view but we do want to take a look at our framing.
Within the panel you can notice we have a few characteristics, a few things that we can focus on more specifically. At the bottom of our opening you can see we have some operations — some rectangular hole notch operations where our cripples are notched into our sill. You can see where our horizontal members are placed we have a bit of a clash between our join stud and the horizontal member. What we can do is add a rectangular hole operation just to notch out where the clashes occur.
What I’ll do is go to wood operations and place a rectangular hole on the selected member. Once I’ve selected the member you can see our operation is currently obscured by the horizontal member and we have the option to choose the reference side. I want the reference side to be the top based on our view cube orientation.
We want to say top and now what I need to do is resize it according to the size of the notch that we need. I know that my members are two by six members and what I need to do is make sure that the width is 1.5 inches and for our length we can see that their value has to be 139.7. For the depth we want the depth to be equal to the size of the notch that we need to create and in this case it is going to be equal to the depth of this particular member and again we can see this is a two by six member I want to make sure that the depth matches that value.
I can click on my rectangular hole and just make sure that that is again 1.5 inches. All I need to do now is place it centered over the member. If we go to our transparent level of detail you can see that it’s currently notching the area where this member would be clashing.
As we continue to look around the panel we can see we have some operations at the bottom. We have some round holes based on where our anchor bolts will be placed in our Revit model and if we take a look at the top of our panel we can see that we have a slight overhang. All we need to do is select our top track and we can add a longitudinal cut.
As you can see we have a two by eight member here which is too large for this panel. We have two options: we could go into Revit and replace the member or we could add an operation to place a cut on this particular member type. If I go to longitudinal cut you’ll see it places this operation and the operation is currently facing us. You can see the reference side is currently back and in relation to our view cube you can see the operation is currently facing us.
If I change the reference side to top you’ll see the longitudinal cut is repositioned and you can see it’s placed near the top end of this top track member. I’m going to change the value from 73 to 72 and you can see that cuts quite nicely near the edge of that panel. I’ll do the same thing for the bottom of the panel — I’ll go to longitudinal cut, change the reference to bottom and just make sure the offset is 72.
Now our track would be cut to create the size member in this case.
As we’ve made a few modifications to the panel we could also add round holes. We could simply add a round hole but as our panel doesn’t need it I won’t add those operations but just to show what they can do. If I click round again we can choose the reference side. In this case it is at the top. You can choose the depth, the hole diameter, and we can change the location as well as some of the other information. We could add a slot hole and again if I choose slot hole you can see it places a slot hole where we can choose the position, grab it manually or type in a specific value to place it accurately.
As we don’t need these operations I’ll just remove these for now.
The modifications that we have made to the panel — maybe I want to save these to the panel. When we create our cnc output these operations are also included. In order to do that I’ll go back to the general tab where we have the option to oversave, which will save our session as a draft and not include those edits as part of the final output, or we can publish which will then save the changes to the output and when we create our output it will be included — all the operations will be included.
I’ll say publish and that will publish my settings in my panel.
Back into the panel manager we have our panel 13 and as you can see this panel’s cnc edited status is set to yes because this panel has been modified within the cnc editor.
As mentioned previously there are two ways to generate cnc outputs from ONYX and one of those methods is via the panel manager. In order to generate an output from the panel manager we need to first of all select a panel, for example my panel 13. We have two options when we select a panel: we can either download the cnc output related to the whole panel or if we scroll down to the members section at the bottom here we can generate outputs based on the selected members within the panel.
As you can see we have the download cnc output option here for our members. I’m going to download cnc for the whole panel — I’ll just select the panel and simply click on download cnc. Once downloaded it will generate an output and you’ll see that our profile status changes to downloaded. There are also other statuses that will display depending on what we download and how we download, and I will go through those shortly.
The second option that we have when it comes to downloading or generating a cnc output is via the cnc editor. Again we’ll jump back into the cnc editor where as we already know we can make some edits to our panels and make some modifications.
Again I’m just going to enable my filter just to load in specific panels. I’ll choose level 2 and select one of the panels from the list. In this case I’ve selected panel 12 and for this particular panel I’ll just turn off the sheathing and we can see here that we have our panel 12.
Let’s imagine we’ve made some edits to this panel and now it’s ready to produce an output. Before we generate the output we can view the code related to this panel and its members. In our general tab we have the option to select the code viewer. I’ll click on code viewer and this will allow me to view the specific cnc output data for a selected member.
If I select the top track for example you’ll see the information related to that selected member is shown in the window for our code viewer. This is relevant to any other member that I select in the panel. As I select these elements I can find the data relating to that specific member and we can find the process information — if it’s a drilling operation, the position, and other information related to that within the code viewer.
Once we’re ready to generate our output we can simply say publish if we’ve made some modifications to the panel. Then we can say download in order to generate our cnc output. Again it produces our output for us as a downloaded file and that will be sent to the download path that we have specified within our ONYX preferences.
Once again we’ll jump back into the panel manager where we can look at the different statuses that will show for our panels as we modify and generate our outputs for them. As you can see we’ve got panel 12 and panel 13 downloaded and as I mentioned before we have different statuses available.
The first status that we’ll usually see inside of the panel manager is the new status. This relates to any panels which have been newly introduced into the panel manager — we’ve just loaded our files and you can see that we have the profile status set to new. The status will stay as new until we either download the cnc output for that selected panel or selected members in the panel.
For example if I go to panel 14 and instead of downloading the whole output for the entire panel maybe I want to download the output for selected members. I’ll select top track, bottom track and just my end vertical members. With those members selected I’ll simply say download cnc and you’ll see it will generate an output and then you can see that the status for my panel 14 has changed to partial. This is related to the fact that I haven’t downloaded all the members but I’ve downloaded only a few of the members — only part of the panel has been downloaded and our status has now changed to partial.
Once we download all the members then the status for the panel will change to downloaded and that brings us on to the other states that we’ve seen previously.
There’s a fourth status that we can see and if I just go out of my project and into the manufacturing center you’ll see that it shows us information relating to our sort orders and the panels that we have currently downloaded or at least the members we’ve downloaded so far. You can see our project and any projects which are currently running or currently ongoing where we have downloaded an output for our panel members — those will display within the manufacturing center where we can then see some information relating to those elements within that project.
We can set the status for these elements to completed just to say that these have been produced in real life. If you wanted to see which output each of these corresponds with — as we’ve generated three files we may want to see which file, which panel are we referring to when we set it to completed. Let’s go to columns where we can see our sort order and we should have our sort order number that shows us the order in which the sort orders were generated.
This will be our first output which is sort order five, second output will be sort order six, and the third one that we produced based on those partial members would be sort order seven. I’m just going to click on my sort order six which was the second one that we generated and within the project I’ll simply say that this one has been completed. I’ll click and the status has now been saved.
Now when I go back into my project we’ll see that the status for that panel has been changed to cut as you can see there. As mentioned before we have four statuses: the new status, based on the new panel inside the panel manager; partial status, based on only selected members being downloaded in the panel; downloaded status, which shows when all the panel members have been downloaded and our cnc output has been generated; and we have the cut status for when we have generated that member and produced it in real life — and this is just to give an indication that this has now been produced.
That takes us to the end of the webinar. I appreciate you listening today and I hope you enjoyed it.