Introduction
I’m excited to share my hackathon on my weekend: an Data Workflow Platform built to move beyond “just storing Revit files” and toward a real data platform approach.
My goal was simple. We can choose any models from ACC to able run some workflows, it's can be schedule, and we can run it in the background. Example:
- Export Revit Data to Excel
- Export Revit Data to IFC
- Automated QA/Compliance Checks
- Automated Analytics and Reporting
- Automated Error Detection and Correction
- Automation model updates and versioning
- Automated publishing models on weekly basis with revit and just easy by create the workflow and schedule it.
Demo
Why This Direction Matters
In BIM workflows, Revit files should be treated as raw source, not the final query layer.
By normalizing Revit files into canonical data structures, we unlock:
- Faster validation and rule checking
- Easier compliance automation
- Better analytics at scale
- Cleaner foundation for AI copilots and assistants
- Long-term extensibility to other formats (not only Revit)
This is the shift from a file converter to a data platform.
What’s Next
Our next milestones are:
- Add relationship graph exploration (subgraph query + visualization)
- Expand normalization coverage (more IFC entities/properties)
- Add rule engine templates for QA/compliance checks
- Improve schema evolution and version/time-travel support
- Strengthen production readiness (observability, retries, async workers)
What The Limitations Are
Autodesk is still stuck in API to allow option export with unit format and no unit format. If you transform the data in some big data platform, you will encounter issues, because you need to split between unit and no unit format. I raised the issues to Autodesk Team before but after 5 years, I think the problem is still there. I think Autodesk should fix it, because it's a big problem for the data platform.
In Revit you have options to setting Phases and View to publish into ACC, and unfortunately, the data is very dependent on the settings by users, when you get the model guid and choose the master view. Sometimes, you can't get the right full data of the model. I prefer Autodesk try to update master view should be the the views that have all the data of the model at the default. Imagine if you have 1000 models, what do you need to do ?