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Double handling Structural

Post-tension tendons, straight into Revit

Post-tension tendon data drafted straight into Revit, instead of redrawn by hand.

Discipline Structural
Client context Structural engineering team
Tools involved RAM Concept, Revit

The problem

If you design post-tension in analysis software and document it in Revit, the tendon layout has to cross that gap somehow. Most teams either redraw it by hand from the analysis output, or send the drafting out to be modelled. Both cost you. Redrawing a full floor of tendons is slow, and every tendon is another chance to put a high point, an end condition or a strand count in the wrong place. Outsourcing trades that for quality issues and a round of back and forth every time the design moves.

What I built

The client designs their post-tension in RAM Concept and documents it in Revit. I built a custom tool that reads the post-tension data straight from the analysis model and drafts the tendons into Revit, in plan.

It lays the whole layout down in a single run: end conditions, high and low points, live and dead ends. The work that used to be redrawn tendon by tendon happens in one pass, straight from the source.

What makes this work

Where two tendons are effectively identical (same slope, same strand count, same profile), it recognises the duplication and collapses their tags into one. On a dense floor plate that is the difference between a drawing someone can read and one buried under repeated annotations.

What changed

The full layout drafts itself in plan in a single run, straight from the analysis. What used to be redrawn tendon by tendon, or sent out and waited on, lands in the model in one pass. And when the design moves, you run it again instead of starting over.

Notes on maintainability

Built as variations for a few different teams, so it adapts to each one's families and detailing conventions.

Recognise this on your own projects?

If your team runs into something similar, get in touch. Happy to walk you through how it works and what it could look like for you.

Discuss a workflow See more projects