ITM Hanger Rod adjustment with Dynamo

[Tye Austin]

We have been struggling with the Rod Adjustment eVolve tool.  It takes 2hrs to 5-6hrs to run on a floor depending on how many hangers it uses.  I already wrote a dynamo that will place a ZOI in the deck at the hanger locations so we could lower the rod for DDI style hangers and still have the embed ZOI in the bottom of the deck.
I wrote a Dynamo yesterday where you can enter the deck thickness and then the difference from bottom of deck to where you want your rods to end.  when I run it, I see that it is changing the rod length in the parameter but the rod physically does not change.  Maybe this is because eVovle/Revit is looking at that top of rod like a hosted location?  and it will not change?  Anyone know if there is a setting or method to force the rod length to change on ITM hangers?  If you just try and grab the node and drag it down in a section, it's the same result.  it snaps right back to the deck...

[Axl]

If a hanger is hosted to a pipe it's anchored to the pipe, and if the hanger is attached to the structure then it is fixed to it, therefore it won't change the rod's length

My solution (probably there is better ways to do this) is that either I un-host the hanger or un-attach the hanger from structure, that will allow me to change the row length

[Tye Austin]

Yeah. I just am not clear on how to detach the rod from structure. Maybe unload all links?

[Tye Austin]

Just an update on this:

I found out that if you unload all the links except structural, the eVolve Rod Adjustment tool works much faster...   So I think I'm good on that now.  Will keep using the dynamo for placing the ZOI/Embeds since they are not associated with the rod end and will not get pulled down out of the deck when doing the final rod end adjustments and then just run the Rod Adjustment eVolve tool before hanger fab...

[rtlflat]

Sounds like you found a solution, but here is some more relevant details on this...

There are 2 ways to manually change the length of the rod in Revit

1.  The SetRodLength Method from FabricationRodInfo Class
- You are setting the total length of the rod of each individual hanger
- The rod MUST NOT be hosted to the deck and disable auto-hosting to structure
- Changing the pipe elevation moves the entire hanger and maintains the same length and would require readjusting the length

2. The SetRodStructureExtension Method from FabricationRodInfo Class
- You are setting an extension value (like the takeoff of an insert) that is either added or subtracted from the rod length
- The rod MUST be hosted to the structure
- Changing the pipe elevation stretches the rod to the structure still (+/- the extension value you set)

You can get the same result using either method, as far as how the modeled geometry looks or the length shown on a Fabrication Report.

Method 2 is the one I used, which allowed me to develop a library of inserts and their rod adjustments lengths for each deck thickness and rod diameter, and using Dynamo it presents a list of inserts to choose from to apply to a bulk selection of hangers. It basically just pulling values from a spreadsheet and applying to each hanger.

There are Dynamo nodes available to assist with either method, although you will have to build out the rest of the graph to implement it. Not sure how eVolve is adjusting the length, but the excessive amount of time makes me think they are unhosting every hanger from structure and using method 1 and running the math on every hanger to adjust the rod length which could add to to overhead.