Revit - The Ribbon Panel
- Mihnea Balta (Unlicensed)
- Mihai Iliuta (Unlicensed)
The user interface for the Maxwell Render for Revit plugin consists of 5 main interaction points:
- The Maxwell Render Ribbon Panel
- Maxwell Render Options
- Maxwell Render Grass Options
- Maxwell Render Material Options
- Maxwell Render Log Window
The Ribbon panel is the central hub for the Revit plugin, every action being accessible through this interface.
Due to a limitation in Revit itself, this panel is only active in the main view. Moving to an alternate view created via a camera or a walkthrough will disable the plugin bar and you won't be able to access any feature until you press the Default 3D View button in the Revit View tab.
- Render button will export the current Revit document and start Maxwell to render the scene with the parameters set in the render parameters window.
- Send To Network button will also export the current Revit document and will proceed to start the render manager that you can use to render the scene on multiple computers.
- Export MXS button will first open a window that lets you choose where the plugin should export the current Revit document and then export an MXS file with the chosen name in that location.
- Maxwell Log button is used to signal any warnings or errors encountered during the export process. The number in brackets tells you how many currently logged warnings or errors exist. Pressing the Maxwell Log button will bring up a window where you can see and discard said errors.
- Render Parameters button opens a window that lets you configure most aspects of the rendering process. For more information see Revit - The Maxwell Render Parameters
- Materials button opens a window that lets you customize the materials used when rendering. For more information see Revit - The Maxwell Material Options
- Maxwell Grass button opens a window that lets you add grass parameters to Revit objects which will tell Maxwell where and how to render grass on the exported Revit objects. For more information see Revit - The Maxwell Grass Options
When you start a new project, it is recommended that you first go to the Material Options window and set appropriate translations for the Revit materials in your scene, especially for the materials that use textures. The second step needed to start the render is to open the Render Parameters to set the output location for the image resulting from the render. Following that you can optionally use the Maxwell Grass window to add grass parameters to your objects and press the Render button to start rendering your scene.