Follow up: Cutting Objects to Topography: 3D water

I got a comment on my last post from the great landarchBIM stating that water volumes would be a great area of use for the "FamilyInstance.ByGeometry" node from "Spring nodes" package. So I naturally wanted to try that out. In addition I wanted to try out the "Elk"-package which enables Dynamo to read OSM and topography data into Dynamo. So why not combine?

For an introduction to the Elk-package have a look here:
Dynamo and OSM: https://vimeo.com/143623515
Dynamo and Topography: https://vimeo.com/143624038

I went with a small area of the Grand Canyon as the test site and downloaded a tiff file according to Timothy Logans videos above.

This is from http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ and you have to make an account, but it's free!

It's accurately described in the videos above, but this is the Dynamo script for making a Revit topography from the SRTM-data provided form the earthexplorer site:

Quite simple, eh?

In the next part I've added a nearly identical node layout as my last script, but with some modifications. For example cutting the solid at a certain waterlevel. The script is quick and dirty and more of a proof of concept than anything else. I guess it could be automated to select the correct solid to be imported, but it worked as is for me.

Depending on which way you draw the model lines used for defining the extent of water, you will have to switch between the first and last item in the solid operations and also switch between +/- for the offsets. Someone will improve on this for certain! ;) As I said, quick and dirty, but it works.

Depending on Revit's cooperation you must sometimes also place the imported family yourself, but just select the correct import level and place the family in the project base point.

Next I gave the family a material parameter and changed it to water, and voila!

Even a smooth bottom surface!

The Topo in Revit is triangulated and you can choose whether you want to use this triangulated model for modeling the water. You can just as well use the surface directly (as I did) to get a smooth edge at the bottom, but then it mismatches a little bit with the generated topo in Revit, no big deal as far as I'm concerned.

Come to think of it, why not import the surface as a solid family itself, all shiny and chrome? ;)