Take your Revit projects to the next level with the AI-based Autodesk Assistant

by Dennis Collin

The Autodesk Assistant agent was introduced to Revit 2027 and offers users a personalised, context-aware, conversational automation tailored specifically for Architectural, Engineering and Construction workflows. Such capabilities include getting guidance on Revit commands and workflows, extracting information from models and task automation through prompts.

These tasks can be done in a natural conversation-based environment, and they can be refined or adjusted as the dialogue develops, and the Assistant gets more information for context.

Automating renumbering

One common task customers often need to perform is the renumbering of elements, such as room numbers, which may need to be numbered according to a level. and from a west to easterly direction.

This instruction can be typed in a conversational form to the assistant. And AI takes care of it. The AI prompt can look like this:

Renumber the rooms in this project. According to their x,y position. And prefix the room with a Zero for Ground Floor, 1 for First floor, 2 for Second and so on. Room numbers to be 3 digits

The assistant then talks through the process, explaining its logic and providing summary steps as it goes.

In this example the assistant starts renumbering the rooms, and its progress can be monitored by watching the "chat window" and inspecting the Room Schedule View as a check. Once the task is complete a message is displayed describing that all 98 rooms have been successfully renumbered.

There is now a need to renumber the doors throughout the project, they need to be numbered according to room, with a letter suffix added where multiple door instances exist. The prompt in the video sample is:

Renumber the doors in this project. Doors are to be numbered according to their relevant room number. Where there are multiple doors to a room append a letter A,B,C etc according to a clockwise direction

The assistant then collects all the rooms and all the corresponding doors and works through the task methodically, floor by floor, room by room, door by door.

As each floor is complete a status message reports progress, once complete the assistant reports that it has numbered all the doors in the project, this it managed to achieve in a matter of minutes.

The assistant reported that it was unable to renumber two curtain wall panel doors, likely because they lead into a non-existent space (e.g. outside). While this issue can be resolved manually at a later stage, the assistant successfully renumbered over 100 doors within seconds—a task that could have taken a user more than an hour to complete.

Conclusion

The Autodesk Assistant is still in a Tech Preview stage, and as a result has limitations and can make mistakes but its capabilities will improve with time but even so tedious repetitive tasks were achieved in a few minutes rather than hours. These time & cost savings are all realised using out-of-the-box tools with no additional costs required for additional add-ins, scripts, or API development. These benefits will help companies deliver their projects in a timely manner and within budget.