Regular is an open-source Revit plugin, designed to help users manage construction data. Our first tool, DataSpec, lets users define flexible format rules for Revit parameter values. Data can then be validated (and, if necessary, corrected) using an intuitive user interface.
- Installation
- Getting Started
- Worked Examples & Video Tutorials
- Dependencies
- Sharing Rules
- Exporting Reports
It is widely known that construction technology suffers from a lack of established data standards. Without robust, common data standards it becomes impossible to develop technology that escapes local practice and creates a global impact. To briefly restate the problems we face:
- Agreeing on optimal formats for data is hard: opinions are strong and will often differ between companies and sectors that have already invested in establishing their own internal processes.
- Validating data created in line with any format specifications is a specialist task that too often falls to those who originally trained as architects, engineers, or project managers - not experienced data managers.
- The few standards we have are prone to frequent change. Moving the goalposts mid-way through a project often results in costly and unenjoyable data correction work. The risk of this happening is great enough to deter further standardisation from taking place.
The second and third problems above can be minimised by investing in programming skills. However, for AEC these remain in short supply.
Enter DataSpec, designed to address the three problems above.
- DataSpec gives users control over establishing data format standards at whatever level is right for them, be it project-specific, company-wide or industry-wide.
- It provides an intuitive interface for rapid, automatic format validation against these rules.
- It lets users easily adjust rules and rapidly revalidate against new standards, should these be introduced.
DataSpec makes creating and sharing data standards easy, even for non-technical users.
Regular is an ongoing project. Future tools are currently being developed to help further reduce the cost of AEC data management.
Behind the scenes, DataSpec uses regular expressions - a technology commonly used by programmers to define rules for validating data that needs to follow a specific format, such as email addresses or phone numbers. Regular expressions (often shortened to 'regex') are an incredibly powerful tool, but one which requires specialist programming knowledge. Even programmers can find them difficult to work with!
DataSpec works by abstracting away the complexities of regex behind an intuitive user interface, which lets non-technical users define rules for their data formats in plain English. Our goal is to 🙌 bring Regular Expressions to Regular Users 🙌.
Data format rules are stored locally in a Revit document using the ExtensibleStorage API. These can be exported and imported between files using the .json file format, allowing for data format standards to be defined for a project, a company or even shared industry-wide. Those wishing to define a universal data format for, say, park benches are encouraged to pick up the mantle.
- All data is processed locally on your machine, no external connections are made to anywhere or anything.
- Regular is available using the highly-permissive GNU Public License v3.0.
- DataSpec can only validate text-based parameter values.
- Conditional logic cannot be applied within rules - only relatively simple format logic can be used.
- For simplicity's sake, DataSpec uses an intentionally-limited subset of the full regular expression syntax. AEC data formats tend to be relatively simple, so it's better to cover 99% of cases than push for 100%.
If you'd like to help contribute to Regular, feel free to raise any issues, create pull requests and/or message me on Twitter.
See our CONTRIBUTING.md file for more details.
Regular was started at the Thornton Tomasetti AEC Tech Hackathon 2019 in New York, presented by team ☕ Regular Espressos ☕