From walls to workflows: Automating Design-to-Manufacture in Revit

The construction industry has long wrestled with the handover between design and delivery. Architects model, engineers analyse, and manufacturers interpret. This often happens in a chain of disconnected steps that consumes time, increases cost, and amplifies risk.

At Digital by Design, we have changed the rhythm. Using Revit as the starting point, we create automations that transform a simple act, drawing a wall, into a direct pipeline to manufacturing outputs.

Step 1: The Familiar Design Environment

The process begins inside native Revit. A technician or architect uses the tools they already know to lay out walls, floors, and roofs. No new platform. No steep learning curve. Just the standard Revit environment.

This matters for clients. It means no expensive retraining, no loss of design fidelity, and no disruption to existing workflows. Your project team keeps working in Revit, and we extend what the model can do.

Step 2: Triggering Bespoke Automations

Once the building shell is in place, our design automation can be triggered. This is where the process diverges from traditional Revit workflows.

Behind that trigger sits a library of bespoke scripts and parametric rules, developed by our team to reflect your chosen construction system and manufacturing logic. These can cover:

• Panelisation rules for LGS, timber frame, CLT, or hybrid systems.

• Tolerance management to reflect the specific constraints of your machinery.

• Structural rules that ensure the design is buildable, not just drawable.

• Connection logic for joints, fixings, and service integration.

Because these automations are bespoke, they are not generic templates. They are tuned to the way you build, your factories, your systems, and your supply chain.

Step 3: Manufacturing Outputs in Seconds

Once triggered, the automation generates outputs that would typically take days or weeks:

• Fabrication drawings with panel layouts, dimensions, and fixing details.

• Cutting lists and bills of materials aligned to your material supply chain.

• Schedules for openings, windows, and doors.

• CAM and CNC ready data for LGS roll formers, timber frame saws, or other automated manufacturing equipment.

• Coordinated BIM models enriched with all manufacturing metadata.

For clients, this unlocks instant visibility. Instead of waiting for downstream interpretation, you see exactly how a design translates into buildable elements in real time.

Step 4: Closing the Loop With Feedback

Because the system regenerates outputs in seconds, options can be tested iteratively. Want to swap a wall type? Adjust a span? Explore cost savings through a different panel strategy? The automation responds instantly.

This creates feedback loops where developers, designers, and manufacturers can evaluate choices together, dramatically reducing design risk and commercial uncertainty.

What This Means for Clients

• Speed: Projects move from sketch to manufacturing readiness faster than ever.

• Certainty: Outputs are generated using your rules, ensuring alignment with your factory’s reality.

• Scalability: The same logic can be deployed across multiple projects, multiplying value.

• Integration: Manufacturing machines, whether LGS roll formers, timber saws, or hybrid systems, receive data in their required formats.

• Confidence: Every design iteration comes with instant supply chain clarity.

The Bigger Vision

We believe automation should never distance design from construction. It should bring them closer together. That is why our team of architectural technicians, equal parts designers, coders, and builders, develops automations that work for your system, your outputs, and your clients.

Whether you are producing light-gauge steel panels in a high-volume factory or timber frames in a regional plant, we can build the automation that links your Revit models directly to your manufacturing machines.

At Digital by Design, we do not just create buildings in Revit. We create the automations that ensure those buildings can be manufactured with certainty, speed, and scale.

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