Flatness and Deviation Checks

Intro

The flatness check is primarily used to verify the flatness of surfaces such as floors, walls, or ceilings. This is done by color-coding the deviations between the point cloud and the model geometry. This allows for the rapid identification of unevenness and discrepancies between the model (or specific components) and the point cloud to monitor construction quality or provide proof of standard-compliant tolerances.

Examples

Checking Floor Coverings and Ceilings: Monitoring the flatness of screed, raw concrete floors, or ceilings.
Inspecting Walls: Checking for bulges, inclinations, or misalignments.
Renovation Preparation: Identifying depressions (dips) or elevations (humps) in existing buildings.

Procedure

~~asdsadsahkjkjhqwe~~Select Revit elements (e.g., floors, ceilings, or walls). Use Revit selection filter ("Modify --> Filter") to narrow down the selection by Category.

Click the "Quality Analysis" button.

The plugin extracts the geometry of the selected Revit elements and determines the distance of all points from these elements. The distances are mapped onto the active color map and displayed.

Select and edit color maps using the "Color Map" command.

If the analyzed geometry changes or you wish to analyze different geometry in the same view, select the corresponding elements and click "Update" to restart the calculation.

Toggle between the distance visualization and the normal view by turning the "Quality Analysis" button on or off.

Key features

Quality analysis can be performed in all view types that support point cloud display (3D, Floor or Ceiling Plans, Elevations, Sections). Each Revit view can be configured independently, allowing you to focus on specific elements, element categories, levels or rooms.

For documentation purposes the views can be placed on sheet views and printed or exported.

The distance calculations are performed dynamically, meaning only the points visible in the current view (from coarse to fine, following the Level-of-Detail scheme) are processed.

Calculated distances are not saved in the Revit project; they must be recalculated in a new Revit session.

Color Maps

For flatness analysis, soft, multi-colored gradients (e.g., Turbo) or diverging color maps (e.g., cool-to-warm) are recommended, as they fluidly represent the topography (peaks and valleys) of the surface. Color maps suitable for flatness analysis are marked with the symbol

Recommended Color Maps for Flatness Checks

Color Ramp	Name
	Turbo	“Rainbow Colors.” Developed by Google as an improved alternative to “Jet.” Turbo retains the vibrant, high-contrast colors of the rainbow to make fine details visible, but without sudden changes in brightness that can cause edges to appear. Note: It is not completely perceptually uniform and is not colorblind-safe.
	Inferno (1) (2)	smoothly transitions from black through fiery reds and oranges to bright yellow. It is highly effective for highlighting high-intensity data in heatmaps while remaining colorblind-friendly and printing well in grayscale.
	Viridis (1) (2)	Transitions smoothly from dark purple through blue and green to bright yellow. It is specifically designed to be colorblind-friendly and perfectly legible when printed in grayscale, making it a highly reliable standard for scientific data visualization.
	Gray (2)	Visualizes the distances without distracting color associations.
	Bone (2)	Grayscale-based colormap with a subtle blue and warm gray tint that progresses from black to white. It is the standard choice for medical imaging (like X-rays and MRIs) - that's where name comes from - because its slight coloration is easier on the eyes than pure grayscale.
	Red-White-Blue	Red-white-blue is a classic diverging colormap that transitions from deep red through a pure white center to deep blue. It is ideal for flat 2D visualizations where you want a critical midpoint (like zero) to fade into a white background, heavily emphasizing extreme positive and negative anomalies.
	Cool to Warm (1) (2)	Cool-to-warm is a diverging colormap that shifts from cool blue to warm red through a desaturated, neutral light gray rather than pure white. This design prevents middle data values from washing out or confusing the eye when compared to white background.

(1) Perceptually uniform, meaning that equal numerical changes in distance are perceived by the human eye as equally sized changes in color and brightness.