The ABR Workflow

Branch Automation doesn’t work alone. It sits in the middle of a round trip that starts and ends in Revit, and the file that travels between them is the .abr design layout.

1 — Export the floor plan from Revit

In Revit, open the Auto BIM Route AI ribbon tab and run Branch Circuit Export. Pick a floor plan view and export it. You get an .abr file holding the drawing, the panels, the devices and their branch circuits.

2 — Import it into Branch Automation

Open the desktop app and use Import Design Layout — either the button in View Manager or File → Import Design Layout. The viewer draws the plan, and View Manager fills in the file and view names.

3 — Generate the routes

Click Generate Routes. The app places an HR (home-run) box for each panel’s circuits and routes the branches from the devices back to those boxes.

From here you refine: add a box by hand, steer runs with Preferred Routing, combine circuits with Merge Circuits / Configure Circuits, and use the Action Buttons exactly as you would in the plugin.

4 — Export the design layout

Use Export → Design Layout to write the result back to an .abr file. It is saved in exactly the state you left it — routes, boxes, preferred areas and all.

5 — Build it in Revit

Back in Revit, open the Auto BIM Route plugin and choose File → Import Design Layout. The plugin restores the layout and generates the HR boxes and conduit routes in the Revit model.

Why the round trip? All the heavy routing work happens outside Revit, so your Revit session stays light and responsive — and the design layout file means you can hand the work to a colleague, park it and come back to it, or re-import it any time without losing a thing.