Autodesk University 2026
From Prompt to Production: Building Revit Skills Your Team Can Rely On
Cheli Hershcovich (BIM Developer, SWAPP) with Dan Warren, CPL
Submitted for Autodesk University 2026 — not yet scheduled.
Create Floors skill: extending floors through door thresholds
A clever prompt can create floors for every room — until it hits the door thresholds, and every opening becomes a gap an experienced drafter spends an hour fixing by hand. This session is about the difference between a prompt and a production skill. Cheli builds a real “Create Floors with Door Thresholds” skill live (instruction file, Python logic, geometry library, edge cases, and graceful fallback), and Dan Warren, a Senior BIM Manager and Autodesk Authorized Instructor, weighs in on what makes a skill trustworthy enough to hand to a junior team member.
What you’ll be able to do
- Identify which Revit automation tasks need a skill versus a direct chat prompt, and why geometric complexity is the key signal.
- Analyze the structure of a well-built BIM-chat skill: the instruction file, the script, the parameter interface, and the fallback logic.
- Evaluate a skill’s edge-case handling and assess whether it is robust enough to deploy across different project types and model conditions.
- Apply a parametric skill in a live Revit session to create floors with door-threshold extensions across a complex floor plan.
Session outline
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Opening · 8 min
The Problem a Prompt Cannot Solve
Live, no setup. A BIM chat receives “Create floors for all rooms” on a clinic floor plan with a long corridor and dozens of connected rooms. The floors are created — but stop at the wall face. Every door threshold is a gap. Fixing that by hand is about an hour for an experienced drafter. Then we run the skill: every floor extends through every door opening, correctly, in seconds.
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Section 1 · 12 min
What a Skill Is and When You Need One
The difference between a chat prompt (the model reasons and acts) and a skill (the model invokes structured, pre-written automation). Three signals a task needs a skill: it involves geometry, it runs across many elements, and it has edge cases.
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Section 2 · 22 min
Anatomy of the Create Floors Skill (Live Build)
A real production skill, Create Floors with Door Thresholds, deconstructed live in five components: (01) the SKILL.md instruction file, (02) the Python logic, (03) geometry via NetTopologySuite, (04) edge cases (split-level rooms, zero-area rooms), and (05) graceful fallback when a dependency is unavailable.
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Section 3 · 10 min
What Makes a Skill Trustworthy Enough to Hand Off (Dan leads)
Dan brings the BIM Manager’s deployment standard and the Autodesk Instructor’s eye for trainability. Three criteria before a skill goes to his team: instruction quality, fallback behavior, and the trainability test — can a junior team member read the instruction file and understand what the skill does, what it won’t do, and what to check when the output looks off?
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Closing · 8 min
The Skill Readiness Checklist
A one-page framework for what a skill needs to clear before it goes to a junior team member: instruction-file quality, script robustness, edge-case coverage, fallback behavior, and deployment criteria. Q&A.
Speakers
Cheli Hershcovich
BIM Developer, SWAPP AI
Cheli Hershcovich designs and builds the extraction pipeline and parametric skill architecture behind SWAPP’s Revit automation. She holds an MArch (Technion), spent 8 years in practice at firms in New York and Israel, and builds Python-based automation tools validated on real client models across educational, clinical, data-center, and student-housing project types.
Dan Warren
Senior BIM Manager, CPL · Autodesk Authorized Instructor
Dan Warren is a Senior BIM Manager at CPL and an Autodesk Authorized Instructor, based in Charlotte, NC. With a Master’s in Construction Science and Management from Clemson and 13 years in AEC, he has trained architecture and engineering firms on Revit, Navisworks, and BIM 360 as an Application Engineer, then managed BIM operations at McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture for five years before joining CPL. A Certified Revit Professional, he evaluates tools from both a trainer’s and a manager’s perspective, asking not only whether something works but whether it can be handed to a junior team member and trusted to run.