KPF

Introduction

KPF runs demanding Revit work across a lot of projects and a lot of people, and they'd already done serious tooling work themselves, on their own and with Thomas Mahone before us. They didn't come to Reope because they were stuck. They came because capable architects who build their own tools still hit a ceiling: the person who wrote a script is usually the only one who can run it properly, tools that work on one project need hardening to work everywhere, and good ideas pile up faster than anyone has time to build them.

So the work wasn't a rescue. It was taking tools KPF already valued and scaling what each one could do, building the ones they were missing, and doing it in a loop fast enough that their architects could feel the difference on live projects.

The Problem

A firm like KPF isn't short on automation, its architects already build strong tools. What takes specialist depth is doing that next step faster. Taking a working script and turning it into something the whole practice can rely on. A pyRevit script does the job for the person who wrote it. Getting it to a place where anyone can pick it up, on any project, on the current Revit version, is a different kind of work.

That's the gap. KPF's architects kept surfacing specific needs from real project work. Some were existing tools that needed to go further. Some were tools that didn't exist yet. Some were bugs that were quietly breaking work on current Revit versions. What they needed was a partner who could ship against those needs fast, then harden each tool from real use.

What we did

We worked as an extension of KPF's Design Technology team, in a request, ship, use, measure loop: their architects surfaced a need, we shipped against it, they used it live, and usage data told us what was landing and what to sharpen next. Most of the value sits in that loop, dozens of shipped enhancements, new tools, and fixes over seven releases in a tight cadence.

Taking existing tools further

The clearest proof is Room Dimensions Tag. We built it from scratch to auto-tag each room with its dimensions, then hardened it from live feedback into a workhorse. On a real 73-floor-plan KPF Revit model, we cut the dialog open time from about 59 seconds to about 260 milliseconds by collapsing a per-view query into a single document-wide pass. From there, roughly 15 follow-on improvements came straight from named users on real projects: multi-level runs, view and room-parameter filtering with live preview, per-room exclusion through a shared parameter, hide-zero-missing-tag views, a Revit 2023 compatibility fix, and a full dialog reflow to match KPF's house style.

Area Aggregator is the other flagship. We listened to how the team actually reported areas and rebuilt it from a simple utility into a real reporting tool: a program-type selector, level-based aggregation sorted by elevation, a preview table before anything writes to the model, per-level roll-up into shared parameters, By-Program-Type and By-Area-Scheme modes, one-click level schedules, and Excel export.

Building new capability on request

The Arealines suite grew a new ArealinesToRooms tool that turns area boundary lines into Rooms, auto-detecting closed loops, with multi-target output across several Area Plans or Levels at once, plus root-cause fixes on the existing FromRooms tool. Alongside these came the smaller utilities the team asked for directly: a Permit Set Sheet Counter with natural sort and saved preferences, imperial/metric conversion, and area-line-to-wall and area-to-room conversion.

Fixes that unblocked live work

Set Sheet Scale was silently failing on Revit 2026 after working on 2023 through 2025. Print Set From Drawing List was crashing on duplicate print-set names. Both were breaking live project work, and both got fixed, along with a steady stream of smaller enhancements.

The system that made the loop repeatable

Two pieces of infrastructure made all of the above consistent and governed rather than ad hoc.

We reorganised the ribbon with the BIM team at KPF: flattening single-item dropdowns into standalone buttons where it helped, grouping tools into clear panels (Content, Drawing Set Management, Interop, Automation), a deterministic panel order, and KPF's own tools first. It reads the way their people work because it was shaped around how they work.

And we consolidated their telemetry. KPF already had usage visibility under pyRevit, so this wasn't a brand new insight. We ported their existing KPFLogger into the managed C# add-in as a native telemetry service (five loggers covering application, document, command, transaction and sync), feeding the same SQL Server and Power BI dashboards they already relied on, network-first with local fallback so nothing is lost. The point was to bring their telemetry into one governed, consistent pipeline inside the managed platform, so the request-ship-use-measure loop could run on trustworthy data.

A look ahead: ToolMaker

As an early tech preview, we brought our own ToolMaker to KPF. It lets a user build a working Revit tool by describing what they want in plain language, then generates it, compiles it, and adds it to the ribbon on the spot. In a June 2026 trial, during KPF's Tech Week, KPF staff and guests built 22 working tools live. The winner, HighlightJoinedWalls, went from four short instructions to a real QA tool that highlights joined walls across plan views and exports a sheet-referenced schedule to Excel. It's a preview of where the loop goes next: closing the distance between an architect's idea and a working tool even further.

The Results

• Existing tools taken to a new level: Room Dimensions Tag went from a 59-second dialog to 260 milliseconds on a 73-floor-plan model, then gained around 15 refinements from live use. Area Aggregator went from a utility to a full reporting tool.
• New tools built to exact need: ArealinesToRooms and others were built from real requests, then hardened from feedback by named users on live projects.
• Project work unblocked: Production bugs on current Revit versions, Set Sheet Scale on 2026, Print Set crashes, fixed fast.
• Telemetry consolidated, not bolted on: KPF's existing usage tracking ported into the managed add-in and unified into one governed pipeline, so decisions about what to sharpen next run on consistent data.
• A toolset that feels like KPF's own: Seven releases in a tight cadence, a reorganised ribbon, and a rebrand to KPF's own colours and icons.

Conclusion

KPF is one of the world's leading architecture practices, with a BIM team recognized as among the best in the industry. Like any strong team, they know when it's worth partnering with specialists to go further. They've already built real tools. What they didn't have was the time and specialist depth to take each one further, build the missing ones, and keep the whole set working across projects and Revit versions. That's the work that Reope has done for so many architecture practices: scaling the value of what they had, adding what they needed, and ensuring that it works when they need it most.