Revit in Motion

A New Titleblock - Part I

2012-01-10T10:01:00.000+01:00

Revit 2012 - Update 1

2011-08-10T14:44:00.003+02:00

Better late than never. There is an update available vor Revit 2012. Find it here.

Revit 2012

2011-03-24T11:38:00.000+01:00

Autodesk has released Revit 2012 unto the public. Well, sort of. I've heard of it and seen reviews but could not find anything on the official website.

But in any case David Light has written a quite comprehensive review. Check it out.

From what I'm reading I can't wait to get my hands on this release. Especially the improvements for worksharing look really promissing.

I'll post my experiences once I make them.

Area Boundaries won't Snap

2011-03-02T16:10:00.000+01:00

OK, quick one.

I am placing Area Boundary Lines on an Area Plan, using Floors as the bases. And it kept driving me crazy that Revit won't snap to the Floor edges. Why?!

Well, it turns out that Revit automatically turns the option "Apply Area Rules" on, which means that it will only snap to walls according to the set area rules. Turning the option off allowed me to snap to everything again:

Views and Levels

2011-02-16T15:21:00.000+01:00

Whenever you create a new View via the Ribbon:

You get the following dialogue box:

Here you can select for which level you want to create the View. This is the only time you will be able to set the level associated with this View! So choose wisely.

Let me repeat this: You will not be able to change the Level associated with this View!

As you can see here, the field for the associated level is grayed out.

This also means that when you duplicate this View, it will stay with this Level. No amount of renaming the View will change that!

So if you need a view of a different level with the same settings, make use of View Templates instead of blindly copying.

Catenary Pt 3: Assembly

2011-02-10T12:03:00.000+01:00

Almost to the day one year ago I posted Part II of the catenary line. And since I got a comment on if I was ever going to finish it, I thought it about time.

Sadly I don't have the files anymore, but I'll discuss the technique I used back than. I just won't have pictures. Sorry.

To start off there is one addition I have to make to the last post: the parameter nr needs to be an instance parameter!

The next step is to open a new Conceptual Mass and start placing the family created in the previous post. Place the family on the x/z-plane with the origin as insertion point. By changing the nr parameter for each instance to a unique number (with the maximum of 8, since that is what we put down as nr_of_segs as a type parameter) the lines will move and adjust automatically.

At the end you should have a row of lines that form a catenary line. Play around with the parameters to get the exact shape that you want, import it into you project and use the lines to draw trusses, walls, sweeps, or whatever.

I hope this last step works without pictures. Should you have questions, please drop a comment and I'll try to answer them. Good hunting!

Getting the North Arrow right

2011-02-09T15:34:00.000+01:00

Getting the North Arrow right on my sheets was not a high priority for me up until now. I mean, if it's about right, it's OK. Right?

Wrong.

I realized that I rely heavily on north arrows put on a sheet by other people and I started asking myself, whether these people unknown knew what they were doing. So to be sure that others using my drawings get the correct information, I asked myself how to do this properly.

I started with getting a situation drawing from official channels. Here I know that North is North. I then proceeded to rotate my Project North so that the first setup of the building aligns with the official map. (Making sure that my View was set to True North.)

Now I know True North and Project North. The angle between them is something like 112,443599125 degrees. About. More or less. Something like that.

Right. Not much help there.

So instead of solving this with numbers I went ahead and drew a "north arrow" with reference planes in this view.

(The long end points to True North.)

Problem solved.

I can now go into any view and I have my "North Arrow" point to True North. I can then place my North Arrow Symbol correctly on any sheet.

And if I had paid attention as to where I had placed these reference planes in relation to the drawing I might have had the correct insertion point on my sheet as well. But then, that would have required thinking and planning ahead...

Hidden Lines - Not Hidden?

2011-02-03T15:51:00.000+01:00

I came across this command in my View-tab called Show Hidden Lines and wanted to try it out.

The usage is pretty straight forward: click the command, select the element you want to be "transparent" and then select the element(s) you want to be visible. The result should look something like this:

See the dashed line? Cool, eh?

Well, my colleague also tried it, but the dashed lines would not show up on his screen, even though it was the same file with the same view. Strange.

Even more strange: when printing the view, the lines appeared.

After some searching we found that he had Use Hardware Acceleration in his Options enabled, while I had not:

So, should you find yourself not seeing something on screen that you know should be there, play with this setting. It seems that there are still issues surrounding it.

Revit Building Elements

2011-01-26T11:36:00.000+01:00

I've run across a very informative graphic to explain how Revit is set up at the most basic level. I've polished things up a bit and here you are:

I hope you find it as interesting as I did. I mean, I sort of knew this, but trying to explain the differences to other people was always a bit difficult. Until now. :)

light reading

2011-01-24T14:16:00.000+01:00

I've been following the BIM troublemaker for a while now, and he pulled another one out of the hat. For some light reading, just check out this:

http://bimtroublemaker.blogspot.com/2011/01/complex-rigging-and-built-up-forms-pt1.html

and

http://bimtroublemaker.blogspot.com/2011/01/complex-rigging-pt2-skin-that-sucker.html

I thought I was pretty savy with Revit, but the Troublemakes is in a class of his own. I stand amazed.

Select all Instances

2011-01-20T15:05:00.000+01:00

In the past few days I've been back behind my computer, reviting away. And I have found an interesting way Revit understands the difference between Select All Instances and Count in schedules.

Today we needed to calculate the number of workspaces placed in an interior design for a client. So we created a furniture schedule with the fileds Family Name, Family Type and Count. In the options we chose not to Itemize Every Instance and sorted by Family and then by Type. So far so easy.

According to the schedule we had 150 workspaces.

But when I went to one if them and used the Right Click > Select All Instances > Entire Project I got 183 selections back.

Wait. What?

Well after some searching it turns out that Select All Instances > Entire Project will select everything and in all Design Options, whereas the schedule will give you the correct count for the selected Design Option.

Just one of those things that are logical from a certain point of view, but not readily obvious.

Happy New Year

2011-01-03T10:32:00.000+01:00

To all you Reviteers out there:

Happy New Year!

(Image courtesy of Alex Bruda from RGBStock.com)

Schedule Filters - not by family type

2010-12-17T11:20:00.001+01:00

I am busy creating a schedule for an area plan. I need to get the number of trees that I need to cut down, can keep and plant new. For this I created a Planting family with a few type parametes that change the appearance of the tree (e.g. the Yes/No parameter kappen (which means to cut down in Dutch) is linked to the visibility of a cross across the tree symbol).

So far so good.

I can then create a schedule with my familty types and totals. Cool.

But now I want to only see the trees left at the end of the project.

One option would be to phase the trees (set the phase demolished parameter of all trees to be cut down to the phase of the new construction), but for other reasons I did not want to go that way.

So I figured I would simply set the filter of the schedule and filter out the appropriate family type. But, lo and behold, I don't get that option!

A quick Google-search reveals that this is not a bug but a feature (or something like that).

So for a workaround I am now using the Type Mark parameter, setting it to different values for the different family types. (The other option would have been to create my own shared parameter and attach it to both the project and the family, but I'm just lazy. Plus I can now use this to tag the trees as well.)

But I don't get why I cannot filter based on family type. What would have been the trouble with this? Can someone explain?

Basic Concepts - Worksharing & Worksets - Pt. II

2010-12-15T12:22:00.000+01:00

Once you know how the whole central file / local file business works (see my earlier post), it is time to see it in action and check out the advantages en the pitfalls of this system.

Some of the advantages of worksharing are clear:

several people can work on the same project
no need to shuffle multiple files
always work on the most up-to-date version of the project

But working together on the same file also demands good commuunitcation between the users. For a smooth workflow it is important that you make clear guidlines and rules for such things as:

who is working on what
importing of families
use of families
family type naming conventions
where to switch from 3D to 2D

In the past I have noticed that despite office standards each user is going about working with Revit and setting up their projects in a slightly different manner. This is a limited problem as long as only one person works on the project from start to finish, but once more draughtsmen get involved, the error ratio and the frustration levels grow exponentially.

This is why I find it imperative that one person is designated to "guard" the drawing. He or she will be responsible for the consistency of the file and will spend time on checking the work of others. In the beginning there will be a lot of checking and correcting, but as time goes on, this should diminish - as long as the errors are communicated with the rest of the group!

Unfortunately, Autodesk does not offer an easy tool for communication between the different users working on a project. Yes, there is the Worksharing Monitor (see post here), which I recommend to use always. But there is no quick communication tool built into this (think chat-client).

What I have done in the past is to introduce a Jabber server and client (an internal chat program that relies on a local server instead of ICQ, MSN, etc). This made work a lot easier and faster, especially when the different users don't share the same office space. Give it a try.

Basic Concepts - Worksharing & Worksets - Pt. I

2010-12-07T13:48:00.000+01:00

Working on projects with several people at the same time can be a challenge, especially if the projects get fairly big and involved. Coordination and project consitency suddenly become very important.

To make this scenario managable, Autodesk introduced Worksharing & Worksets into Revit. I will cover the basic setup in this post and go into the nitty gritty of creating and managing worksets in the second.

So, first off, what is Worksharing? Worksharing means what is says: multiple users working together on one project, in one file.

Wait! What? One file? That's not possible! Just look at any other software out there! You cannot open one file more than once.

That is (sort of) correct. Windows will only grant one person write access to any file at any one time. So it would be almost impossible to open one file from multiple computers and expect everything to go smoothly.

Revit solves this by introducing the concept of a central file (residing on the server) as a sort of overseer and multiple local files (residing on the workstations of the users) as the actual files people work in.

The central file is located on a central location (hence the name), for example the office servers. It contains the model information and is in charge of allowing (or disallowing) users to make changes to objects, views, layouts etc. It does so by "lending" out objects to a specific user, thus allowing him or her to edit said object and denying everyone else access. Once that user is done with the object he or she reliquishes the hold on the object and returns it to the pool of editable objects.

For example: UserA wants to move an interior wall 50cm to the right. He grabs the wall and moves it. Revit as now determined that UserA wants to edit this wall and assigns the wall to UserA. UserA now has full control over the wall. UseressB now wants to move the wall 75cm the other way. She cannot do that, because Revit has locked the wall. Only after UserA relinquishes his hold on the wall will UseressB be able to do the change she wants.

The central file is responsible for this sort of rights management.

The local file(s) is located on the local harddisk of the user and is there to facilitate the rights management as much as enable quick working. It also contains a copy of all model information which has to manually be updated. This is to prevent data-loss should the connection to the central file be severed. The local file has the same name as the central file, but with _username added to the end.

Basic Concepts - Views and Schedules

2010-10-05T11:28:00.000+02:00

Since I have been slow to discover new things that I absolutely have to share with the rest of the world (who propably already knows...) I figured I will start writing a few things about basic concepts in Revit. My aim here is to further understanding of the program so that you don't just know the "to do this follow these steps" but the "why" behind it.

Today we'll start with something relatively simple: Views and Schedules. What are they, what are they for and how do you use them.

The first thing we need to let go as we transition from a 2D/3D CAD program (like AutoCAD) into a program that uses a Building Model (like Revit) is the way we view a drawing. In a 2D program a drawing is just a digitized version of lines on paper, which represent a floor plan or an elevation.

In Revit that is not true.

In Revit you build the (almost) entire building inside the computer, putting the information into a database that runs in the background. This means that instead of two lines representing a wall in the floor plan I put into the database an object that is a wall with a certain length, height, position in the building, structure and other characteristics. And from this information Revit will then calculate a drawing that shows the parts of the building that fall within the visible range, e.g. a floor plan or an elevation.

Once we get our minds around this we start to see the possibilites opening up. We have a database! And databases are great not only for storing information but also retrieving the specific information you need.

One way of retrieving this information is by creating Views. This is basically a way to ask the database to "show me any and all objects that I can see from this point, looking in this direction for this distance." This specified by the type of View (Floor Plan, Elevation, Section, etc), the View Range, the Far Clipping, etc. Any 3D object that is in the line of sight will be displayed. I can then further customize each view with Annotations (we'll get to that later), shadows, and a few other things, to suit my needs.

The great thing of this is also that when I change an object in the model - move a wall - the change is refelcted in all views where this object is visible. I also means that I can have multiple plans of the same section of the building - floor plan of the ground floor - that convey different information - electrical installations, square meters, wall and floor finishes - without having to redraw them every time. This reduces the danger of drawing errors considerably.

Another way of retrieving information form the building database is using schedules. This is a non-graphical way of looking at the same data, and so as architects and draftspeople something we are not really used to. But tell the builder who does the calculations on how expensive the project is going to be that you can give him exact numbers on the square meters of brick wall or the number of doors and he well love you forever (or at least until he sees what the costs of your funky design are...).

So stop seeing schedules as something alien and weird and start seeing them as just another way of presenting your design. In the end there are (unfortunately) a lot more people interested in the numbers than in the esthetics.

This concludes my first article on Basic Concepts in Revit. As you can see this is all theoretical and no hands-on. I will try to write some hand-on instructions on the concepts that I cover in other posts. If you have some concept of Revit that you are struggling with, please feel free to leave a comment.

Revit 2011 - Update 2

2010-09-30T09:03:00.001+02:00

Austodesk has release the 2nd update for Revit 2011. Contrarty to intuition, this can be found under the product download section, rather than the update section for Revit Architecture on the Autodesk site.

At the same time Autodesk has released the latest Subscription Advantage Pack for Revit 2011, including a new type of server for central files, a conceptual energy analysis tool and a set of extensions. I am now downloading all that and will report on my progress later.

OpenOffice / LibreOffice

2010-09-28T09:18:00.000+02:00

OK, so this has nothing to do with Revit, and I am sorry. But I am an avid supporter of OpenOffice and I think it is important that such a project gets all the support it can get.

You might note that I have added a new widget to the sidebar, where you can sign a petition supporting the formation of an independant foundation (called the Document Foundation) which will continue to develop OpenOffice (or rather LibreOffice at the moment) without Oracle looking over their shoulder.

Feel free to sign the petition as well.

OK, and now back to Revit...

Fased Wall End

2010-09-21T09:43:00.001+02:00

We are in the process of designing a ronded building with an all-glass extgerior. This leads to the situation that an interior wall needs to end at a glass panel. Revit presents with this solution:

Hmm. Not what I wanted.

The solution that I came up with is a bit of a workaround, but it gets the job done.

First I created a new, very thin wall.

Not that the material I used is the same material that covers the interior walls. That way mt schedules will still be correct and the result in the renders will also look nice. (Or render-program Artlantis uses the Revit materials as the base for its own images).

I then drew the thin wall at the angle that the interior wall was supposed to be fased at (parallel to the existing Curtain Wall):

Having done this I cleaned up the result with the Trim tool and adjusted the length of the thin wall:

And that's it. Job done.

Nice.

Help-File location

2010-08-27T15:00:00.002+02:00

Since I like to work with Revit on my laptop, I was highly irritated when Autodesk decieded to switch to an online-help-only model. It meant that I had to be online to get the "help" (for the times that the Revit-help was actually helpful - not very often).

It seems I am not the only person with this issue and so Autodesk published an article on how to change the online-help to a local help-file. See the article here.

It basically boils down to adding three lines to the Revit.ini file.

[Documentation]
UseHelpServer=1
HelpBrowser=0

Simple as that.

On a personal note: This is my 100th post. Happy Birthday to me!

Off Topic: Visiting Browsers

2010-08-25T10:37:00.000+02:00

Last Monday the counter on Google Analytics broke through the 100-visitors mark for the first time, almost double the previous record and four times as many as the average day. I am thrilled!

Anyway, I went through the other statistics and thought I'd publish the percentages of the visiting browsers:

Looks like Internet Explorer is still in the lead with Firefox catching up. I guess a lot of companies are still using this dinosaur of web-viewing tools.

Thank you to all the people taking an interest and I hope I could/can help.

By the way, if you have an issue with Revit or would like me to take a stab at explaining some aspect of the program, let me know.

Sheet Grid Guides

2010-08-20T14:04:00.001+02:00

With the arrival of R2011 it is finally, finally possible to align different plans (e.g. floorplans) on different sheets without having to draw pencilmarks on your screen. Here is how it works and how it works better (IMHO):

In a sheet view go to Ribbon > View > Guide Grid

Clicking this will prompt you to give a name to this particular Guide Grid for future reference and use in other Sheets.

I'll call mine "A3 floorplan", because it is going to be for floorplans on A3-sized sheets. Duh.

After I click OK my entire Sheet will be covered with blue lines and become highly unreadable.

...especially after I place a View (in this case the ground floor) on the Sheet...

But that's fine for now. I'll just align the View to the Guide Grid by using the Ribbon > Modify > Move command. I am able to use Grids for this (as in my example), but Reference Planes will work as well (which can be handy if you don't have any - or too many - Grids).

OK, so now I know where I want to align the drawing on the sheet. Time to get rid of all those blue lines I don't need. I do this by selecing the Guide Grid and using the blue dots on the sides to make is just as big as really neccessary.

Nice.

Time to create a second Sheet (or open it should you already have one created) and apply this Guide Grid. I do this in the View Properties of the Sheet.

I end up with this:

I now know that this one intersection of the Guide Grid is the one to which I need to align the intersection of Grids 1 and A of my 1st-floor drawing.

Oh, and don't worry. Revit will not plot the Guide Grid, so need to always turn it off again. (Although I find that it just looks nicer to not have it on. Call it a personal quirk.)

VoW: Results

2010-07-26T08:32:00.000+02:00

Since I was busy at work with our Project Template I wanted to know how big yours is - Family Template that is...

Looks like bigger is indeed better - or at least more widely used.

We have trimmed ours down to about 5.5MB, putting the extra stuff in a separate file from which you can pick and choose which elements to use.

Project Location

2010-07-21T10:35:00.000+02:00

Today I am following an update course for Revit 2011 and a few handy tips are surfacing.

One of them is the project location. While in Revit 2010 the list of standard cities for the US was very extensive, the Netherlands was represented by exactly two location. That left you going to Google Maps, finding the geo-location data and manually entering them.

Revit 2011 makes this easier. It brings Google Maps to you.

In the Ribbon select Manage > Location

And when you change the dropdown menu for Define Location by to Internet Mapping Service, you get this:

Google Maps, right inside Revit. Including the regular search functions.

Loving It!

Keyboard Shortcuts 2011

2010-07-20T10:11:00.000+02:00

This is one of the more drastic changes in Revit 2011. The keyboard shortcuts are handled and set differently.

In R 2010 you had the KeyboarShortcuts.txt file in the Program-directory. By changing this you changed the shortcuts.

R 2011 does things differently. Now you have a nice dialoge-box in which to set the keys:

Find the command you want, select it, and press the new keys you want assigned. By clicking on the now active "Assign"-button you activate the shortcut.

There are a few rules you have to keep in mind (this is straight from the User Reference Guide):

A keyboard shortcut can consist of up to 5 unique alphanumeric keys.
You can specify a keyboard shortcut that uses Ctrl, Shift, and Alt with a single alphanumeric key. The sequence displays in the Press new keys field. For example, if you press Control and Shift and D, it displays as Ctrl+Shift+D.
If a keyboard shortcut includes Alt, it must also include Ctrl and/or Shift.
You cannot assign reserved keys.
You can specify multiple keyboard shortcuts for each Revit tool.
You can assign the same keyboard shortcut to multiple tools. To select the desired tool when you execute the shortcut, use the status bar. See Using Keyboard Shortcuts.

On one hand I like this a lot, because everything is done within Revit and the changes happen immediately (as opposed to having to restart Revit).

However, there are a few features that I don't really like. Because you can assign the same shortcut to multiple commands there is no collision control. Once you type the command, the status bar will display the options and you can cycle through the different commands with the arrow keys and select the one you want with space (see the User Manual).

I just don't get that. I assign a shortcut to make my life easier, not give me multiple options. It is supposed to save me time, not make me type more and more letters. I would really like an option where you can have collision controle while asigning new shortcuts.

Other than that I am happy. :)

VoW: Size of your Project Template

2010-07-09T09:43:00.000+02:00

Our office is making use of a commercial solution for our family content. Most of the time this saves on creating families on your own and makes the workflow that much quicker.

Other times it does not.

Anyway. They have just published a new Poject Template to go with their solution for Revit 2011. So I figured I'd download it and take a look. That thing is almost 10MB in size!

When I went to university I took a CAD-class, where we worked with AutoCAD. (OK, not quite the same, but bear with me.) Or final project was to take an existing building of some size and create floor plans, sections, elevations and a 3D model. I did this for the Bank of China in Hong Kong.

Image courtesy of Hijme Stoffels

Quite fun. :)

But here is the kicker: we had to turn this in on one floppy disk! You know, these weird, 3.5" big, plastic square things that held 1,44M!

I know that memory does not cost as much as it used to, but sending files to others via e-mail is still limited. (Yes, I know, there is online storage avaliable. Yes, I know, some of it is even free. But not everyone is comfortable with this. Or knows how to use it.)

Anyway. Enough ranting. I was just interested in how big your project files are before you actualle put any project-information in them.

Graphics Cards and Revit

2010-07-05T14:48:00.000+02:00

This is more a reminder to myself, but if it helps anyone else - great.

We've been having some stability and speed issues with the new release (R2011). Since a lot of this was graphical, I went to look for the list from Autodesk that has all supported graphics cards in it, together with current driver information.

Since it took me some time to finally track it down, here the link:

Revit Graphics Hardware List

Door Openings

2010-07-02T15:40:00.000+02:00

I've been playing around with a variable openings for doors in plan view and never quite worked it out. So I finally sat down and started from scratch to get this settled.

And since this is not only nice to have but also interesting to do (from an academic point of view :) ), I thought I'd share. So here goes.

I first started with a Generic Model - line based.

I then create a Reference Line, to which I will attach my opening door. Just put it at any angle but be sure to start it from the family origin.

Adding an Angular Dimension with a Label will make this puppy move like I want it. But since I want to be clever, I use an "internal" Label for this, calling it aopen and sorting it under "Other". Why? Well, I'll tell you in a second.

First will quickly draw a "door" with a variable thickness (after all, you could also use this family for windows...). I'll use Symbolic Lines to draw a rectangle, attaching one side to the movable Reference Line and adding some labeled Dimensions to it.

OK, so now for the "smart" part. I want this door to display a possible opening of 10 to 170 degrees, and turn off when the opening angle is below 10.

So I create two new parameters, called opening angle (angle) and door visible (yes/no). The first is so the user can change the angle and the second will turn it off automatically. I the program them as following:

aopen = if(opening angle < 10°, 10°, if(opening angle> 170°, 170°, opening angle))

and

door visible = not(opening angle<10)

Now I just set the Visibility of the door-lines to the door visible parameter and I am done.

Now, when the user enters a value lower than 10 the actual aopen-angle will stay at 10, preventing the family to break, but turning off the visibility. And an automatic doorstopper is set at 170 degrees.

Of course you could also introduce variables to set the minimum and maximum opening angels etc, but hey. That's up to you. :)

1st Update Revit 2011

2010-06-30T10:49:00.001+02:00

As I have just found out there is a first update out for Revit 2011:

Revit Architecture Downloads

Revit Structure Downloads

Revit MEP Downloads

Looks like the main things are stability and performance issues.

The About Revit info from the help menu will now display this:

(Notice the "Web Update 1 Service Pack" under the build-ID!)

Thanks to the Revit Clinic for the post.

Artlantis Revit 2011 Plugin

2010-06-30T09:28:00.000+02:00

Finally! Abvent finally released the Plugin for Revit 2011.

At first glance things are looking good. The export work just as easy as with the Revit 2010 plugin: create a camera (not perspecitve!) and export from this view. So far so easy.

Unfortunately a few pending issues have not been resolved.

One major drawback is still the inability to export any toposurface properly. No matter whether you have severaldifferent regions, subregions or a combination of the above, each with different materials applied, you get one big blob with the material Default.

This is of course nothing new and the workaround is to save different surfaces in different files and then load them as separate objects into your Artlantis project, but still... A missed chance here.

I wonder if they will ever get this to work.

VoW - Week 23 Results

2010-06-11T11:10:00.000+02:00

Looks like the majority of people uses their own Revit families. Guess it's time we started doing the same.

VoW - Revit Families

2010-05-31T10:43:00.000+02:00

Today I would like to get your take on where you get most of your Revit Families from. Do you have a subscription from a professional vendor, do you make your own or do you spend a lot of time looking for that one window that just fits your project on the internet?

Custom Pattern Files

2010-05-27T12:15:00.000+02:00

To create custom patterns to use in Revit you'll need a very specialized tool: A text editor! (Like Notepad, or better Notepad++) With this you can create a .pat file that contains you pattern(s).

To explain how to set this up I have copied the explanation out of the Revit.pat-file stored in the program installation map of your Revit.

;;revit.pat file v. 3.0 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;(c) 2000-2003 Autodesk Revit ;;;

This file contains the standard set of custom fill patterns distributed with Autodesk Revit. Since it is part of the standard installation, do not change it. Any changes you make may be lost when you update Revit. To define custom patterns, create a new file using this file as a template.

Fill patterns are also known as hatches and fills.

;;Model vs. Drafting patterns

There are two types of fill patterns in Revit: model and drafting. Model patterns are used to depict real-world elements, such as bricks, shingles, tiles, etc. They are defined and display in model units. An 8x16 inch brick pattern will show exactly 12 courses on an 8-foot-tall wall. A 2-meter-tall wall with a 200x400 mm brick pattern will have 10 courses. Model patterns appear denser at coarser view scales and sparser at finer ones.

Drafting patterns are defined in paper units. If you import the pattern at scale 1 and print at 100% zoom, the pattern's dimensions on paper will be exactly as specified in the file, regardless of view scale. Drafting patterns are used to symbolically denote materials such as steel, concrete, sand, etc.

Drafting patterns are typically defined with smaller numbers than model patterns. Drafting patterns usually contain sizes from 0.04 to 1 inch (1 - 25 mm)model patterns usually contain sizes from 2 to 20 inches (50 - 500 mm). These are guidelines only, not enforced by Revit. Revit's existing restrictions limit the maximum size and density of the patterns, and a review of these restrictions is planned for a future release.

;;Pattern files

Revit pattern files contain custom fill pattern definitions. They are modeled after the AutoCAD hatch pattern files, with a few additions. The file extension is .pat. A file may contain an arbitrary number of patterns. To use the patterns, import the file using the Fill Patterns dialog. See Help for detailed instructions.

If a pattern file contains an error, Revit will not import it. An error message will indicate the erroneous line. Revit may consider a pattern to be too large or too dense. If it does, modify the import scale or the pattern definition. Once a pattern is imported, it is stored in the project, independent of the original file.

;;Pattern file format

All lines must be less than 4096 characters long. Lines beginning with ;% are Revit directives. Lines beginning with are comments. Lines beginning with * begin new pattern definitions. Blank lines are ignored.

The file consists of a prologue followed by pattern definitions. The prologue may contain the following directives:

   ;%VERSION=3.0

This identifies the file as a Revit Fill Pattern file of the specified version. The version described here is 3.0. Include this directive in your files for future compatibility.

   ;%UNITS=INCH         or
   ;%UNITS=MM

This describes the units in which patterns are defined. Specifying units in the file is preferred to modifying the import scale. If neither directive is present, Revit will assume that the patterns are defined in inches.

;;Pattern definition format

A pattern definition consists of the name header, type directive and line families. Each one is placed on a separate line. The entire pattern is terminated by the following header or the end of the file.

;;Header format

   *name, comment

The name may contain any ASCII characters except for comma. They are shown in the list of imported patterns. The comma and comment are optional. They are ignored by Revit. The header may be followed by one of the following type directives:

   ;%TYPE=DRAFTING    or
   ;%TYPE=MODEL

If neither directive is present, Revit assumes that it is a drafting pattern.

;;Line families

Each line family is a set of parallel lines that build one "direction" of a pattern. A complete pattern may be defined by several families each defining part of the final, such as the vertical joints of brick coursing. The lines are described in the two dimensions of a face as follows:

   angle, x-origin, y-origin, shift, offset, dash, space, dash, space ...

Angle specifies the direction, in degrees, of a set of lines relative to the x-axis. The first line in the set starts at the specified x,y-origin. Parallel lines are drawn as specified by Offset and Shift to fill the entire face. Offset defines the distance between parallel lines. Zero Offset is not allowed. Shift moves the pattern of dashes and spaces along the length of each new parallel line. Shift is ignored if the line is solid. Distances are expressed as decimal numbers (using peroid as the decimal separator) in the units previously specified.

The dash-space sequence defines a repeating pattern of dashes and spaces for a line. If it is omitted, the line is solid. Positive numbers define dashes, negative numbers define spaces, and zero specifies a dot. If you begin a pattern with a space, do not alternate dashes and spaces, or do not end with a space, Revit will introduce tiny dashes or spaces to compensate. Revit expands dots and very short dashes into dashes of a minimum size.

;;Worked example

   ;%UNITS=INCH
   ;%VERSION=3.0

   *Block 8x16, 8 x 16 blocks running bond
   ;%TYPE=MODEL
   0,             0,             0,             0,             8
   90,            0,             0,             8,             8,             8,             -8

This pattern is called "Block 8x16" you will see this name when you import it into Revit. It is a model pattern. It has two families of lines. The first family creates the horizontal coursing:

   angle = 0          => lines are horizontal
   x,y-origin = 0,0
   shift = 0          => line pattern is not shifted
   offset = 8         => consecutive lines are 8 model inches apart
   no line pattern    => the line is solid.

The second family creates the vertical joints:

   angle = 90         => lines are vertical
   x,y-origin = 0,0   => the pattern begins at the same point as the horizontals
   shift = 8          => line pattern is is shifted by 8 model inches for consecutive lines
   offset = 8         => consecutive lines are 8 model inches apart
   dash = 8           => each line is built of 8" dashes and 8" spaces
   space = 8          => this pattern repeats until the face boundary

The shift makes the vertical segments appear between alternating pairs of horizontal lines, which appears as 16 inch bricks in interlocking bond.

;;Differences from AutoCAD
AutoCAD has an 80-character line size limit, Revit's is 4096.
AutoCAD allows arbitrary sequences of dashes, spaces and dots, Revit coerces them into dash- space format by inserting zero spaces and dashes.
AutoCAD has a notion of dots, Revit expands them (including the zero dashes it inserted) into short dashes.
AutoCAD has a maximum of 6 components to a line pattern, Revit has no limit.
AutoCAD does not allow spaces in a pattern name, Revit does.
AutoCAD allows only one pattern per a custom file, with pattern name matching file name, and with the file residing in a known location. Revit has none of these restrictions.
AutoCAD and Revit utilize different logic to decide whether a pattern is acceptable.
Note that when Revit exports its models into AutoCAD formats, such as DWG, it makes sure to comply with the more stringent AutoCAD requirements.

I find this explanation very clear. But in the end, to properly find out houw things work, you'll have to get your hands dirty and just go for try-and-error. That's what I did...

Creating "deep" elevations and sections

2010-05-26T12:55:00.000+02:00

Creating "deep" elevations and sections has always been an issue with Revit. Yes, you can add shadow and play a bit with the line weigths, but it just does not cover it all.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell Revit to use a lighter color / linestyle once it goes beyond a certain distance into the drawing? Something like this?

Well, there is a way, even if it is cheating a bit.

What I did was basically putting two sections on top of each other onto the sheet. One section contains the main information, including all annotations, while the other is the background. Here's how I did it.

First I created two sections almost on top of each other:

On one of them (here number 1) I turned on the far scope (adjust the blue, dashed lines) and set it so that the view does not look further than all items in the foreground. This will be my main view with all the info and annotation.

On the other view (# 2) I turned everything grey using the Halftone option in the Visibility/Graphics settings:

I also hid anything I did not need (levels, the site, etc) and turned on the shadows, setting the shadow color to a relatively light color.

In the final step I went to the sheet and placed view #2 first.

This way when I place view #1 it will be displayed above #2 and cover everything that is not background.

Here we go. A nice "deep" section that will automatically update, no matter which item I change.

VoW - Results

2010-05-22T18:07:00.001+02:00

Looks like R2011 has been recieved very well.

I am still waiting for the Artlantis Plugin to work before making the switch at the office. I just hope they hurry up!

Dynamic Number of Blocks of Variable Distance

2010-05-19T15:56:00.000+02:00

Phew. What a title for a post! But, basically, that's what it is.

To explain: I was looking for a way to make dynamic shelves, where I could not only determine the distance between the individual boards, but also the number of them. Simply put: I want a family where I can say: shelve A has three boards that are 40cm apart, while shelve B has four boards that are 45cm apart.

To get to grips with the technique I first made a trial family, using my trusted cubic meter:

Great fro trying out things.

I then set up a family using the Generic Model - Floor Based template, because my cubic meter sits on the floor. You should use the appropriate template when using this technique for other things.

Anyway. I loaded the cube into the family, and placed it at the center of the family. I then created a reference plane to the right and gave it a defined distance with a parameter calles "distance". (If this is too fast for you, please read the manual on dynamic families and labels.)

OK. Now comes the tricky part. I then went ahead and created an array from the cube, and selected the following settings:

I then made the array strecht from the central reference plane to the one I had set up.

So far so good. The next step is to create a parameter for the number of cubes in the array. Select the cube, and a temporary dimension will pop up the the number of items on it. This you can select and add a parameter.

Well. That's it for the basic setup. Now comes the "programming part":

Open the Family Types dialogue box and set it up in the following way:

Create a parameter called "block distance" (or whatever :) ) and group it under Dimensions. (This is not strictly neccessary, but helps with usability for others.) This is the distance between the cubes - more precisely the distance between the centers of the cubes.

I then let the distance be calculated by multiplying the number of cubes (minus one) with said distance.

And presto, it works!

TrueView 2011

2010-05-12T08:55:00.000+02:00

Since we are slowly slowly moving into the direction of 2011, I figured it a good time to upgrade my TrueView to 2011 as well.

The install went fine and I opened a drawing I had just recieved from our structural engeneer. But when I wanted to measure some distances I discovered this:

No Ribbon. No measuring tools! WTF?!

After some searching around I found that there is a Ribbon in there, and that the tools I needed were still there. Relief. But it was pretty well hidden.

First I had to activate the menu:

And in the menu I found an option to actually show the Ribbon:

Lo and behold. Our Ribbon's back. And, as far as I can see, it has not changed with respect to R2010. So back to work and luckily I don't have to start looking for an alternative viewer - as the good ones mostly cost extra money and the free ones are not always up to scratch.

Having said this, if you know of an alternative dwg viewer that is good and freeware, drop a line!

Artlantis Plugin

2010-05-10T15:51:00.000+02:00

We are using Artlantis for our renders at work. Nice software package with lot sof options.

The Revit-plugin for 2011 is supposed to arrive end of May.

Also, there is an update to Studio 3.03 available from their site.

Revit 2011 - A Few Issues

2010-04-26T14:24:00.000+02:00

I've had a chance to poke around R2011 a little further, and there are (still) a few things that don't work well - or at all. So here's a short (and propably incomplete) list:

1. Stairs:

This looks like a fairly standard staircase, no? I mean, one corner should not be too hard to make. (Note: this stair war drawn by using runs.)

Alas, 't is not so. What's with the stringer? And the railing? I still think that a 3D-approach to making stairs would be a lot better.

2.Formulas

The help states that exp(x) is e to the power of x. So exp(1) should be e (2.7182818...)

Hmmm.Or not.

3. Selection

This is a new one. It looks like the selection lines (you know, the square you get when selection stuff with your mouse) now have a variable line thickness. Looks strange to me...

4. Help

Online help only? OK, the help was never great in the first place. But why do away with a local version? Now I have to be online all the time to get to the help. (A bit difficult when working in the train...)

Revit 2011 - The Quick Access Bar

2010-04-23T12:14:00.000+02:00

As with Revit 2010, the guys at the factory realized that you will be using a few commands all the time. And if you don't like keyboard shortcuts, you want these commands quickly accessable - all the time.

Enter the Quick Access Bar. Here you can place any command-icon you want. Up until now, this was as far as it went. Sorting or dividing the icons was not possible.

This has changed. You can now edit to your hearts contend, simply by clicking the down arrow next to the last icon in you Quick Access Bar.

As I am using the bar quite a bit, I was vary happy to see this.

But what I really found interesting, is that most of the icons that are now displayed out of the box are the ones that I had installed in R2010. Funny that.

Revit 2011 - The Ribbon

2010-04-22T13:29:00.000+02:00

Well, Revit 2011 is now installed on my computer and I've been browsing thourgh it for a little while.

Here are a few things that I've noticed right off the bat, which I think are interesting. I'll make a few of these posts, each with a topic.

Today I'll start with the Ribbon:

The ribbon has been reworked and the icons subtly changed.

Also, the modify-tab will stay open and in the same place whichever element you select.

Most notably: the selector for the family type has vanished from the Ribbon and is now housed with the element properties in an extra window. More on that later.

This new setup needs some adjusting, but is more consistent. I like that the modify-tab stays open, and even if I have already started a copy-command I can still change it to rotate. On the other hand to stack the icons in ones, twos or threes makes the Ribbon seem cluttered. So I'm still a bit on the fence on this.

Revit 2011

2010-04-16T11:25:00.000+02:00

Well, it seems the April 8th-date was a bit premature for the 2011 release.

But it is finally happening and it looks like I'll be playing Revit 2011 over the weekend. :)

Expect more posts on R2011 in the near future.

VoW - Results

2010-04-04T22:14:00.000+02:00

Here are the results for the latest installment of the Vote of the Week:

After noone voted for "I'll stay with 2010" I left it out.

Seems like everyone is really looking foreward to this release. It should be a good step foreward.

Revit.ini Secrets

2010-03-31T20:02:00.000+02:00

As posted earlier, you can change the size of the temporary dimensions by adding a line to the Revit.ini file.

Well, seems like there are a few more things you can do with the Revit.ini file. Check out this article from the Revit Clinic.

Just thought I'd share.

Faster Revit Pt. 2

2010-03-29T11:02:00.000+02:00

In the past I have made a list of increasing the speed of your Revit. I have since come across the following on multicore-computers: (this is a copy from page 4 out of this document by Autodesk.)

Although the Revit platform is not fully optimized for multi-threading, multiple-core processors reduce cycle use by other applications running concurrently. Some reports show as much as a 20% increase in Revit platform performance in a multi-core or multiple processor environment.
In Revit 2010, multi-threaded methods for printing and wall join cleanup have been made available. Multi-threaded hidden line removal for printing has been enabled by default.
Due to the operating system overhead of maintaining multiple threads, multiprocessing of wall join cleanups can experience a minor degradation when only 2 CPU cores are present, but up to a 27% performance increase when 4 hyper-threaded CPU cores are present. Because 2 CPU core systems remain the most common configuration of Revit systems as reported by CIP data, multiprocessing of this features is OFF by default.
To enable multiprocessing for wall join cleanup, add the following entries to the Revit.ini file:
[PerformanceOptimizations]
ParallelWallJoins=ON
To disable multiprocessing for wall join cleanup, you may omit any entries in the [PerformanceOptimizations] section of the Revit.ini file, or explicitly set the state of either one or both multiprocessing optimizations:
[PerformanceOptimizations]
ParallelWallJoins=OFF
ParallelPrintProcessing=OFF
The Revit platform's rendering function is optimized to use up to four processors. The Revit platform will share processing time with one of these four rendering processors, so there is no exclusive gain for the Revit platform in making more than four processors available. Additional processors may be desired
if other computationally-intensive applications need to run while the Revit platform is rendering.

Structural Framing as Floors

2010-03-29T09:01:00.000+02:00

We are currently working on several parking garages, made from prefabricated concrete. It's a bit like using Lego. :) And since I wanted to show how this works, I decieded to use "proper" structural elements: sctructural colums and trusses.

I started off creating a family for the floor slabs:

Easy enough, although you need to keep the extensions in mind. (As soon as I have this properly figured out, I'll post about it...)

Next I created a Beam System using this slab as a beam and put it at level height.

And here is where it got interesting, because I couldn't see the slabs:

Visibility of trusses is always an issue. Revit seems to think that they are only important to structural engeneers and that architects are not interested in how they look. So, if you're lucky, you get a thick line representing a small thing like a concrete truss 400mm wide and 1500mm high. An element that you'd propably not notice in real life anyway... :/

In my case, the solution was failry simple: I set the Bottom of the View Range to below the current level.

And, lo and behold, I get to see my truss floor:

Back again...

2010-03-24T10:32:00.000+01:00

Hi there.

As you might have noticed, it's been quiet here for a few days. That's because spent the last week and a half on the beach. :)

But I am back again, and immediately with a new Vote of the Week. With the R2011 release looming, I want to know when you'll make the switch. Please vote.

VoW: Week 9/10

2010-03-12T23:24:00.000+01:00

Here's the result of the latest Vote of the Week:

As many people go directly to AUGI as use the internet. A few users actually try the built-in Revit help... I didn't think it would be that many.

And I am HURT! Deeply, deeply HURT!! Noone. NOT ONE OF YOU. Comes here directly for help...

...Fine. See if I care...

:)

Revit 2011 - Subscription

2010-03-10T15:17:00.001+01:00

According to the Autodesk Website, from 2010 on the subscription updates of Revit in 27 "participating countries" will no longer be shipped as a DVD, but rather be available through a download-option.

If you want your box shipped, you need to set the prefered delivery method to "boxed" on your Autodesk Subscription profile. This needs to happen before march 12th (end of this week).

Line Style [Demolished]

2010-03-02T16:42:00.001+01:00

We are working on an extension to an existing building and need to demolish a few parts of it.

So we set up the drawing to create the existing building by setting the Phase of the View (in the View Properties) to "Existing" and drew the structure. The properties of the elements that needed to be demolished were changed accordingly.

A new View, this time set to "New Construction" revealed the old building and dashed, red lines where elements needed to be torn down. I didn't like that line style, so I figured I'd change it.

Silly me thought this would be accomplished by going to R > Manage > Settings > Line Styles and changing the line style.

Confusion ensued.

After some searching I found that the line style used for demolished parts is in the R > Manage > Phases dialogue, under the Graphic Override tab:

Fair enough. That worked. (Mark it up as another one of those Revit oddities.)

But can someone explain to me, what the line style is for?

Colorschemes in different views

2010-03-01T10:41:00.004+01:00

As posted here, we use a set of different colors to highlight rooms and make plans more readable.

Thing is, sometimes the colors do not show up as expected. This can have a number of different reasons and it has cost me quite a bit of frustration so far. So I figured I'd list a few the reasons that I have found that can make difficulties. I will try to go from basic to complex and if you are experiencing issues with the colors, follow the instructions by number.

This list does not pretend to be complete. If you find other issues / hidden switches that can cause the color scheme to not show up correctly, post a comment.

So here goes...

Are there rooms in the view that can be filled? Check the drawing by selecting everything in sight and filter out the rooms.
Do you have a color-scheme set up and the view set to show it? See the View Properties dialoge on the right:
Do the rooms in your view have a color based on the color scheme you have selected? (If the color scheme is based on the Name of the Room, this should be the case. But check anyway.)
Is there something blocking the colors? When you have a Floor in a Plan View that has its own color (check Surface Pattern and -Color of the material of the floor) it can lead to complications. Set the Surface Pattern to none.
The same goes for Walls in Section Views.
On the same note, it may help to set the Color Scheme Location in the View Properties dialogue to Foreground. (see right) Note that this will place the colors in front of everything, even the walls your view is cutting through.
Are Rooms visible in this view? Check the Visibility Settings of the current view to see whether Rooms are visible.

Those are the issues I have come across. Happy troubleshooting.

VoW: Week 8 - 2010

2010-03-01T10:22:00.000+01:00

Quick results on the Vote of the Week (8-2010): Do you find the setup of the Ribbon logical?

Looks like Autodesk still has some tweaking to do on the Ribbon. But it does seem as if about 3/4 of the users have accepted the Ribbon.

VoW: New question

2010-02-22T15:45:00.001+01:00

Long time no blog... or whatever. :)

Anyway.

After a comment by Rick on this post, I was wondering whether everybody feels this way. I mean, we've all been (forced to) getting used to the Ribbon. And I have to say, it's been a fairly easy transition.

The Factory have made a good effort and I find the setup (mostly) logical. And I want to know how you guys feel. Do you find everything is in its proper place, are you searching for some functions or would you rather go back to the GUI of R2009?

Go forth and vote! And feel free to leave a comment on what you were looking for or why you hate the Ribbon.

VoW: Week 5 and 6 of 2010

2010-02-15T11:28:00.000+01:00

The results are for the Vote of the Week, weeks 6 and 6 of 2010.

Not unexpectedly the majority of you uses dwg/dxf to exchange information between the parties concerned.

What I found interesting is that there is nobody using the ifc-format and that there are still a few people using paper.

At the office we are using a combination of pdf and paper, but are trying to start using other means, like native rvt or at least dwf.

Catenary Pt 2: the Family "catenary line"

2010-02-11T09:46:00.001+01:00

In my last post I described the math for creating a catenary. Now it's time to get down and dirty and create a family that does this.

The plan is:

Create a family with a line with a dot at the end that I can hang my line onto - we'll call it "catenary line".
This family will move the dot horizontally and vertically depending on user input.
The height of the line will be computed in this family.
We then create a family "catenary", into which we nest the "catenary line" and which does computing for c.

So let's get cracking.

I start by creating a new Conceptual Mass ( R > New > Conceputual Mass ). And since I want the catenary to be vertical, I set the work plane to the Center(Front/Back) - Reference Plane. On this plane I draw a vertical Line and place a Reference Point at the end.

I then add Dimensions to it and give these dimensions Parameters: x and y.

Now for the "fun" part: the math. I open the Family Types dialogue and enter the following parameters and formulas:

A quick runthrough:

Parameter	Explanation
nr	number of this line (segment)
nr_of_segs	number of segments the catenary will have
x	The distance of the line from (0,0) calculated by multiplying half the length of the arch with the position of the line (segment number divided by total number of segments)
xn	conversion of the distance from (0,0) to a pure number (as opposed to the length x)
y	height of the line at this point (this is where the catenary-formula comes in)
tlen	half the length of the arch
u	number calculated with Newton's Method to get to a
a	constant to put into the catenary formula
e	Euler's Number

Armed with this I can now load this family into the catenary family and start creating the catenary. (Which I'll discuss in the next post).

Catenary Pt 1: the Math

2010-02-09T16:31:00.005+01:00

As promised in this post, I'll go into making a parametric family for a catenary arch. I'll do this in two parts, since I can imagine that the actual math is not that interesing to everyone.

So, if you've always hated math and don't want anything to do with it, go here instead and stop reading. This is gonna get boring.

For everyone else, here we go.

The goal is: Make a parametric family, where I can enter a width and a height for the arch and get a catenary.

First the general formula for a catenary is this:

and it looks like this:

(image source)

As you can see, the graph moves upwards with every increase in a (I have used c in place of the a, just because I had found the formula with a c first). But what we need is a graph that goes through (0,0). So we'll modify the formula:

and we get:

Great. Now we only need to find the right c to fit our purposes and off we go. The way to do this is to substitute the height of the arch for y and half the length of the arch for x and solve for c. Easy.

In this example I want an arch 30m wide and 5m high:

Now we run into 2 problems:

Revit does not know what a cosh (Hyperbolic Cosin) is.
You can not solve this function for c.

To tackle problem 1, we substitute:

Revit does know how to calculate e to the power of x (Well, sort of. You do have to tell Revit what e is, but oh well...). So that's sorted.

To tackle problem 2, we use the Newton Iteration to find a value for c:

The two functions are:

and

We put this together and within 5 or 6 steps we have a value for c that works for our purposes.

...and all this to create a simple arch!

OK, so much for the basic math. In the next part I'll walk you through how I actually set this whole thing up in Revit so it works.

My thanks go to everyone at wikipedia for their articles on the math and to John Forkosh Associates for their online LaTeX machine.

Exporting Conceptual Mass

2010-02-04T13:05:00.000+01:00

I am currently working on redesigning an existing building. I have the drawings so I went ahead and set the whole thing up in Revit.

In order to start the designing process, I wanted to make an in-place mass and export this to the Conceptual Mass editor. So I started my mass, gave it a name and started modelling.

But when I tried to export it, I found no way of doing so. I tried via grouping it and exporting the group, exporting as a family, and a few other "official" ways.

So I figured, what the heck. I'll do it quick and dirty: copy & paste!

Surprisingly this worked, but only with a little trick. When I tried to copy the entire mass, it wouldn't work. But when I just grabbed the volumes I had created within the mass, I could paste them in the conceptual mass editor.

Or, to be more clear, this is what I did:

create an in-place mass in a project file (Ribbon > Massing & Site > In-place mass), give it a name and start editing
once done with the forms within the mass, copy the forms by selecting and pressing [ctrl] + [c]
R > New > Conceptual Mass, select the conceptual-mass template and open
[ctrl]+[v]

Now you have your in-place mass in the conceptual-mass editor and can play around as much as you like.

Revit Bug: exp()

2010-02-03T12:15:00.000+01:00

For a project I want to use the form of the catenary, which is the form a free and flexible chain adopts when hanging from 2 points. If you invert this you get a very stable arch form.

One example for this is the arch in St. Louis:

This form is based on a mathematical formula involving e (approx. 2,71828182...)

Revit is supposed to know this number and by using the command exp(x) you can calculate e to the power of x. At least that's what the manual says.

Unfortunately, exp(x) will calculate 10 to the power of x. Took me half an hour of troubleshooting my formula to find that out.

Once I have the catenary done I'll post a tutorial on how to make one.

VoW: Week 3/4 2010

2010-02-01T11:30:00.001+01:00

Here are the results for this weeks Vote of the Week:

Looks like a lot of you use the render function in Revit for final presentations.

We have decieded against that, as we are afraid that the models will get too big and cumbersome to be effective. Please comment on whether that's the case and what kind of experiences you've had.

Plotting filled rooms

2010-02-01T09:57:00.000+01:00

Today we were trying to print a drawing with the rooms filled in in gray. This is what we got:

Not really satisfactory.

After some googleing and try-and-error we came up with this:

Much better!

The solution: in R > Print > Settings Setup switch the Hidden Line Views setting from Vector Processing to Raster Processing.

Stair boundaries

2010-01-29T10:00:00.000+01:00

"Stairs require no more than two boundaries" Anyone seen this before? Yes?

I get this almost every time I try to make a stair that is not 100% straight and has more than one run.

As an example I was trying to make this stair:

So I went ahead and created 3 runs. Note the way the boundaries are not really what I want:

So I tried:

moving the boundaries one by one: error
deleting the ones that are wrong and redrawing them: error
deleting all boundaries and drawing them by hand: error

What finally worked was tab-selecting the entire boundary-line and moving the handle.

The issue with this is af course that it makes it impossible to make rounded boundaries, but at least I got this stair done.

Now if I could only make Revit create a monolithic stair like this.

Creating Walls

2010-01-28T10:26:00.000+01:00

Creating Walls... That should be simple. Click on Ribbon > Home > Walls and away you go.

Aha. So you might think.

Well, I've been having this weird problem that any wall I drew had a fixed bottom and top offset of 500mm, even when I changed the height in the drop-down menu before drawing the wall.

It took me a while to realize that I had previously created a wall by using the Create Similar command in the context menu and that the wall I used as a template did have a bottom and top offset of 500mm. So when I used a different wall as a template (without offsets), I got the "normal" behaviour back.

Good to know that Revit remembers these things, even after coming back the following day.

Property Line

2010-01-26T10:28:00.000+01:00

Today I was looking to change the line style for the Property Line.

So I started looking in Ribbon > Manage > Settings > Line Style. Obvious place, I thought. But no luck.

This property actually resides in the Object Styles: Ribbon > Manage > Settings > Object Styles.

VoW: Vote of the Week - Results Week 2-2010

2010-01-18T10:55:00.002+01:00

The results are in for the first Vote of the Week.

I had asked : "How many line weights do you/your office use?"

And here are the results:

Thank you for participating.

I will open a new poll later today.

VoW: Vote of the Week

2010-01-13T14:40:00.001+01:00

As you may have noticed, with the new year I have introduced a new feature to this site: the Vote of the Week. I will be posting a new poll every Monday (depending on participation maybe only every two weeks; we'll just have to see) and publishing the results of the last one.

This week's question is "How many line weights do you/your office use?"

I have been looking into this for our company standard and it seems to me that there are way too many line-weights registered in our template. I want to seriously cut them down and go back to using 5 to 7 line weights and I was curious what you guys are using.

I guess I still am old fashioned as I learned drawing with pen and paper. And these pens came in 0.18, 0.25, 0.35 and 0.5. If your were lucky (or had wealthy parents) you extended that with a 0.13 and a 0.7 pen. But that was about it. Anything thicker and you just put down two lines...

...but anyway. Go ahead and vote. I'm looking forward to the results.

Conceputal Mass Units

2010-01-12T10:16:00.002+01:00

I just started a new project and wanted to get going with a Conceputal Mass. So I loaded the standard template and drew a line.

But wait! This is in meters while my "normal" drawings are in milimeters!

OK, I can sort of understand that, because this editor is meant to be used for first sketches. But I am so used to typing everything in mm that I created quite a few lines with a length of 10,000 meters before realizing my mistake.

Solution? Change the units and create a new template to use.

To change the units, go to Manage > Project Units, change the Length-setting to mm.

Testing...

OK, that did the trick.

Now save as a Template:

Wait! What? I can't? Hmm.

Well, maybe this solution will work here as well. Save the new "template" as a regular Family. Using the Windows-Explorer go to the map you saved the file and change the ending to .rvt (=ReVit Template)

You can then move this file to the map with your templates (the standard for Revit 2010 under Vista is C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RAC 2010\Metric Templates\Conceptual Mass) and you now have to option of either working in meters or milimeters.

Parametric Families

2010-01-11T15:24:00.003+01:00

The strength of Revit lies within its families. The better your families, the more efficient you can work.

I - and a lot of other people, judging by all the tutroials online on the subject - find this to be very true indeed. But mostly this is discussed for parametric wall openings (changing door-widths or window-heights) and less so for your sheet titles or things like your scale-bar:

So I figured I'd create a "smart" scale-bar for the office, so that we can have the same bar on all drawings, no matter to what scale they are drawn to. And this is how I did it.

I first created a new generic annotation family ( R > New > Family, select the Generic Annotation template) and drew the basis for it:

The "0" is static, so I just created a Text there.

Next I created a few familiy parameters so that the text specifying the distance could be dynamically changed.

The parameters are: (all of them are Type, since I want to create Family Types corresponding to the correct scale)

Name	Function
schaal	scale (1:x) of the drawing
n01 - n10	calculated scale-value, where n01=1cm on drawing, n02=2cm etc.
detail	Boolean (Yes/No) to determine whether the scale is 1:50 and above or below that (drawing is considered a detail)
unit	can either be m (meters) or mm (millimeters)
multi	multiplier to calculate either meters or millimeters

The schaal is the only parameter the user can and should change. The rest I have programmed with formulas.

n01 - n10 are calculated by taking the scale, multiplying it with the distance on paper (in mm) and dividing it by multi to determine whether to display the result in meters or in milimeters.

detail is a simple Yes/No: Be Yes (True), if schaal is smaller than 50.

unit is determined by detail. If the drawing is a detail-view, display "mm" otherwise make it meters.

Now it was just a question of creating all the labels.

The last label was the only "interesting" one, because I actually displayed two parameters instead of one:

But that's basically it. I can now create Family Types to suit the most common needs (1:100 for plan views, elevations etc, 1:1000 for the situation, 1:5 for details, etc) and still make it very easy to add extra scales.

Railings & Balusters

2010-01-08T09:55:00.001+01:00

Hi everyone and a happy and successful 2010!

As promised last decade, I'll describe how I created the christmas-trees in my last post.

The question here was: how do you put objects onto a path and have them maintain a constant distance from each other? In AutoCAD (and most other CAD-programs) there are functions that let you draw a path and then have it either divide up into x segments or into a number of segments with the distance of y from each other. Unfortunately, Revit does not have a function like that.

...or does it?

The trick is to use railings and balusters for this.

How?

Well, here goes:

This is what we had.

First I created the object I wanted to have placed (a tree in this case, but it could easily be street lights). To do this I created a family ( R > New > Family ) using the Baluster-Post template.

This I imported into the project. I then went ahead and created a new Railing-Family-Type and selected my tree (boom in Dutch) as Baluster. I was now able to select the distance between the instances by setting the Dist. from previous setting to 3 meters.

All the other balusters I left blank.

Note that the Base is set to Host and that I inserted a positive Top Offset. This is neccessary to be able to remove all hand rails from the family-type. ( Type-Properties > Rail-Structure )

I then drew the path for the railing.

And that's it.

Railings let themselves be used in quite a few interesting ways. Be creative and try a few!

Credit for getting me onto these tracks are due to Eric Wing, who held a great lecture at Autodesk University last year. I followed it online and was very impressed. Kudos to him!

Merry Christmas

2009-12-18T11:34:00.001+01:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Since our office will be closed for the christmas hollidays, this is propably my last post for this year. So enjoy the free days and the snow (yes, there's snow on the ground here!)

PS: And in the new year I'll explain how I got those trees distributed in an equal distance along a random path...

Creating a Family Template

2009-12-14T09:09:00.001+01:00

Creating a Project Template is a fairly well documented feature of Revit. You create a new Project Template by selecting the New Project Template option, put all the walls, floors, text-styles, etc in there that you will need for a new project and save.

But what about a Revit Family Template?

No word about that in the documentation - at least not that I could find. But after some online-searching and a few tryouts I found that it is indeed possible. And quite simple, too.

The quick summary:

create a new family using the established templates that come with Revit
put the stuff in that you need
save as a family
change the ending from .rfa to .rft

That's it.

But why, you ask? Could I not just create a regular family with the content that I'll need, edit it to fit my current project and then save as a new family?

Yes, you could do that. Problem is the save as part. If you are anything like me, [ctrl] + [s] is very much ingrained into your working habit. And I for one would propably ruin this perfectly good family by the second time I edit it.

Plus, it's neater this way. :)

Multicore Rendering in 2010

2009-12-11T09:47:00.000+01:00

Before buying Revit for our company about 8 months back now (still 2009), I was browsing through the forums and found the persitant oppinion, that Revit will only render in single-core mode, even if you have a multicore-machine. And even after going to 2010, that oppinion was widespread.

Since we are using Artlantis for our render work, I didn't care much.

But today I wanted a quick render and didn't feel like importing the model into Artlantis, so I figured I'd try Revit directly. And, lo and behold, Revit actually used both cores I have in my machine.

I have since then looked around further and it seems that Revit will utilize up to 4 cores for rendering.

So for quicke scenes I think I'll start using the Mental Ray engine in the future. Good to know.

Creating Elevations

2009-12-04T10:06:00.001+01:00

When creating Elevations in Revit, you need to pay attention to the rotation of your view. If you are not perfectly perpendicular to the Grids, they will not be displayed in your view.

Luckily, Revit knows this and adjusts the rotation accordingly:

Pretty cool, I thought.

Snaptip

2009-11-30T16:29:00.000+01:00

In my previous post I talked about the use of snap shortcuts.

Even if you don't use them, revit will tell you what it'll snap to. Not only by highlighting the objects/lines in your drafting view, but also in the status bar on the bottom right:

(Just saw that today and thought I'd share... :) )

Best Practice - Snap Shortcuts

2009-11-30T14:03:00.001+01:00

As stated here, Revit enables you to rotate the view to align with any horizontal or vertical wall you like.

Revit also gives you multiple other way to align with or stand perpendicular to walls, lines, groups and a host of other objects. Sometimes this can get confusing and if you have many different directions represented in one drawing.

To make things easier when drafting, use these shortcuts to make Revit snap to the point you want:

Shortcut	Snaps To
SI	Intersections
SE	Endpoints
SM	Midpoints
SC	Centers
SN	Nearest
SP	Perpendicular
ST	Tangents
SW	Work Plane Grid
SQ	Quadrants
SX	Points
SR	Snap to Remote Objects
SO	Snaps Off
SS	Turn Override Off

This is, of course, on the basis that you haven't changed these shortcuts in the KeyboardShortcuts.txt file.

I have highlighted the ones that I think are the most useful.

Best Practice - Faster Revit

2009-11-17T08:49:00.003+01:00

In response to a comment from W. left with this post, I thought I'll compile a list of things that have made my Revit faster:

Close all views that you do not need at the moment.

This is especially true when saving as Revit re-calculates all open views after saving.

Only have one file open at a time.
Use constraints with caution.
Turn off shadow(s) until you want to print.
Keep your template and your project file as clean as possible.
Close Revit during lunch.
When working with central files:

Create a new local file every day.
Regularly compact the central file.

When working with single files:

Don't. Still make a central file out of it, put it on a server, and work in the local file.

Work in a local file that resides on your own computer. Don't put files on a server unless it's the central file.

I hope this helps.

PS: Please also check here.

[Post edited 17-11-09, 16:22]
[Post edited 19-11-09, 10:08]

[Post edited 30-03-10, 10:10]

Subscription Update

2009-11-16T13:45:00.002+01:00

Autodesk has released what they call the Subscription Advantage Pack. You can download it via the website or just by going to your subscription center in Revit (as long as you have a subscription).

To check out the advantages, watch this video.

What I really like is the way the Modify-tools stay available even when you are already modifying.

So, for example, I select an object and click on move. - Damn, I wanted to copy, not move. - Up until now I had to escape out, reselect the object and start again.

That is now no longer neccessary as the copy-tool is still available, even after I have already started the move command. Nice, especially if you have selected numerous objects.

New Sections Not Visible

2009-11-05T11:17:00.000+01:00

Earlier today we ran into the problem that when creating a section in one plan view, it would not be visible in another plan view, not even as a hidden object.

Turns out that Revit seems to assume that when you create a section in a view with a certain scale (1:100 for example), that this section should only be represented in views with a scale smaller than that.

In other words: Revit automatically sets the Hide at scales coarser than - property to whatever scale the view is you created the section in:

And if you are working in views with different scales, this can lead to a lot of confusion.

So, next time you are missing a section symbol in a plan view, check this setting first.

Rotating View

2009-11-04T09:54:00.001+01:00

We are currently working on a fairly complex design with walls going in many different directions. To keep walls parallel is a challenge:

Things would be soooo much easier if I just could rotate the view so that the important outside wall is horizontal. So Google, here I come...

And, hey, there is a way! And it is rather simple:

Make sure the view is aligned to Project North
Disply the Crop Region
Select the Crop Region
Rotate the Crop Region

Your view will be rotated along with the Crop Region.

Simple but effective, as Revit will now not only align to parallel or perpendicular lines but also to the horizontal and vertical.

Best Practice: Constraints Pt. 2

2009-10-30T13:20:00.004+01:00

As mentioned before, using the constraint-tool can both help and hinder your designing process. So use with caution.

An interesting fact to keep in mind is the following: when you create a dimension line and turn on the constraint ("lock" the lock) that constraint will remain in place, even if you delete the dimension line. So when you move one end of the constraint, the other moves as well.

This happened to me with two levels that one of my colleagues locked together. A bit frustrating if you ask me.

But the easy way out is: simply create a new dimension line! When you select it, the lock will appear and be locked, showing that there is a restrained relationship between levels. Simply open the lock and things are back the way they should be.

Worksharing Monitor

2009-10-23T14:58:00.000+02:00

Working together on a project can really speed up the drafting process.

To avoid complications, Revit has some built in safety-features, like forbidding other users to edit objects that you are working on. To keep track of this, I (and everyone else here) uses the Worksharing Monitor from Autodesk:

You can download it as part of your subscription directly from Autodesk.

It'll tell you whenever someone is saving to central, needs to edit something borrowed by you, and a lot of other things, by popping up a small info-screen on the bottom right. Informative and unobstrusive.

Memory Problems

2009-10-16T16:28:00.000+02:00

We have been working on a biggish project (central file of around 90MB) and I have been experiencing memory issues. The worksharing monitor keeps telling me that my virtual memory is too low.

So after some searching I found an excellent post on the AUGI-forums by hypnox1. I'll shamelessly copy and paste one of the most interesting passages, as it deals directly with my problems and the post is a bit on the lengthy side:

1.Confirm you are on the latest build/update: Check the communications center of Revit to see if you are on the latest build. In 2010 it looks like the little satellite in the upper right area. It's in the lower right in 2009.

2.Purge the File: In Revit 2009: File => Purge Unused, in Revit 2010: Manage tab => Project Settings panel => Purge Unused

3.Audit the File: You can only audit the file when you open it. When opening the file there is a checkbox for Audit.

4.Compact the File: In Revit 2009: File => Save to Central => check the box at the top of the Save to Central dialog for Compact Central File, In Revit 2010: Collaborate tab => Synchronize panel => Synchronize with Central => check the box for Compact Central File)

5.Create a new Central File: If you are working in a work shared file, try opening your local file "detached from central". This gives you a new, unnamed central file. Save that to your network and have everyone on the project make new local files from that new central file. Note: before you do this make sure everyone has saved all their changes to the central file and that they are not actively working on the project as their local files will not be able to be synchronized with the new central file you are creating. This is best done on the weekend or when no one is in the office or working on the file.

6.Create a new Local File: My recommendation is to make a new local file every single day. If you are not currently do that we would recommend that you do so.

7.Hard Drive Space: Check available free space on your hard drive. To do this simply right click on your C:\ drive and go to Properties and see how much free space you have. If you are nearly out of hard drive space you'll have to delete files to free up more space.

8.Review Errors/Warning in the File: Your goal should be to have 0 errors/warnings in your Revit file. You may not be able to get the errors/warnings down to 0 but you essentially want as few as possible. In Revit 2009: Tools => Review Warnings, in Revit 2010: Modify tab => Inquiry panel => Warnings.

9.Defrag Your Hard Drives: XP computers: Start => Programs => System Tools => Defrag. Vista computers: Start => All Programs => Accessories => System Tools => Defrag

I'll go and work my way through these tips during the weekend, as I'll have unrestricted access to the central file then. I'll report my findings in the next post.

Percentage vs. Graded Angle

2009-10-13T14:50:00.000+02:00

I have been trying to create a ramp for cars, leading from the ground floor to the parking level and I have come across yet another cool feature.

This is what I was going for:

So I drew a floor and made one of the short edges define a slope:

Easy.

Now, since I knew the length of the ramp and the height I would normally dredge up my high-school math and find that in a triangle with a right angle I get the angle I need by taking the invertet tangent from the result of dividing the height by the length.

Or, and that's the nice part, I can simply divide the height by the length and type in the percentage I get!

And Revit will calculate the graded angle for me. Nice!

2009 GUI in 2010 Revit

2009-10-08T12:01:00.002+02:00

While (almost) everyone was complaining about the new GUI in Revit 2010 in the beginning, acceptance seems to have set in.

If, however, you still don't like it and want you old 2009 GUI back, read this article from Autodesk. There you can donwload a workaround to get the 2009 GUI back for your new Revit.

But be careful, there will be no support for this or any other guarantee, that it will even work. So, try at your own risk!

Importing Large dwg-Files

2009-10-05T09:54:00.001+02:00

Importing large dwg-files can be problematic:

When your project becomes larger than 2 miles (around 3.2km) across, Revit will run into trouble due to inaccuracies that can occur so far away from zero. In the past, all you got was a warning, but with 2010, Revit just tells you no.

But what about large masterplans that you want to use to place your project? Apart from opening them in AutoCAD, deleting everything around the site and resaving it?

Well, here's one way:

Instead of letting Revit choose the Import Units, select Custom and give it a manual number. In this case I am telling Revit that one unit in the dwg is one unit in Revit.

This is strictly speaking not true, as one unit in the dwg is one meter, whereas one unit in Revit is one mm. But hey.

I then go ahead and resize the dwg to the size I need, using the Ribbon > Modify dwg > Scale command after selecting the dwg. Even though the project is now bigger than 2 miles, I get no error.

Revit Update 2

2009-10-05T08:24:00.000+02:00

There has been another update published for Revit. Please follow this link:

Autodesk Revit Architecture Update 2

It looks like it's mainly a stability improvement, but for me, that's an important issue (see my post from a few days ago.)

Anyway, go forth and install.

New Look

2009-10-02T22:48:00.002+02:00

As you can see, I have changed the look of my blog into something a bit more "architecture". Or whatever.

Let's see how long this one lasts, as I think that it's waaaaay too easy to change the layout. I just can't stop myself.

Copy / Paste Views

2009-09-21T09:51:00.002+02:00

Just another quick one. I found out that you can copy/paste camera's from one project to another. Just show the camera in the view you are in, select it and press +. Switch over to the other project and in Ribbon > Modify > Paste Aligned select Current View (when you are in a 2D-view).

Comes in handy when you are working two options on a project and are using two separate files. (Yes, I could have used the options-tools, but the difference between the two versions was just too big and too involved.)

Set Camera Focal Length

2009-09-21T09:41:00.003+02:00

Ever tried putting a 3D-view of your building onto a sheet and ending up with something like this?
The vertical lines converge somewhere off screen and the whole thing looks very strange.

This has to do with the focal width of the lens. The closer you get to an object, the more distorted the image becomes.

When you move away from the object, the vertical lines become (almost) vertical again. Only... it's a bit small, isn't it?
This is where the focal length of the camera comes into play. Click F8 to open the wheel, click on the littel arrow on the bottom right and select Increase/Decrease Focal Length.
You'll get the ability to "zoom in" without adding the distortion effect:
Now you can make the view as big as you neet on your sheet and still have it look nice.

This method does not allow you to accurately set the focal length of the camera. But then, this is a visual thing anyway and you're much more likely to "play around" until you like the result than enter a fixed length into some parameter field or other. At least, I am.

Crash and Burn

2009-09-18T16:11:00.003+02:00

What a day. I think Revit crashed about 10 times on me within 2 hours. It did not loke me to touch one particular wall that I wanted to shorten. The wall in question was joined to a perpendicular wall on the other side of the hallway, and I wanted to clear that way, because the fire-door I had previously placed here was no longer necessary.

I finally got around the regular crashes by first disallowing the joining (select wall > find the handle at the end of the wall > right click on that handle > select disallow join) of the two walls and then shortening the wall.

Phew. I do not want to be the one support guy reading all my e-mails I sent to Autodesk via the automatic crash report function...

Temporary Walls

2009-09-15T10:21:00.006+02:00

For a project we needed a way to add optional walls into our drawing.

This is what we came up with:

How? Well, we used the phasing feature of Revit, where you can determine at what point in time a part of the building is constructed and/or demolished.

Ribbon > Modify > Phasing:

In the Project Phases tab I added a point in time "optional" before the actual construction time.

In the Graphic Override tab I changed the view-overrides of Existing to the dashed lines I wanted. (And for explanatory purposes I also set the Demolished lines to the same pattern)

I then went to the Instance Properties of the walls in question and set the Phase Created to "Optional".

You can then set the Phase Demolished either to "None" or to your construction time, with the following results:
The connection with the other walls is better when the wall is not demolished.
But on the other hand, rooms are cut off by this wall.

There may be other ways of doing all this, but for us, this provided the quickest and cleanest solution to the problem.

Hotfix for Revit

2009-09-15T08:57:00.002+02:00

After encountering a few crashes while modifying walls (actually, trying to attach a wall to another wall, resulting in a conflict with a placed window), I sent a report to Autodesk. Turns out there is a hotfix for this.

Just in case you didn't know, here is the download page:

Autodesk Website - Download Area

This was published in August, but I figure, better late than never.

Stairs With 3 Flights

2009-09-08T13:38:00.004+02:00

Stairs: Those things that make it possible to reach another floor in a building.

A Flight Of Stairs: An uninterrupted set of stairs.

Stairs With 3 Flights: Does not exist! (at least, according to Revit 2010)

Well, but in the real world, these things do exist. So how to make them?

My first try of drawing three runs and them moving them on top of each other resulted in this:
Interesting stringer there.

On my second attempt I used the same technique, but did not align the 1st and 3rd flight on top of each other:
Still not what I wanted.

So after some more try and error I came up with this:
Success!

How did I do this?

Well, as you can see, these are essentially two stairs instead of one, the second one being placed with an offset from the ground floor:Since I wanted the two landings to be part of the stair I cut the second landing in half and attached the two halfs to the two stairs.

And finally, to clean up the stringer and the railings, I made set the slopes of the flat pieces manually to flat:
Select railing > Edit path > select the flat piece > in the drop-down-menu for Slope select Flat.

And here we go!

Calculate Distances

2009-08-31T16:12:00.001+02:00

Just a short one.

When drawing / moving / changing things using the temporary measurements in Revit, you have the option to insert a calculation instead of a number. Just start your input with an equal-sign '=' :
This way you don't need to search for your own calculator under the piles of paper on your desk. And it even knows to multiply before adding.

Revit 2010 - Online Help

2009-08-31T13:25:00.005+02:00

There is an online version of the Revit 2010 help files:

I tried it in Firefox 3.5.2:
Even though there are a few layout problems, the rest works.

I just wonder why, since when I need the help I am usually using the program anyway and I thus have access to the local help file. No internet needed.

Temporary Dimension - Change the Text Size

2009-08-31T11:59:00.004+02:00

I use the temporary measure tool quite a lot, especially when working on projects other people have started and/or are working on. But I sometimes have a har time reading the result, as the text is pretty small:
Well, after a quick search online, I found the solution at the Revit Clinic:

Close Revit
Locate the Revit.ini file under C:\Program Files\Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010\Program (or whereever you have installed Revit)
Open it in Notepad (or similar)
Locate the [Graphics] section
Add the following parameter into a new line: TempDimFontSizeInPoints = X (X being the font-size in points)
Save and close
Open Revit

Here is the result. (For illustration, I set the size to 20.)

Central Files - Opening

2009-08-28T16:26:00.005+02:00

Working with Central Files has advantages when working in a group. But you also have to be careful with what you do.

One of the things you should get used to is opening the central file from the server every morning. To do this, do not go to the server directly to double-click the file!

Instead open Revit and click open:

Go then to your central file and open it, making certain to have the Create New Local option ticked. (Should happen automatically, but hey, you never know.

Now you will get a fresh copy of the central file, including all changes that have happened since you were away.

Blue Level Symbols

2009-08-19T09:17:00.004+02:00

OK, so here's something I stumbled upon. I've been editing the annotation symbols for the levels that you get in the section. (just one straight line with the height on top and the name of the level below) I apply them and get this:
As you can see, one of the lines is blue, the other black. They are supposed to be black as all the settings (Visibility Graphics, Object Styles, Line Styles, etc) are turned to black.

It seems that Revit will turn Annotation Symbols for levels that are attached to a level view to blue automaticaly. Nothing I have done can change that.

A bit of a bummer, as we print in color and I don't really fancy the blue.

Wall Assembly

2009-07-30T12:14:00.002+02:00

Open the wall assembly dialog (Select a wall -> Type Properties -> Structure : Edit)
This is what you get. Here you can add and remove wall layers, attach materials to them, define the thickness and tell them to wrap (or not).

A few interesting things to keep in mind:

Anything between the 'Core Boundary' lines is supposed to be the supporting structure of the wall (like concrete, bricks, etc). Nothing else should be in here.
The materials used here define how the model looks in 3D but they can also be used to calculate costs etc. Use them wisely.
The function-filed has 5 different functions, or rather levels (the numbers in the [] ). The lower this number the higher the priority of this part of the wall when connecting with other walls. For example in a corner, a level 1 will always have priority over a level 2. When you have the same level in both walls, you can choose how the corner/intersection looks like.

Things Are What They Are

2009-07-30T09:18:00.002+02:00

If you are new to Revit, coming from a 2D / 2.5D application (like AutoCAD or Arc+), please remember:

In Revit, Things Are What They Are!

What I am trying to say: a wall in Revit is a wall, and not two parallel lines I can use as a floor in a section view. If I want a floor in a section view, I draw a floor.

Revit Publication

2009-07-15T13:21:00.003+02:00

Being a member of the AUGI, I stumbled on this interesting publication (click image for site):

Quote from the site:

AUGI | AEC EDGE is an exciting new print and digital publication designed to enable architects, engineers, designers, and builders using Autodesk AEC products to be more productive, better informed and help keep them at the top of their game.

I browsed through it and found it quite informative. See for yourself. It's free! :)