Comment Moderation

Hi all,

I've had to enable comment moderation as apparently I must have used some "key" words in my most recent posts. I've had several spam comments I've had to remove. Therefore with moderation enabled there may be some delay on comments appearing on the blog after you've posted.

Thanks,
-R

Dimensions, you're reporting what? More Revit '09

So....

As any good Revit user knows, its will nigh impossible to make a dimension lie. Sure you can adjust the rounding value, and you can make the text super small (and write your own), but there was never way to just make that dimension string report and out right lie.

Well......, you still can't.



However! We've been given the next best thing. We can now insert text to replace the string value. On top of that, you can add more then a prefix or suffix, you can actually put text above or below (that is attached to the dimension string). Now I admit that Mental Ray is cool, and there are some other nifty improvements in a variety of areas. But if you asked me, and there was one thing out of 2009 that I wanted to hold on to, well this would be pretty high on my list!



More after the pics (BTW, let me know if these are illegible...)






















So you might look at these images and say, well in that text field, why can't I just type; 3' - 10". Well, because the developers have been extremely clever. They've coded that dialog box so well, that you can't fake it out. You can try every combination you can think of, and it just won't work (the rumor mill says they had fun testing this one in house). The only way to make it say; 3' 10" is to type "three foot ten inches", which somehow, I don't think is quite what we want. What is particlary nice is, if you're like me, you can insert "Varies" or when doing stairs/landings, you can easily include "clear" below, and or list rise/run strings, rather then (or in addition to) numerical values.

Now that Steve is making me look bad, I might have to start doing some videos too... That guy, always keeping me on my toes ;). Don't expect to hear my voice though, I settle for demonstrative & my typing.

Cheers,
-R

Warning, Warning - Revit 2009

Another neat little new feature of 2009 that they've snuck in is some upgrades to the warning's dialog box. You can now export the Review Warnings dialog as an html file for review later, or as you address the warnings in your model. The other really neat new feature is the "Warning Button" that now becomes available in the Options Bar if you select an element that has a warning attached to it. In my simple example I've copy/pasted a wall on top of itself in the same place, resulting in a warning about walls overlapping, and how I should use the cut geometry tool, etc... When I select one of the walls, the new button pops up, clicking it results in the warning dialog appearing with the warning(s) specific to your selected element.

Revit 2009 - new feature

So while most people will probably be really excited by the new rendering engine in Revit 2009 (congrats to the Factory BTW). There are lots of other small things that got added. One thing that I stumbled upon, which I don't recall being documented (yet), is a new control handle for wall's who have had their join condition dis-allowed. What is supposed to be particulary useful about this feature is that it is available on wall join conditions that previously we couldn't edit, for instance when you edit the profile of wall, or use the opening tool to create an opening. In either condition there are never any blue circle handles with which to manipulate the wall (makes sense right), thus you couldn't right click to disallow the join. Now, with the new feature you can disallow the join. What is particulary nice is the control becomes available on any wall normal wall end when you disallow the join. This helps to serve as a graphical reminder that a wall join has been dissallowed, when a user says "hey, why isn't this wall join working!"

See the images for more detail: