The Legitimacy of Data Back-up?

Question One:
Why do we need to worry about running a back-up against the data stored on a Revit Central Server?

So this will perhaps seem like heresy to IT professionals the world round, and perhaps even to anyone who knows something about IT, or has lost work/data/files due to some type of hardware failure.

Question Two:
When was the last time that you recovered an active Revit file from a back-up?


Myself, never, and thats the point! Back-ups run at night, so unless your server fails right after the back-up has run, what use is it? Every user who is regularly working on a project should have a Local File on their computer. Furthermore Revit Server itself tells you who the last person was to complete a Sync With Central. Unless your entire office undergoes a disaster, then the "last" Local is the file you're likely to use to re-create your Central File if something goes wrong with Revit Server. If your entire office does under-go some type of disaster that affects every single computer, then it does not seem likely that you're going to be too worried about getting back to work right away.

Consider this instead, you're probably better off regularly archiving your Central File either manually or automatically (thanks to the API and additional Command Line options available in Revit Server 2012). If you are working in Revit Server, you are probably already creating files that you can count as archives if you have to send your Revit file to any consultants not working on your WAN. To send a file to consultants you likely either create a new local file, or use an existing Local File to send, those files can easily be stored on a normal File Server in an archive directory (which is probably backed-up every night), so that when disaster does strike, you at least have your archives.

Error Correction: Tagging in 3D Views

I will correct the original post, but I wanted to clarify, all Keynoting Features are available for usin 3D views, including tagging materials by Keynote. I was correct about not being able to tag materials directly, and what I didn't point is that you cannot tag Rooms/Spaces/Areas, but then we can't see them in 3D either.... :-(

Thanks to my friends at Autodesk for pointing out my mistake.

AEC Media Day: Update 3 - Sustainable Design

The "rumor" I just heard from the latest speaker is that Revit 2012 will include the Solar Analysis tool that had previously been an Autodesk Lab's plug-in, and then was rolled into Project Vasari late last year with its release.

Autodesk is also pushing sustainable design and that they have products that match all levels of design. I think the one caveat to that is that the wonderful narrative they just spun relied on several (more then three) tech previews on Autodesk Labs..... I don't know about you, but most companies don't like to use products that have "expiration dates" with no guarantee of renewal on projects that may continue longer then the life of the "product", or at the very least we need to access the data later.

Another important note, Autodesk is re-packaging their software into Suites (similar to Office or Adobe), all well and good, and it will be great for small and medium business. What I think is really, really cool, is that Sketchbook Pro is included in all the suites. Why is this important you ask? Well prior to the 2012 release Sketchbook was always a stand-alone license and if you were in a large network environment that was problematic at best. Now with the suites, if you buy network license versions Sketchbook is part of that network license pool, which is great! Now you can make it available to anyone to play with, use or do whatever they want!

ADSK Media Day: Revit 2012 - Tagging 3D Views

So, Autodesk was kind enough to invite me again to Media Day. The highlights for me being that I can blog more about 2012, renew aquatenance and connections, and maybe have some side conversations whose content can't be shared. :-)

Today's agenda looks interesting, I'll get to learn some more about this whole "suite" thing and it looks like some interesting outside speakers will be talking about what they've been doing with Autodesk tools.

In any case, chatting last night a topic came to mind about Revit 2012.

Per other bloggers you should already know that you can now "lock" a 3D view to help prevent accidental changes to the point of view such that the view can be placed in a document set and you know it (hopefully) won't change. I say hopefully because someone can still choose to unlock the view and manipulate it. The other really critical part is that you can now create "Tags" in 3D views (note this does not include perspectives) rather then just text. Combined with the lock functionality this allows you to have a consistent "2D" 3D view to put into a document set.

So we're all excited about consistent 3D views we can annotate, right (I know I am)!! The important caveat, at this time, particularly for Architects, is that you cannot use Keynotes in the 3D view and you cannot tag Materials or Rooms/Areas/Spaces (still not visible in 3D). This limitation is a bit disappointing particularly as it brings to mind last year's release where we could tag across links, but could not tag Rooms, Areas, Spaces, Beam Systems & Keynotes. The good news though is that all of that was fixed in this year's release, so hopefully next year the limitations of tagging in 3D views will be addressed. Before grumbling too much about these limitations, I think it is also important to note (or be aware of) the business case that drove this tool into the product. While it is considered a "platform" enhancement much of the dev was driven from the MEP side, particularly because they need "riser diagrams" (yes architects have been asking for tagging in 3D for years, but it was MEP that finally pushed it over the edge). So, in that that light, one can see where Materials and Keynotes took a "back seat" in terms of priority if the major concern is to show significant duct and pipe risers.

Of important note to architects, you may want to see my previous post about a "technique" for creating a camera callout in your plan views (huh, I wonder, why I was so concerned about calling out 3D views in December....).

When you have a hammer, everything is a nail.....

Ok, so not quite true, but one must ask the question, now that '12 supports placing Adaptive Components in project, what are we to do with them?

Well the first answer is, just about anything!!! Remember that AC's can have a single placement point (they don't need multiples) meaning that the family will behave very similar to placing any non-hosted family. I'll let Krista follow-up with a post on this brilliant work-flow, including my suggestion on how to "circumnavigate" the issue of limited category options for AC's.

On to the main subject of this post....

Since time eternal (or at least as long as I can remember) Revit has had a 1D array (ie, define a start point an end point and elements are arrayed between them). However in architecture there are certainly a number of occasions where a 2D array would be far more useful (ie create a "grid" of elements rather then a single row). Now this little technique will not solve all problems, but it may help with some, and inspire others.

My use case is this, we do a number of education facilities at our firm, which means classrooms, classrooms often means regulated "arrays" of chairs or desks, rows and rows of them in fact. So what if we could simple define the outside corners of where we want our furniture, the distance between each row and column, and let the computer do the rest, including dynamically updated if we change the size, interested!?

Enter adaptive components. The first step is to create an AC with a flat plain, that is actually a "void" (thus not visible as a piece of geometry). Each corner (however many you want) is of course an Adaptive Point. Once we have the Void Surface, we can divide it (clever tick huh?) so now we have a grid that we can control with parameters. Did I mention that we can also put the AC into the Furniture Category (kinda useful).



Now that we have our armature, we need some panels to go in our grid. Time for a new family, this time a Panel by Points family (also can be put into the Furniture Category). This family is a little more complicated, you could model your actual furniture here, but my suggestion is to load a family built from the standard template(s). The trick is locating the family in the panel. Here, I've created two sets of crossing reference lines that lock my tablet arm chair to the center of the panel. You could always look at doing an offset, or something else, but for the purposes of demonstration, I decided to keep it "simple".

Once you have your furniture panel, you can load it into your array family. Place the panel (of course you have multiple panels, and allow users to use a Type Parameter to switch one from another) into the divided surface, and now we have a 2D array of chairs. Once that is done, load the array family into your project and start placing.

As with just about anything that uses Adaptive Components, more CPU power is going to be your friend. Regen times can be high with Adaptive Components, though as long as the nested family is not too complex, you should not see anything to far out of the ballpark here.

When will 2012 arrive?

And when will this new release happen ....

Sometime in mid April.

The gag order is lifted!! Its 2012 Time!

Yep, that time of year again folks a new release is right around the corner! With any luck I'll have some follow-up posts but I'm working a on a project these days as the PA, so that has been keeping me a bit busy! I have to say I would love to get my active project into 2012 for a variety of reasons (most of which are listed below).

While I would not consider this year's release to be a blockuster, its still solid. As has been typical for the last couple of years Architects will mainly benefit from what are considered to be "platform" enhancements (because in reality they're useful to everyone) but I would say are mostly driven by Architecture customers. This year's release I would also say has a bent towards addressing issues that large projects (and therefore mostly large firms) have to deal with. Structural folks who are really interested in the analysis model, and looking for analysis packages to more easily talk to Revit (bi-directionally) should also be jazzed as much of Structure's enhancements revolve around completely rebuilding the analysis engine, for that they have the "Core Modeling" (conceptual massing environment) enhancements from '10 & '11 to thank.

Lastly '12 sees the release of new tool subset (currently only available in Architecture and Structure), we now have version 1 of "Construction Modeling" tools. While targeted as a toolset for contrators or design build shops working in Revit, I think that as these tools develop, they should prove quite useful for architects and engineers too.

Things that excite me about this year's release:

• Tagging Rooms, Spaces & Area across links.
• Tagging Keynotes across links.
• Revamp of "Graphics Display Options" dialog:
• Ambient Shadows print/export.
• Ambient Shadows in Hidden Line (really sweet....).
• Shadows in Consistent Colors (a little odd I know, but in line with traditional colored elevation techniques).
• Ghost Surfaces (the biggest complaint will be no way to adjust the level of ghosting, but still great for diagramtic views).
• Adaptive Components can be placed "in project"*
• Revamp of CAD export dialog, most importantly settings are stored in the project now, so no more custom export files, except to define specific standards to be used for different clients/jobs.
• Construction Modeling**:
• Parts - has great potential for panelized wall systems (a pet interest of mine).
• Assemblies - has lots of potential.
• Introduction of Workplane Viewer to the project environment (still needs some work, but plenty of potential)
• Worksharing Display (visualization of use of worksets):
• Similar to the Temp Hide/Isolate and Reveal Hidden Commands.
• Four modes: Checkout Status, Owners, Model Updates, Worksets
• Revit Server improvements:
• Cache files are cleaned up.
• Permission data is cleaned up.
• Admin console provides more detailed information about SWC's and Model Size versus Data Size.
• Compatible with 2008 R2 and VMware.
• Comprehensive API, including the ability to create new locals files with programming.
• Point Cloud integration: built using Autodesk's existing technology, also "version 1" but a good start and it has full API support, so software vendors specializing in Point Clouds will be able to build Revit Addins that take advantage of their technology and integrate with Revit.

* With great power comes great responsibility... Alas the number of categories that AC's can be in is rather limited, mostly out of concern of potentially "breaking" the software. With any hope that list will increase over the coming years.

** Remember this is version 1 of a whole new toolset. There are most definitely some limitations here but also a huge amount of potential in the long run. I'll be covering "Parts" to some extent in my RTC course this June.

Those are the things that most interest me. MEP as expected continues to see a great deal of development, but at this point I'm just not enough of an engineer to appreciate the improvements. As with any Revit release there are subtle fixes (bug or otherwise), background improvements that you'll never really "see" and plenty of small enhancements and features.

With any luck I'll be following up with a couple of posts on "practice" adaptive components, but alas one is "in  the shop" right now being looked at by the experts as it seems I've managed to break Revit (as usual).