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:

2D CAD sucks

I've recently been forced to work on an Autocad project out of neccessity (lack of staff). I have to say that after spending 12 hours attempting to somehow remeber what I'm doing in Autocad, it just plain sucks. I really truly beleive that moving to a non object based Computer Tool like 2D CAD was one of the worst things our industry ever did. We should've stuck with pen & paper until a tool like Revit or Archicad or Tri-Forma came along. At least when we were drafting on paper (or whatever) a person really thought about what it was they were going to represent when that line was drawn, because no one wanted to redraw. With 2D CAD we got the notion of "oh its easy to change". Well yes, its easier to change, but working in 2D CAD has I think also fostered a notion of "we don't really think about what is going on" Now, this is not to say that people don't think when working in CAD, but I think you also can't deny that these ideas do potentially prevade our profession in some form or another, at different levels of intensity. I simply cannot beleive how painful it is to manipulate "stuff" in 2D CAD versus an object modeler like Revit. I am so frustrated by this, I simply want to run from my office screaming....

Sorry this isn't much of an informational post, but I'm somewhat frustrated..

+/- offset(s) for families

So have you ever wanted to give users the ability to offset and object either plus or minus a certain distance from a constant reference point. Like maybe you have a custom curtain panel family that you want the user to be able to plug in 1' 0" to offset the panel forward one foot from the curtain wall centerline, or you want them to be able to put -6" into the same field and have the panel move backwards 6" away from the centerline. Well, here is the code and instructions:

1.) Create two reference planes, depending on what is important in your family they might represent the front face, back face or centerline of the panel/object. (For our demonstration we'll assume that we're using the front face.) Name one reference plane, "forward offset", name the other "front of panel". Make sure the forward offset ref plane is forward of the front of your constant (in this case the ref plane that is in the curtain panel template named "front"). Make sure the "front of panel" ref plane is behind your constant.

2.) Now create a dimension from your constant to the "forward offset" ref plane. Select the dimension and make it a parameter called "Offset Forward". Next create a dimension from the "forward offset" ref plane to the "front of panel" ref plane. Make this dimension a parameter and call it "Offset Back".

3.) Go into the Family Types dialog box. Create a new parameter called "Offset" set it be a length type of parameter. You can leave it at its default of 0' 0" or change it to some value, positive or negative.

4.) In the formula fields of our other two paremters enter this information:

Offset Forward - = if(Offset > 0', Offset, 0')
Offset Back - = if(Offset < 0', abs(Offset), 0')

That should be it, with the addition of the two formulas the offset will automatically go forward or back based on the positive or negative value entered into the "Offset" parameter. As long as I didn't screw up the order of the dimension strings to reference planes it will work just fine.

Too much to do in too little time: Linked file error message

Argh... I've been busy. After my last post I had a deadline on a 30,000 sq ft building, then there was Thanksgiving, AU then a deadline on a 100,000 lab/classroom building (all in Revit of course) oh and Christmas was in there too and New Years. What is cool is the classroom building was featured on the cover of McGraw Hill's latest research report:

Interoperability in the Construction Industry

If you care about our industry and why we use tools like Revit its a good and important read, check it out. I recently attended an AGC BIMForum committee meeting (as an architect) where Norbert Young delivered a keynote address regarding this report.

All that said, Revit stuff. Regard Steve's recent post about acquiring coordinates from another file. An error that I know we've run into here, and I imagine others too is the wonderful error message about "Can't save file X, as it will invalidate local copies of file Y, owned by user Z (you)" Now, no one I had talked to had ever really been able to explain this message, though A-Desk was able to say, don't worry about it. The question is, what does it really mean? Well thanks to having the ability to see what users are working in a central file, I think I have an explanation.

First we'll lay out the conditions. You have a central file for your building (worksharing enabled), of course this means you have local copies of the central file on your computer. You also have a second revit file that is a site file which contains all of your topography and exterior elements. Within your building file you've created dimension strings that are attached to objects that exist in the site file that is linked into your building file. Your building central file is also linked into your site file (for reference). Your site file exists on the network with your central building file, and the site model is does not have worksharing enabled.

When you open your site file and work on it Revit sees you as a user working in the central file of the building. So this would be similar to if you opened up the central file directly and started working, rather then creating a local copy of the central file. Why you might ask do you show up as a user working in the central file, because of the links! Links in Revit have all sorts of associations and relationships, shared coordinates being the most obvious, but also being able to schedule objects across links, creating dimensions, align/locks, workplanes based families, etc... So, in affect you're a quasi local user when operating in linked files that have worksharing. In fact, you have to be in order for shared coordinates to work, as when you publish shared coordinates to another file you have to be able to write data to the file you're publishing to. If the file being published to is workshared.... well you get the picture.

So now, back to the error message. We've now established that user Z is working in the site model, but is also seen as a user working in the Building Central file. User Z has a local copy of the building Central file on their computer. Except user Z isn't working in the local copy, Revit sees them as working in the central file.

Time out again; lets go back to another error message that everyone is probably familiar with. "If you do not save current changes in the central file to your local file, you won't be able to save any new changes in the local file to the central file". This basically says that if you don't save all the changes from the central file to your local file, the two will be out of sync, thus invalidating your local file. This is Revit's way of protecting the integrity of the database, your local copy of the database always has to be in sync with the server copy.

Time in;

You've made a change in your site model, that for whatever reason Revit is convinced affects the building file, maybe you moved a bollard in the site file, that has a dimension string in the building file, who knows, either way, Revit being a giant database, it wants to rectify that change in the building file when you go to save your site file. So, in essence, when you hit save in your site file, you're doing a Save To Central on the Building File! (At this point you've either understood everything I've written, or you're saying waiiiit! What? an STC that isn't a real STC?). So, now here is the catch, when you hit save in the site file, and kick off the STC to the Building Central file, you don't really have a local file you're saving from, but Revit is smart, and it says wait, you do have a local file on this computer, and if I let you make changes via the site file to the central file, the central file and your local file won't match up anymore, therefore, you're local file will now be invalidated (per the other error message previously discussed). Since you don't have the local file open, there is no way for Revit to save the changes and rectify everything across all the files, therefore you get the error message.

The nice thing about this whole issue is that it really isn't that big of a deal. You're not prevented from saving the changes to the site model, and all you have to do is close it, open your local file, reload the site file, and then STC and everything should be kosher. I will say that this is all based on assumption and a little detective work (and the ability to see who Revit thinks is working in a central file). I'm can't say that I'm 100% right, and you're more then welcome to poke holes in my theory, but I think the overall logic is pretty solid, even if I might be off on some of the details.

Early voting results in

Early voting results for AU Unplugged have been released on the BLAUG.

I'm pleased to say that my proposed session is in the list. If you haven't please check-out my session and the AU Unplugged wiki in general:

My Session

Wiki

AU "Unplugged"

AU unplugged has gone official with a real website. Check it out.

http://au.centraldesktop.com/auunplugged/FrontPage

Interesting Note on importing View & a bit of non-Revitness

Pause in Revitness;

Whohooo! The Sox clinched the divsion and so did the Phillies! Now as long as the Boston wins the series, and the Phillies loose the league, I won't have any conflicts of interest, ;)

Pause over.

I went to load some schedules from a previous file into a new file and learned something interesting. It would seem that when you click on that wonderful option to insert views (File menu-->Insert From File-->Views). You're actually opening that whole file in memory on your local machine. Some (like me) may have thought Revit simply had a nifty way of querying other Revit files for their views. That is not the case it would seem, the reason I'm thinking that the whole file is being opened, is because of the message I received. When I selected my file, and hit Open, after it had loaded up, I got a message "Instance of Linked file needs coordination review", what!?.. The file I was working in, doesn't have any linked Revit files, and certainly none that need review, but I know for the fact that the file I wanted to grab views from does have links, and they do need review. Why does this matter? If the entire file that you want to take views from is being opened, that means what you're doing is no different, then if you went to the open command. So the question you should ask yourself, given your computer's hardware specs, when you go to get those views from a file, would you typically open both that file, and the file you're working in at the same time? Something to consider, especially if you dealing with large files. An alternative to transfer views and such, would be to create a new empty file, transfer the views you need into that file, then transfer from the new file to the file that needs the views, thus reducing the load on your computer.

UPDATE:

So, not only does Revit open the entire file in the background (when doing "insert views") the file apparently remains in memory (for how long I don't know yet). I managed to figure this out because I went to do a "transfer project standards" and to my suprise, the file that I had inserted views from, was in the list! And, as you may also know already any files that are linked into a file, were also in the list! This means that you should definently use the Insert from File command carefully, and under strict conditions, or you may be running with a much heavier Revit then anticpated.

AU "Unplugged"

You may have heard of the "un-conference", well the organizers at AU have decided to do something similiar. (Though I question how "random" and "spur of the moment" it will be with it being so "organized"). Editorials aside, essentially AU Unplugged will provide for small dicussion groups focused around user driven topics. I've submitted a topic inspired by a recent post on AUGI under the "AU class wishlist thread" in the Revit community. I'm suggusting a discussion on best practices for core template & content development, and distribution to the rest of your firm. Vote for me! :).

You can find out more here:

http://au.autodesk.com/2007/blogs/view/AU_Unplugged_is_Ready/

Cheers,
-R

Follow-up to Type Catalogs

Justin had a question comment, and I'll try to respond. I've posted two screen shots, one of the type catalog in Excel, and another of the family types dialog box from a related family (in this case lab casework). You can see in the Revit screen shot the parameter "Rear Panel Access" essentially we want to be able to turn this on or off, as any cabinent can include an access panel, but they don't have to.
So rather then having two different familys, we use a "Yes/No" to control the visibility of some symbolic lines, and also fill in a shared parameter than can be scheduled to indicate if an access panel is required. (make sure to click on the images to get the full size image to see the details).

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Had a problem today, where a user simply could not successfully move an element "down" (screen direction, in plan). They could move it side to side without a problem. In this case the element to be moved was a linked file, however as far as Revit is concerned, in some ways a linked file is just single large object/group. Having no success in figuring out what to do, I defaulted to my old standby trick to break any sort of constraint; "cut" (cntrl+x). The cut command has the wonderful ability to keep everything on your clipboard, but all relationships or constraints between the object you cut, and the rest of your model are completely broken. With a quick "paste aligned; same place" (under the edit menu) we were able to place the cut object back in the same exact spot, then move it down the 8" required. How the linked file originally got out of place we don't know (I highly reccomend pinning cirtical elements like links, grids, levels).

This trick of cutting, and pasting back to the same place is also effective on sketch lines or other objects that like to automatically establish relationships with other objects. On more then one occasions I've had to cut and paste the sketch lines of either a floor or ceiling in order to prevent the floor or ceiling from attempting to adapt to changes in wall configurations.

Type Catalogs

As some of you might be aware, when creating Revit families you can also author a type catalog to go with your family. Type Catalogs are extremely useful if you are going to have any sort of parametric family that is going to have many types. My general rule of thumb is if you need six or more types, then you need a catalog (I confess that I learned this from someone else somewhere along the way, JB, PR & others). If you want to know how to format your own basic type catalog in Revit just go the Revit Help and do a search for "Type Catalog", I promise you'll find something. In any case, while the help instructions get you started, they don't really cover everything in detail. For instance, it spells out the basic "unit" types allowed, but in their own example you can an "other" column created, which allows them to assign text strings to the "Model" parameter of their example. What I've been working on required the use of "Yes/No" parameters in the family type, furthermore, I wanted to specify the condition of the "Yes/No" in my catalog. I started with the other, and assuming that Revit simply would interpert text, I inserted Yes or No. Needless to say (otherwise I wouldn't be writing, ;) ) it wasn't that simple. When I went to load my 40 some odd types, I got 40 some odd warning messages referring to my Yes/No parameter.... hmmmmm. Well first, since Revit is always so case sensitive I changed all my "Yes" and "No"s to "yes" and "no", same problem... Then I sat back and said, hmmmmmmmmm, Revit is a computer program, and from working with Yes/No parameters in conditional formulas, I know that its really a binary switch (hang on there, I know I'm delving into compturese....), which really means, even though in a schedule Yes/No's show as "Yes" or "No" as far as the computer & Revit are concerned, its really, true or false and if its really true or false, that means its a "0" or "1", just like computer programming. Soooooo, I decided to put 0's and 1's into my Type Catalog. Bang!! It worked perfectly! My types came in without any warnings, and the Yes/No parameter was "thrown" correctly, ie Yes or No where needed. This little un-documented bit, really makes me wonder what other little things are hiding, hidden under the veil of more typical computer programming, rather then a more "user friendly" format.

Backups in my Journals! What!!!

So, a new feature that some people may not be aware of in Revit 2008 (supposedly its published somewhere, but I don't remeber reading it). I found this quite accidently when I was messing around with journal files for something else. In the journals folder I found all sorts of rfa and rvt files. At first I thought, maybe Revit creates a Revit file when it crashes and creates a dump file, however that didn't really make very much sense. An inquiry to my contacts at Autodesk revealed the truth. Revit now creates backup files under the journals directory in c:\program files\revit 2008\journals, these backup files are only created when you're working on a file located on a network share or drive. As you can see from my screen shot, I do a great deal of working on networked based files! I will add that this new behavior is not applied to files with worksharing enabled, so no worries about all sorts of duplicate copies of your local or central files being created. That said none of your families are going to have worksets, and in my expereince I'm always working with various experimental files that are not worksetted too, so you may want to keep an eye on this directory. My "problem" with this new behavior is further compounded because I use a piece of software called I-Share Mobliti, its a really great tool in that it essentially replicated (and manages) network resources to my local harddrive. Unlike other tools out there, this tool actually creates a virtual network, so as far as my computer is concerned, I'm always working on the network. This, however creates a problem for me, since my computer thinks I'm on the network, Revit thinks I'm on the network, thus creating all sorts of back-up files. At this time, there is no way to modiy this built in behavior, I wish there were some sort of tweak for the ini that would at least allow you to re-path the directory, however for the moment we're all stuck.

New Revit website

Following on Steve Stafford's post, and the fact that Ian left me a very kind comment as well. I've added Ian's new "Revit Zone" to my links list. Looks like the site could be quite helpful and so far very well done (nice looking graphics).

Cheers,
-R

Fun with VTF (Variable Thickness Floors)

So yes, undoubtedly we were all quite excited to see this feature (VTF - Variable Thickness Floors) enter Revit Architecture 2008 (development thanks to our structural friends). If you don't know or didn't realize, Revit '08's floor can now be set to slope or warp in multiple directions even though the floor is still essentially "flat", this is particularly useful for crickets, tapered insulation, warped/sloped concrete decks and parking garages. This is all well and good, but a use that may have not yet been considered would be to use VTF for creating site or topographic elements.

Huh!? you might say... Check it out... My current project we have this "courtyard" or "quad" that has significant change in elevation across it (about 5'-7'). The landscape architect's current design includes a couple of sloping paths and some stairs. In addition there are some manicured green lawns that are going to gently slope in one or two directions, all surrounded by masonry walls.

So I decided to create the paths and lawn areas all with VTF's. To start I created thin pads to cut into my topo surface so that I essentially had a hole in the ground for my in-fill.

I should add that the site file in this case is separate from the building file(s). So under all my buildings are 4" thick pads whose material is set to be "gravel". I used the same pad type under the courtyard, though that could change in the future...

Once my pads were set-up, I was able to create the walls, then the floor objects. Once the floors were in place I could start to use the new tools to adjust the properties of the floor's slope(s).

In this case I chose to have one layer that stays constant (2" thick) then another layer that has a minimum thickness (in this case 4") for a total minimum thickness of 6" for my "grass". Both layers in the floor type are set to the same material so that in sections it reads as a monolithic material.

I also used a second floor type for the "paved" path ways, one note of caution though, when you subdivide a floor object it becomes much more difficult to manipulate the hatch pattern. It appears that the align tool no longer works correctly. You are still able to use move and rotate to adjust the pattern. At this time on our project because the landscape architect will produce the final documents, the non matching tile pattern doesn't bother me much, but I can see where it would cause problems. I suspect that Accurender will have the same difficulty, so at some point, I will probably adjust the hatch patter, and will render with a simple surface material applied (no pattern) and then merge a Hidden Line image with the rendered image to get a paving pattern.

Once the floors were in place and set-up, I went back and did profile edits on the surrounding walls so that the tops of the walls taper with the slope of the adjoining "grass". Now I've got my courtyard in place in Revit, so that my elevations and sections start to read more correctly, and needless to say I think these results are better then what I would have been able to achieve by attempting to edit the topo surface. As of these images there is still some work to do, I need to put in some stairs, and make some other tweaks, add some flower beds, etc., but its a good start...

Wall Schedules

In case you didn't know. Wall schedules are smart when dealing with areas. If you add a window, the reported area for the wall will be reduced. Obvious really, but I don't trust anything until I've run my own tests...

Why do I care? Today I was working with our energy anaylis team, and they needed to know the ratio of opening(s) in our building to our total exterior envelope. Now of course Revit will happily spit out all sorts of numbers, but how do you know they're right? Hence the testing of wall schedule behavior. In the end we have at least three schedules to help us get the numbers to calculate the ratio. A wall schedule (making sure to exclude all walls except the exterior envelope), a curtain wall schedule and a window schedule (from which we're calculating area). With those three numbers we can then determine our ratio(s).

Partition (not wall) Types

So as most Revit users are aware, wall families in Revit can't really be seperated from the project file. Most people (I think) opt to put their firm's standard wall types into their project templates. However, being such a large firm we've opted for a slightly different approach. Because we service so many different market sectors, and have so many offices (up to 8 stateside, 3 international now) we've opted to keep our base project template simple and streamlined. To that end it contains only generic partition and wall types. More advanced (and approved) partition types are instead stored in a project file that is kept in our library. Projects can open the file, and either do a "Transfer Project Standards" or copy/paste the partition types they need. They can also bring over details, partition schedules, and general notes as needed. We plan to create similiar "library" project files for our major market sectors (like healthcare and Science & Technology) rather then creating multiple actual project templates, that all have to be updated when we make minor changes. In this process I've also learned that partitions is what we build inside, and walls go on the outside of a building. The screen shot below is from the partition type file, it is set up with 8 1/2" x 11" sheets so that we can print a partition standards booklet from the file for distribution or reference.

Not wanted... :(

So AU decided they didn't want me :(, I tried! They apparently didn't want a bunch of other people I know too, so I don't feel too bad. With any luck I will still attend AU this coming year, and I'm willing to help anyone out that needs assistance in presenting on Revit. I look at it this way, not having to prepare for AU frees me up to focus on my project work, moving things forward at my firm, and having a life on the side. If you are interested to hear what I have to say on BIM or Revit, drop me a line, I'm always insterested (and motivated) to speak on the subject(s).