Cropped and Nowhere to Go!

A subtle twist of the new Rooms in Revit Building 9 is that the tags for rooms will not show up when the crop region of a view does not intersect the room.

If you recall in the past a room tag would linger off in space outside a crop region when you set up a partial plan etc. Then you'd have to delete those orphans. Now they just disappear from view automatically. The exception to this is irregular shaped rooms that still cross over the crop region's boundary.

BEFORE CROPPING:

AFTER CROPPING:

Need an Excuse to go to Australia?

Any Revit user/fan that needs an excuse to visit Australia now has a great one. To mix Revit and travel you just need to attend the Revit User Conference. It runs from October 26, 2006 through October 29, 2006. Check it out!!

Here's a reprint of the schedule as it appears on the conference web site.

Day 1 Thursday, October 26
9:00am Setup
1:00pm Introduction to Revit Building 9
2:50pm Introduction to Revit Systems 1
4:40pm Introduction to Revit Structure 3
7:30pm BBQ - meet and greet

Day 2 Friday, October 27
7:00am Breakfast
9:30am Welcome and Intro
10:30am Morning Tea
11:00am Keynote
12:30pm Lunch
1:30pm Modelling - Basics - Modelling - Advanced
3:00pm Afternoon Tea
3:30pm Families - Basics - Families - Advanced
7:30pm Dinner

Day 3 Saturday, October 28
7:00am Breakfast
9:00am Documentation - Basics -Documentation - Advanced
10:30am Morning Tea
11:00am Classroom 1 - Linking, Worksets, Shared co-ordinates
Classroom 2 - Phasing, Massing
Classroom 3 - Design Options, Scheduling, Workplanes
12:30pm Lunch
1:30pm Rendering - 3rd Party rendering
3:00pm Afternoon Tea
3:30pm Best Practices
5:00pm Gala Dinner

Day 4 Sunday, October 29
7:00am Breakfast

Units Units Units! Unit Plans?

Autodesk Revit is inquiring about unit plan requirements. What do we do? Why do we do it? They have posted a short survey to respond to. You can supply your comments at the end of the survey.

Take the SURVEY if you care about UNIT PLANS!! Can you say improvements to Groups? Let's hope they come up with something great!

A Flat Slope?

When working with stairs or railings there is a parameter associated with the sketch lines that define them. It is called SLOPE. There are three settings: AUTO DETECT, FLAT and SLOPED. Keep in mind that only the BOUNDARY sketch linetype has this parameter. The others are RUN and RISER, they don't. There is no special name for railing sketch lines, just called LINES. They also have the parameter.


Typically the setting AUTO DETECT is sufficient. When you need to create stairs that are a little less than simple you will find these play a much larger role. Take a look at this image where we'd like to end the stair at the landing.

Now the trick to ending like this in the first place is to use a RISER not a BOUNDARY sketch line at the end.

This stair has been told not to end with a riser yet the stringer at the inside corner is desperately trying to slope, and SUCCEEDING! Also the stringer at the far end of the landing and its railing are both too high. The stair and railing sketches just need a little SLOPE attitude adjustment.

Setting them specifically to FLAT lets them behave. To apply this change you must be in SKETCH MODE to select each line segment. When one segment is selected you can alter the parameter. You cannot apply this change to multiple segments, it would be nice if we could.


So this is the result!

I should also mention that when you make a stair Revit will automatically create a railing, if you let it. As long as you never edit the sketch of the railing Revit will keep track of it. As soon as you edit the sketch for the railing Revit hands over the responsibility for the integrity of the railing sketch to you, preferring to avoid making a change to it that you may not have wanted.

Till next time here's a few parting images! Cheers!





I recently recorded a VIDEO to describe this too. You can listen and sort of watch here.

Revit on the Rocks!

Rather...Revit Rocks!! Yet another Revit blog joins the fray. Daryl, the man who brings you DGCad and Revit tutorial videos has started a blog. Check it out!

Text Settings

One thing I've always wondered about...why isn't there a Settings menu selection for Text Styles?? Nearly every other project setting does yet text doesn't...seems unfair to me.

To manage text styles without this you have to either start the Text command or edit existing text objects to modify or create a new text style. I guess we don't have to make text styles very often? Is that the assumption perhaps? Still seems unfair!!

If I were elected President I'd make sure Text gets a fair shake!!

(that and fix the elevation TAG!)

Workset Visibility in Linked Files

We don't have discreet control over workset visibility in linked files on a view by view basis yet (not in RB9 either). We DO have the option to specify what worksets shall be linked in when we import the file initially, project wide mind you. When you use File > Import/Link > Rvt choose Specify.

Revit will offer you the Workset dialog to choose which worksets to open or close.

When we need to change these settings we have to use File > Manage Links > then choose Reload From

Now specify which worksets you need again.

Rooms in Revit Building 9

One of the first things you may stumble a bit with Revit Building 9 is Rooms. They are now an actual element like a Wall, Door or Window, you place a Room and tag them. The tags no longer define a room. They are just like a door tag, displaying important information only.

The Area Analysis tab on the design bar has become the Room and Area Tab.
You'll find separate commands for Room and Room Tag under the Drafting menu. On the Basics design bar tab you'll find the Room command. The Room Tag command is found on the Drafting design bar tab.

You can now tag a room in section views. You cannot place a room in section nor select it however. You CAN select a room in a schedule, then choose Show from the options bar now.

There is a new Room Model Object category in Visibility/Graphic Overrides and three sub-categories. The Room category is off by default in section and elevation views.
Color Fill governs the display of any color fill applied to the view. It doesn't affect the legend. Interior Fill turns on the system controlled light blue fill that you see when you are placing rooms, tagging or selecting them. Reference displays the crosshair and drag grip that you see when you place, tag or select Rooms.

More about Rooms later. Be sure to take a look at the help topics for Rooms, they have been updated to describe their new behavior and features.

Revit Building 9 is Released and Shipping

Finally!!! Revit Building 9 has been officially released to the Web and is now shipping to subscription customers. Download it HERE. The main site for Revit Building is HERE.

Revit Structure 3 is also available for download now.

In the near future we also will see the release of the brand new Revit Systems 1, stay tuned.

Revit Em Portugal?

I've neglected to mention that there is a blog dedicated to those Revit users who speak Portuguese, Revit Em Portugal. Fernando hails from Leiria, Portugal and has been using Revit for quite some time now, perhaps longer than anyone in Portugal. He'd have to confirm that bit of speculation though. He started the blog in January and fortunately for me there are quite a few images to help me figure out what is going on. Yet another Revit blog to highlight my single language liability!

In addition to the blog he is host to a user bulletin board community similar to those listed on my links sidebar. It is called RevitPT. If Portuguese is your native tongue or your favorite second/third language do check it out.

A Little Help From My Revit

Okay...poor attempt to reuse a Beatles song title, or if you prefer Joe Cocker's cover of it...nevertheless here we go.

When you are browsing the help documentation using the search function, have you ever wondered where the subject you are interested in is actually located?

Next time you are using HELP (I need somebody!...sorry), check out the Index Tab

Typing your query will usually yield nearly the same results as the Search Tab. When you double click on an offering in the list a dialog box is offered if there are sub-topics.

After choosing the information to display, now click the Contents tab.

Notice the table of contents has expanded to show exactly where your subject of choice is located? Makes it a bit easier to study related information as well?

Have fun searching!

Automatic Sketch Dimensions

Did you know these are lurking in every family that you build? As soon as you add a parameter to a dimension Revit starts using them. Take a look at this simple sketch, just a Model Line drawn over the vertical Reference Plane called Center(Left/Right).

Nothing special to see eh? Just notice the direction of the line for later okay?

Now take a look at the same family with a parameter added to the angular dimension between the Model Line and the horizontal Reference Plane.Never seen them you say? Well you have to know when to look! Or at least how to turn them on! They are off by default typically. When you are editing a family, click the View menu, choose Visibility/Graphics and click the Annotation Categories tab to see where they are hiding.

So what are they doing? Revit uses them to infer intent once we start using parameters and labeled dimensions. If Revit does well, we get automatic behavior from our family with a minimum of effort. When it doesn't we get less predictable behavior. It is important to tell Revit what we want when this happens. Reviewing these Automatic Sketch Dimensions can help us decide what parameters we really need to add to eliminate any confusion.

A short search of Revit's help documentation will yield a nice graphical example of how these work. Try here>>

A subtle related issue is sketching lines directly on a Reference Plane. The first image showed the line drawn from the intersection of Reference Planes, up. This image shows the results of the parameter driven change.Reversing the direction of this line, drawing it from the top down toward the intersection yields better results perhaps?It is more reliable, or at least more predictable, to sketch lines, that are intended to be flexed with labeled angular dimension, away from Reference Planes entirely. Sketch them at an angle instead.

Revit Inside?

Recently an architectural firm interested in finding a structural firm using Revit Structure asked if there is a resource to connect with such firms. My reply, I don't think so. I talked with my friendly neighborhood Autodesk sales rep and he said that there isn't such a "list" as far as he knows.

So...I'm curious if anyone reading this might be interested in sharing such information so that other firms could find each other? I'm proposing that I could host a neutral web-based listing of firms that use one or more of the Revit applications. The list could be as simple as a firm name and web address or include more detailed information. A listed firm would be part of the Revit Inside list.

I've reserved the web address REVIT INSIDE just in case there is interest in making such a list happen.

Let me know via email address: staffordconsultingatcoxdotnet (replace the written at and dot accordingly)