Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Autodesk University 2011 - 02

This morning I was introduced to VEO. Most of what was discussed is still covered by a NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). A few things are not. First of all a Twitter feed called @VEO News is not “them”, them being M-Six. M-Six is the creator/developer of VEO (pronounced Vay-Oh, Spanish for “see”). I chose not to take notes because of the NDA so going from my fuzzy memory 12 plus hours later, the letters work out to: V = Visualize E = Execute O = Operate.

When you visit their site you’ll see a simple graphic logo with six VU meters (audio) along the bottom of the page. The first time I saw the logo there were five, now there are six. The fact that there are six isn't really significant though, not aligning with the name M-Six.


These meters are not insignificant as they represent different features or aspects of what VEO will provide, not to mention the musical background of several people involved in the product. If you pay close attention to the meter needles, as in sound engineering the closer you get to “zero” the better. In this case they are indicating the degree of “bad-a$$ness” the feature they represent currently is capable of. Suffice it to say that I imagine you'll want to keep an eye on their progress. Check out and follow their Linked In site to stay in tune with future developments. M-Six

I missed my next session because of getting engrossed in conversation with a few folks, Kelly Cone (Beck Group), Matt Dillon (D|C CADD) and Scott Latch (Autodesk). At some point I suggested that Scott is like the heavy bag that fighters use for training. He takes punches (metaphorically for real criticism and pressure from customers/users) all day and is ready for more. Still not sure who the speed bag is though…

I caught up with Paul Aubin (Author/Consultant) at lunch as well as Matt and Kelly again. Paul teased me for last night’s post ribbing his session. I think it (the nature of the questions and answers we heard) is indicative of the level of proficiency many of the users in the session have reached. They’ve mastered much (or at least are pretty comfortable) of the software and are anxious for it to do more and do it all better too.

Then it was time for Twice Baked Adaptive Components with Robert Manna (Stantec) and Zach Kron (Autodesk). This session is further exploration of concepts they dealt with at last year’s AU. I shared lab assistant duties with David Light (HOK) and Phillip Lazarus (BIM Troublemaker blog). It went quite well considering the subtleties and complexity of the concepts. My side of the room must have been smarter because they had fewer questions than the other side. Either that or they were afraid to ask me for help? We get to repeat the class tomorrow at 1 PM.

At 5 PM I was torn between attending the Vasari class, the family editor session and the AUGI General Meeting. I went to the AUGI meeting, got my AUGI glass and then caught the end of the family session. By the way be sure to VOTE for your choices to form the next Board Members!

It was my loss for the Vasari session, I heard it was excellent. I headed to the AUGI Beer Bash, food and drink and vendors galore. The exhibit floor seemed considerably larger this year and well attended. Navigating wasn't hard but it seemed to have more back alleys to either miss or not get back too. Between running into people and chatting and the number of exhibitors I just didn't see everything. Excellent choice to offer the specialty coffee vendor by the publishing area, I went back for more!

@Case_Inc. held a TweetUp at La Scena lounge and a lot of people showed up. Even Marty Rozmanith (former RTC staffer) turned up! It was good to see him again. We rounded out the evening with a quiet light meal with several long time Revit pals and decided we ought to try to make it an early (depends on your definition of early) evening.

Day three is upon us already. Time seems to stop here, no sense of day or night...but it marches on pretty quickly nonetheless. Just one more day of AU to soak it all in, see friends and make some new ones.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Autodesk University 2011 - 01

How typical, the night before the first day of classes I find myself heading back to the room at 3 AM. The night closed with me having an animated discussion with guys from Spain, Scotland and England, whose favorite teams range from Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea, regarding our desire to see the offside rules in futbol revised. I happen to like the quality of play with Barcelona and I agree that we’d see more productive games if say, the penalty box defined where offside could occur. There are so many situations where a player being offside isn’t really a factor, not a goal scoring, unfair advantage at least. Oh right, AU...

Also last night I met Hideki who made his own custom “fan” that asks “Why Change” on one side and on the reverse shows all the different software that might motivate you to consider doing so. Steve Shell helps him display it in these photos.



Next AUGI Board member Bill Davis shows off his massive collection of AU ribbons. They make him lean forward under the weight.


I dragged myself out of bed to make it to the General Session and Keynote presentation at 8 AM. I was just 10 minutes late which really meant I didn’t have to stand in a long line to get in, but there weren’t many seats. Ran into Steve Shell on the way so we hung out and watched the show together. We saw very interesting presentations ranging from a 27 year old talking about his moon rover project to long time “Reviteer” Jeffery McGrew discussing the things that he’s been doing with his own company Because We Can and wrapped up with a talk with Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine.

My first session was Jeffrey’s “Five Common Pitfalls of Digital Fabrication”. He continued where he left off with his presentation earlier and it was quite enjoyable. His company has done fun and interesting work since embarking on his own. I enjoyed his comment, “Computers can smell fear and false promises by software vendors”. He said that in the context of our needing to test the workflow and methods we use to make sure data transitions properly from one software application to another. In other words don’t rely on the claims made, test and verify.

Time for lunch! Well I spent most of my available lunch time being intrigued by a puzzler set up by Revit QA staff, one called “Where’s my Chair”. They’ve provided thirty six views that you can’t see “your” chair in and it’s up to you to figure out why, fairly diabolical things they’ve chosen to do. If you are at AU be sure to stop by and tackle one or all of the puzzlers. Just keep in mind that they are not necessarily playing “fair”.


When I sat down in Jeffery’s class I had a sudden thought that I’d see Scott Womack’s smiling face wander in. Then I remembered that’s not to be, as he passed away recently. It’s a real loss for the Revit community at AUGI, his work place…and of course his family and friends. His pal Rick caught up with me to reiterate how much the Revit community meant to Scott. He is and will be missed.

I missed my next session to deal with some work stuff so I’m hoping the handout does the job w/o hearing the session in person. Then I was off to the Ask the Experts session with Revit MEP authors Paul Aubin, Darryl McClelland, Martin J. Schmidt and Gregg Stanley. Unfortunately this session turned out to be mostly apologetic, "yeah we know about that issue", "sorry, no way to really do that yet", "you should consider applying for the alpha/beta program"...

The exhibition hall opened up tonight and there is a plethora of firms to visit. I did a couple passes to just get a sense of who, what and where. Then I started to visit some and naturally ran into folks too. I left the exhibition hall when it closed chatting with Cyril Verley (CDV Systems).

Monday, November 28, 2011

Autodesk University 2011 - 00

It's that time of year again. Jim Balding (The ANT Group) was kind enough to let me ride along with him on Sunday morning. We arrived a little after 1 PM. We ran into Robert Yori and Roberto Mencarini (SOM) almost as soon as we started wandering. We headed to the Speaker Ready room and chatted until registration opened at 4 PM.

During registration I saw David Harrington (AUGI's current president), Mark Kiker (AUGI's Executive Director) and several HOK staff. One, David Ivey, invited me along to a group trip to Fast Lap for some racing! After taking the pole position during the qualifying race I came in second to my long time Revit pal, Chris Zoog. It was a lot of FUN! Thanks David and the rest of the HOK gang for inviting me!

At the La Scena lounge I spent some time chatting with Revit content guru's Jose Fando, Gary Sprague (Andekan) and Stephen Germano (BIM Advent). Nice to finally meet them face to face. It's certainly one of the really great things about AU.

Monday (today) is going to be a long one, starting out with visiting friends with HOK and later trying to squeeze several events into a few hours, AEC Mixer, Blogger/Media Mixer, RTC meetup, HOK BIMie Awards dinner...and some other things I've probably forgotten about. Need a way to attend them all at the same time.

For your racing viewing pleasure...


I thought I'd claim that I threw the race so HOK staff would win...but I didn't, too competitive. Chris won fair and square by being patient and waiting for me to make a mistake!

Friday, November 25, 2011

RTC Server Issues

Just a quick note to let readers know that the Revit Technology Conference hosting site experienced a server crash. They are working to get it restored. If you wish to submit an abstract in the meantime you can, that website is separate. Click to Submit an Abstract

(url: http://www.speakerready.com/abstracts/RTCNA)

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Content Critique

Content is King! The right content, good content, smart content...

How the content is to be judged is subjective, evaluated against personal criteria, as well as objective. It doesn't take a lot of effort to find something to complain about when you use content created by others. It isn't even all that hard to return to our own content a little later and have a different opinion about how well we made it. Ever evolving, improving...hopefully.

I had the occasion recently to poke and prod some families shared via Autodesk Seek. The first example is from Belden, one of their equipment management products, this image is a 3D view at 1/8" = 1'-0" scale.


Another example is from Siemon, one of their punch down patch panels, also in a 3D view at 1/8" = 1'-0" scale. This is a bit blobby eh?


What you see in these images are what you see in the project environment, assuming a particular scale as mentioned before. There is a heck of a lot of detail in each of the families. The rack weighs in at 796 KB and the patch panel weighs in at 2.056 MB.

Taking a closer look at the punch down patch panel we find this, I had to use thin lines to see the detail.


The back side has the punch down blocks modelled too as well as sheet metal bends and kerfs. There are even small parts on the inside of the panel which nobody will ever be able to see in a Revit view.


Another family I had a closer look at is one of the Siemon Wire Management racks which weighs in at 2.9 MB.


It is nice looking but there are elements that have been modelled that nobody can see in a Revit project. Cutting a section through the cabinet will not yield the extra modeling effort that was put in. A simple rectangular shape would yield sufficient results in nearly all views except for a close up photoreal rendering perhaps.


These last two families don't take advantage of Revit's Detail Levels or Visibility options to manage the complexity or detail they contain. What's more troubling about these is that they are posted on Seek, suggesting that they are ideal or represent content that others should emulate. The wire management rack is the most "over the top".

I've hidden a hundred or more elements (solids/voids) to show this stuff.


Nearly everything you can see in that image is hidden behind something (except for the door handle) which means in a Revit project that nobody can ever see it because the category (Electrical Fixtures) doesn't have a cut representation. In a few cases I've run across data related equipment that have been assigned to the category Specialty Equipment, which doesn't even show up in Revit MEP views ordinarily (not included among the MEP categories listed in V/G, without showing all categories).

Where am I headed with this critique? It's still the wild west folks. Just downloading content from Seek is no guarantee that you won't have to spend some time tweaking or in the case of the wire management rack or punch down patch panel, abandoning them to create something simpler.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Stair Headroom Clearance

In the past I've written about using a line based family to document path of egress information. Brian Mackey with BD Mackey Consulting in Denver recently shared a concept he uses for demonstrating that a stair well has sufficient clearance. He uses a railing family that has a profile to document the required clearance instead of what we'd usually use. In this example I quickly mocked up I just used a similar "guy" I'm calling Clarence, so Clarence can show the Clearance is met.


It's easy! Just create a profile family and load it into your project. Assign the profile to a new railing type, called Clearance. Assign Clarence to the Railing. Place the railing on the center line of the stair. You'll have to fuss with graphics and decide when it should be visible but it's pretty simple. To really show the zone required for clearance a simple rectangular profile off a specified height would suffice and show where no building elements should touch. A quick interference check would help catch problems too.

Cool solution Brian!

Friday, November 18, 2011

Journal Files - Get to the Point Quick

The Revit Clinic's Kathryn Langan is sharing a little application that she wrote to make it easy to extract the basic information they like to review before they dig deeply into a support issue. Thanks for sharing, so go check it out!

I've clipped some of the info in her post:

...snip
Last weekend I wasn't feeling that great, and decided to play around with some scripting while we were just sitting around watching football. What I ended up with was a Journal File Parser, and I think it turned out to be useful enough to share.
_______________________

What it does, is parses through a folder of journal files and pulls out the following:

  • Journal File Name
  • Start Date & Time
  • Username
  • Revit Build
  • Hardware Acceleration Status
  • Graphics Card
  • Graphics Driver
  • Operating System
  • Last Memory Usage Statistics
  • Last Entry Line

It takes all of this information and populates it into an Excel file.

So how is this useful?

When someone comes to us with a Revit problem, one of the first things we want to do is check the basics. Are users on the latest build? Do they have certified graphics cards? Are the correct drivers installed? Instead of having to open individual journal files to check all of these things, a single run of the script will pull out all of the information. Even if users aren't having problems, it could be used as a quick audit to make sure everyone is on the same build, has the same drivers, etc.

In addition, if a user is crashing, this can help us understand which journals to look at, and to eliminate memory as a suspect. The Last Memory Line will tell us how much memory was left the last time Revit reported it in the journal. So if the available RAM is really low, we'll be able to quickly identify it. If a user experienced an issue but they weren't sure which journal recorded it, we can quickly verify the Start Date/Times of the journals to be able to narrow down the right files faster. Also, if the Last Entry Line ends with 0:< finished recording journal file, that session probably wasn't a crash, so we can focus on the sessions that ended unexpectedly without having to open each one to check.
...snip

CLICK TO see the POST

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Stairs by Sketch and Worksets

I've written about this a couple times in the past. Hanging around with a serious Revit guru tonight I was surprised that he wasn't aware of the issue. He'd encountered it but had not sorted out the cause. The previous posts are THIS ONE and THIS OTHER ONE.

The essence of the problem is how the sketch is created in a workset enabled project. If you create individual segments so the stringers are formed properly Revit complains about having "two boundaries".


If you sketch segments that will not generate stringers correctly the stair will finish but generate another error. If you immediately edit the sketch and use the Split tool to break up the segment it then works properly.


Do the same thing in a stand alone project file and no problem. This is ages old but for some reason it only showed up on the radar when I submitted the issue back in 2007. Still with us today, go figure! Hey for those of you out there that I tried to blame it as "user error", sorry bout that! :) An apology is better late than never...

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Saving or Sharing Export DWG Layer Standards

The process has changed a bit for exporting to dwg (or DGN for that matter). We used to be able to export our own settings to a .txt file format for use with other projects. In Revit 2011 we had this dialog and Save As button.


With 2012 they've decided to capture our settings in a project file itself. They let us choose one of these four standards to use, or to use as the spring point for our own version.


The fifth option is to "Load settings from file...". Interesting that there aren't any files to use though. We are to capture our changes in the project and then, when desired, pass it along to other projects via the Transfer Project Standards tool.

I've posted the source files that the four export settings templates use because they don't appear in my 2012 installation anywhere. I recovered them from my 2011 installation. Interestingly the other three besides the AIA version didn't show up until I loaded each one in to replace the previous. As soon as I did that, the other files appeared alongside the AIA version. If you really want to edit the .txt version, to grow your own version, you can download them here:

exportlayers-dwg-AIA.txt
exportlayers-dwg-BS1192.txt
exportlayers-dwg-CP83.txt
exportlayers-dwg-ISO13567.txt

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Sneaky Buttons

I wrote this POST in August 2005 and then followed up with another POST in July 2008. All these years later this sneaky button still has no tool tip to tell you what it does or that it is even a button. Really sneaky in my book!!


There are other Reviteristic buttons...read the first POST if you are interested.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Attend Autodesk University 2011 Virtually

If you can't attend in person then you can still get in on some of the action. Here are the details I swiped from the Autodesk web site:


AU Virtual 2011

Join us for the premier virtual conference dedicated to the worldwide Autodesk user community. This online event delivers on-demand technical classes on the newest releases of Autodesk products and the latest trends and challenges facing the design industry.

Register for Free

AU Virtual is free to all AU members. Select from 250 classes in English, Spanish, and Portuguese on a wide range of topics. Plus you can network with other virtual attendees, watch key AU 2011 Las Vegas presentations and insider videos, and visit online exhibits—right from your desktop. After the event, AU Virtual classes will continue to be available on the AU website.

AU Virtual Preview Classes Begin November 15

AU Virtual previews are scheduled for mid-November. Join us online November 15 for technical and certification preparation classes—especially helpful if you plan to take a free certification exam at AU in Las Vegas. Then join us online November 29–30 for AU Virtual 2011.

Mark Your Calendars

Plan now to attend this worldwide virtual event. Registration opens November 15, 2011.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Old Roadies

Off topic...me visiting my past...

Last weekend I traveled to Atlanta to attend the second annual gathering of the self proclaimed "Southeast's Finest in the Music Industry". My old nemesis/mentor Fred (aka FUF) started it last year and I managed to get to this one. One of the things FUF was best known for was the gags he'd play on a group's last night of a tour. Witness his Uncle Sam costume for a 38 Special tour wrap up.


When Huey Lewis and the News wrapped up their stint with 38 Special in 1984 he came out dressed up as Big Bird tossing candy out during "Wanna New Drug". Later he and another trotted on stage in a two man horse costume during 38's "What if I'd Been the One" song which features some horses in the music video (if my memory is accurate). The second man brought a water bottle with him, and at one point lifted a leg...you can guess the rest. When Eddie Money toured with us he sat on the down stage edge dressed as Santa Claus, he and Eddie bantering... You never really knew what to expect from him. A true character and it was good to see him again after so many years!


I've told people a number of times, over the years, that there is no proof that I toured with 38 Special in 1984 because the band's program "misspelled" my name from Stafford to Smith. I'm listed there but you'd have to be pretty special to figure that one out! The band/crew photo shoot at the end of the tour has me, but only a leg and an arm, the rest of me cropped out of view. Well at the reunion I got to see the program again for the first time in a long time (one is being sold on eBay for $40 right now)... imagine my surprise when I see a group photo in the back that I'm actually in! It's a grainy iPhone capture in a dim bar, sorry!


I'm the twenty something guy who looks like he managed to sneak in and sat on the couch when the photo got taken. Here's a few of the same folks now. Can you figure out which one is FUF?

(photo courtesy of Michael Beck photography)

Last but not least a shot of the guy that got me started at R.A. Roth to begin with, Peter (aka Wookie, though a slightly grayer shorter haired version now). It was good to see him again, with a beau and ready as ever! Apparently we managed to elude the professional photographer wandering around (Michael) so it's another grainy iPhone shot...(behind us is the never aging John Delong, rigger extraordinaire)


I'll end with the gangs "fight song/cheer"... "Friends may come and friends may go, and friends may peter out you know. But peter out or peter in, we'll be friends through thick or thin...YO!"

Friday, November 11, 2011

New Book for Revit and Interior Design

Daniel Stine teamed up with Aaron Hansen to write a new book with a focus on Interior Design. The formal title is "Interior Design Using Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012" and is published by SDC (Schroff Development Corporation).


They are offering a nice sample chapter on Materials if you want to get a better sense of the book. From the book's description:

"The overall premise of the book is to learn Revit Architecture while developing the interior of a two story law office. The reader is provided an architectural model with established columns, beams, exterior walls, minimal interior walls and roofs in which to work. This allows more emphasis to be placed on interior design rather than primary architectural elements. The chapters chronology generally follows the typical design process. Students will find this book helps them more accurately and efficiently develop their design ideas and skills."

Table of Contents consists of:

  1. Introduction; Leveraging Revit for interior design
  2. Project Navigation
  3. Revit Jumpstart
  4. Materials
  5. Programming
  6. Material Presentation Board
  7. Reception, Lobby and Lounge Design
  8. Office Spaces
  9. Break Room and Work Room
  10. Toilet room design
  11. Floor finishes
  12. Ceiling design
  13. Schedules
  14. Custom Content Creation
  15. Detailing
  16. Renderings
  17. Sheets   

Thursday, November 10, 2011

File Saving Issues

There have been a few threads at AUGI and Revitforum.org alike that discuss an error like this one.


The folks at Autodesk support have apparently pinned the cause down and are now offering a solution via a post at The Revit Clinic yesterday morning. Here's the text of their post.
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____

This post is contributed by Niranjan Kamath who supports Revit on our team in India.

While working with a workshared file, Revit will report an error whereby the central file is not accessible.This issue occurs only when the clients had a different OS version. We could not recreate the file access issue if the clients were both W7, or both XP for example.

The reason this happens: Windows 7 client communicates with the server using SMB2, while the Windows XP client uses SMB. This difference in version may cause some file handling issues.

To resolve this issue disable SMB2 from Server and Win 7 users.

To disable SMB 2.0 for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 systems that are the “client” systems, run the following commands:

  • sc config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi
  • sc config mrxsmb20 start= disabled
  • Note there's an extra " " (space) after the "=" sign.

To restore SMB 2.0 for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 systems that are the “client” systems, run the following commands:

  • sc config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/mrxsmb20/nsi
  • sc config mrxsmb20 start= auto
  • Again, there's an extra " " (space) after the "=" sign.

In order to disable SMB 2.0 on the server-side computer, follow these steps:

Warning!
This document contains instructions for editing the registry. If you make any error while editing the registry, you can potentially cause Windows to fail or be unable to boot, requiring you to reinstall Windows. Edit the registry at your own risk. Always back up the registry before making any changes. If you do not feel comfortable editing the registry, do not attempt these instructions. Instead, seek the help of a trained computer specialist.

  • Run "regedit" on Windows Server 2008 based computer.
  • Expand and locate the sub tree as follows.
  • HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
  • Add a new REG_DWORD key with the name of "Smb2" (without quotation mark)
    • Value name: Smb2
    • Value type: REG_DWORD
    • 0 = disabled
    • 1 = enabled
  • Set the value to 0 to disable SMB 2.0, or set it to 1 to re-enable SMB 2.0.
  • Reboot the server.

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

The Door From and To Values

In October of 2009 I wrote a post that explains the way Revit determines the parameter From Room and To Room settings. This is just an echo of it because I've seen a few mentions of the issue lately elsewhere on the "internets". There's a video too!


Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Opening a New View

One feature of Revit that has been with us for a long time is also quite subtle. When you open a new floor plan view Revit will attempt to respect what you are currently looking at in a floor plan view. For example, if you zoom into look at a specific room or door family and then open a floor plan for another level, Revit will open the new view zoomed into the same area of the model (but on the other level). The key is the view can't already be open. I've posted a video to explain visually...


Monday, November 07, 2011

AUGI Candidates

From the BLAUGI site...

The AUGI Board is composed of nine directors elected on a rotating basis for three-year terms by the membership of Autodesk Users Group International (AUGI). The board includes professionals from varying locations worldwide who use, train and support the varying products of Autodesk software.

Each year the Nomination & Elections Committee and the AUGI Board strive to include candidates that represent diverse interests and global perspectives. The seven colleagues who have graciously agreed to stand for election for the three positions spanning the 2012-2014 term are (in alphabetical order):

  • Scott Ebert
  • David Gaskill
  • Assis Haubert
  • Tommy Holder
  • Dario Passariello
  • Desiree Ratley
  • Jay Zallan

Members now have the opportunity to view candidates’ information and ask questions.

You can find the new Forum Area for the 2011 Candidates here.

Friday, November 04, 2011

RTC USA 2012 Update

The Revit Technology Conference North America 2012 has finally announced the next location and dates as well as inviting people to submit their abstracts. If you are on the mailing list you've probably already received your notification. If you aren't on the list then let me know so we can get you added to the mailing list.


In hints on Twitter I wrote that RTC was going to be "romancing the Stone" and "there will be a mountain" of sessions as well as a passing mention of Robert E. Lee using BIM... All subtle hints at the location that has been selected. The very first RTC event in Australia was held at a resort in the Blue Mountains, so this location is reminiscent of that kind of place.

Click to visit the RTC NA 2012 web site
Click to Read about the venue
Click to Submit an Abstract

You can keep track of things as we ramp up for the next conference via Linked In, Twitter, and Facebook (well on the website too).

Keep in mind that it is quite possible, even likely, that the conference will fill the entire hotel, read into that what you may. See you in June!

Thursday, November 03, 2011

Family Naming - Don't Worry

Jose Fandos of Andekan posted again in his continuing theme of content related posts. He suggests that worrying about a family naming standard, an all-encompassing one at least, isn't our biggest priority. I agree, I've always preached consistency instead of specifics. Every firm I've met over the years has their own position about file and folder naming for every kind of software they use.

He (Jose) predicts that how we find content in and out of Revit will only get better as we move forward so the actual name of a Revit family may become less important as a means to find one. For example, the add-in Family Browser allows us to organize content logically and the name isn't really the focus (while it, a standard, does help organize the folder the content is in perhaps).

If by some chance everybody could agree on a standard strategy it wouldn't hurt us. I don't think it is a fundamental or major priority over actually having content created. If it gets made with a "bad" name, I can always rename it when it hits "my" library anyway. ;)

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

No Math Characters in Parameter Names

I've mentioned this before in the context of older posts but never in a dedicated post. Don't use characters that Revit respects as mathematical symbols in the parameters names you create. That means don't do things like this.


Revit will be nice and accept parameter names that include most if not all of them but when it comes time to do something more clever with the parameters you'll regret it. More clevererer? Like using the parameters in a formula, that's clever! You'll get messages like this one.


Easy to resolve, just don't use mathematical symbols in parameter names.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

M6 or M-Six

One is a great car, one of the most fun/pleasing auto's I've driven so far.


Another is a potentially great new technology offering. There is a little bit more information on their Linked In page. You might recognize a couple of the people that are part of the company? Phil Read placed a teaser on his blog yesterday.


I wrote about a minion doing design work for a Lord and Master (maybe evil) recently. There are some videos on You Tube which if you look closely carry the "M" brand on the dialogs that are visible at various times. I think they are connected. You be the judge... check them out again!



And another...