Monday, December 30, 2019

UnHelpful Help Location URL

I read about quirky Reviteristic issue at RFO this afternoon. A weird graphics glitch occurs when we interact with the Help Icon families that use the URL parameter feature to reference an external document. This is an example of it in the sample architecture model that ships with Revit (rac_basic_sample_project.rvt - in imperial content).


When we select the icon and examine its properties we get this Learning Link parameter.


When we click in the field the small button appears with the ellipsis icon. Clicking on the that button will take us to the URL saved in family.


The trouble begins after we move our cursor away from the field and start to resume work. The URL is stuck on screen over another parameter like below, the Detail Number parameter for the view.


I noticed that I can work past the issue if I click in the Default Analysis Display Style field, which I presume works because it also has an navigation/ellipsis style button.


I also noticed that if I am careful to click on the field right above the Learning Link, called Location, before leaving the Properties Palette I can avoid the issue too.


The forum thread was talking about this in 2019 but these images are from 2020.2. 

Monday, December 23, 2019

Revit 2020.2 Internal Origin Part Three

John Pierson and Parallax Team Apps recently shared a solution at the Autodesk App Store called Internal Origin Hide-ifier. I thought mine was cool but it doesn't install itself or come with a Doge.


It's only 1,000 bucks...nope its free!! Check it out.

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Rename View Click Twice - Wish I Could Turn That Off

Title says enough? I'm sick of getting to rename a view when I really mean to open it. I must be losing my double clicking mojo...

If possible add it to the existing Double Click behavior options? Pretty please?

That was quick!! My wish is already granted: See Michael's comment for the Revit.ini code that provides my wish. Thanks Michael!

Edit: I changed both ini files for Revit 2020.2 and it doesn't disable the renaming behavior...so wish not granted, unless I'm doing it wrong.

Friday, December 06, 2019

Internal Origin Follow Up

After I shared the earlier Dynamo graph I received an email from Aaron Rumple that did away with any package requirements. He wrote a python script and added it to my graph. It also eliminates the warning message that appears after running mine. The crux of that issue is the need to filter out view templates from the process because while view templates are applied to views under the hood they are also views...at least that's my layman's understanding.

Many thanks to Aaron, a real design software savant.

Download the new Dyn

As before, my graph allows you to include/exclude the internal origin, survey point and project base point. Just edit the settings of the Dyn before running it (see previous post).

Saturday, November 30, 2019

Work Plane Based Families and Rotate w Copy

I participated in a thread at Autodesk's Revit forum and it took me far too long to catch on to the issue described at the outset. I should have retraced the thread sooner, but I did get there eventually.

I'm referring to the Rotate tool and its Copy option, this...


The issue boils down to this: the Rotate with Copy option works/affects a Work Plane-Based (and face-based) family differently than when a family is merely hosted by a Level (all non "based" families). Let's start here, imagine I want two screens on my desk like this.


These are stock families: TV - Flat Screen.rfa and Desk.rfa The desk has a top surface that isn't visible in plan view so it can't act as a face to host the TV. I changed that. The TV isn't a work plane-based family. In a plan view, when I place it on the desk it ends up eaten by the desk because it looks like this in a 3D view.


Sure, I can use its Elevation from Level parameter to put it on the desk (an illusion of a relationship). When I move the desk I need to remember to select the TV too (or make a group...or...I digress). I get the clever idea, "Make this family Work Plane-Based, that's easy!"


Using Rotate with Copy should give me the result I want in the first image and it does until I check the box for Work Plane-Based. The angle I decide I want between the screens is 22.5 degrees. I added a couple reference planes for the images to help see what happens, the desired result.


That's what I want except that they should be hosted by the desk, not relying on using the Elevation from Level parameter. When I use Rotate with the Copy option after editing the TV family to make it Work Plane-Based (also Always Vertical is checked) I get this result.


Notice the TV angle itself is correct but it's location is wrong...and a warning message appeared to help me notice... It's been moved/copied by double the input value of 22.5 degrees using the origin of rotation correctly and managed to maintain the angle I wanted. This next image summarizes what happened.


That's weird enough on its own but I can go weird by one more, un-check the TV's Always Vertical parameter. After running through the exercise again I get this outcome.


This time it applied the rotation input angle of 22.5 degrees x 2 = 45 degrees to both rotating the family and its position. This time it did it fully wrong while the previous time it only did it half wrong.

Introduce a Floor, instead of a desk family, into the mix and place the TV family before it is Work Plane-Base with Always Vertical and this happens. No rotation, just copy and in the same place no less.


When the TV family is Work Plane-Based and Always Vertical is used then it works wrong in the same way as relying on the desk's face as the host did.

I imagine Revit is attempting to relate the rotation and copy actions to the family's host, since that is the work plane the family is hosted by. Clearly it is unable to do so properly. I think it is reasonable to expect to get the same result whether level based or work plane-based. This post and the images are from using Revit 2020.2 but I did the same things in Revit 2016 with the same results. This has been around for quite awhile now.

If it is any consolation, the Mirror and Polar Array tools don't suffer from this malady but each have their own prep work required to make them a ready replacement.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Revit 2020.2 Internal Origin Redux

Happy Thanksgiving to those who observe!

One little thing I'm thankful for, I got a file yesterday from Autodesk (TurnOffInternalOrigin.Dyn) that is meant to be run in Dynamo Player (it's a custom node in testing ATM). You can download the file, place it wherever your Dynamo Player is looking for files already or in Dynamo Player just browse to wherever you placed the file. Click the play button (see image) and it will turn off the Internal Origin in all views. This approach means very little Dynamo knowledge is necessary, just enough to get Dynamo Player open and find the file.


Since I already put in some time with my own graph which included the Survey Point and Project Base Point I decided I'd like to be able to turn on/off all three or just the internal origin or some combination. I modified my graph (Control Coordinate Graphics.dyn) to provide input options (see image).


When you use Dynamo player you can edit the input options through On/Off switches (see image).


Click the little Properties button (looks like a old Macintosh computer to me). Clicking the toggle will make the statement either true or false for each "hide" question. All three true = all off for example. Remember my graph is dependent on a node from the Archilib package, make sure you've installed that before trying to use it.

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Revit 2020.2 Turn Off Internal Origin - Dynamo Option

In a thread at RFO John Pierson (Parallax Team, and Dynamo guru) got the ball rolling with a video link that described overriding graphics in views. I picked up the ball and created the graph but missed an essential but tiny setting for one node to make it work (Lacing - Cross Product).

The Dynamo Graph looks like this (click to Download).


You can use Dynamo, with this graph, to turn off the Internal Origin, Survey Point, and Project Base Point in floor and ceiling plans, sections, elevations and 3D views. Change the code block from False to True and it will turn them all on instead.

Regarding Jean-Marc's comment: I think he was suggesting this instead.

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Zoning Clearance Thoughts

A long time fellow Revit traveler reached out to me via Revit Lifeline last night asking about zoning clearance ideas. Where he lives and works they want designers to demonstrate the building is not too tall. They also want them to prove it doesn't extend into a zone that leans back into the site. All in all the code reduces the size of the building that can be built on any given property that falls under its jurisdiction.

I have heard and read about this concern many times over the years. But in response last night, I mocked up a quick example to see if it met his needs (waiting to hear back). I thought, "Blog post? I just posted something the other day...don't get carried away. Yeah, but you've only posted like twice this year slacker! So a blog post it is then..."

Here's a few images to ponder first. Pretty fancy house design eh? Doors and windows are so last century. I CAN design YOUR next home, just call when you're ready...operators are standing by.





The upper surface is a thin floor which is manipulated through Dynamo and Shape Editing. Lauren Schmidt's LandArchBIM blog is a very nice source for land techniques and I stole her graph ideas in this post to make it. Her post explains the technique relies on a sub-region to match whatever hardscape shape (property boundary in this case) is necessary. I used the floor's offset parameter to move it up above the surface by the zoning height required.

The front and back property boundary clearance requirement is built with a railing and profile. The fact that railings can be hosted by toposurface now opens this door wide. The surface form might not lend itself to a nice clean railing though, mileage will vary. You can see the rear railing is a little deformed in a couple spots. I built parameters into the profile so I could (using types) vary the height of the angle portion, change the angle, change the height above property (spring point of the lean) and the thickness of the railing.

I created a specific material to assign to it all so it can be mostly transparent.

My example is admittedly simplistic. How many property boundaries are really a simple rectangle? Pretty rare, about as rare as a purple unicorn that uses Revit? A front or rear boundary that has arcs and many segments will probably pose some issues creating a hosted railing. I can imagine things going wrong but I'll wait until I'm dealing with something specific to worry about that.

The file I mocked this up is in Revit 2020.2 and the dynamo graph (link has both RVT and Graph) is so simple that this screen shot would help you build it nearly a fast as downloading and opening it up. That's what I did with Lauren's example. You do need the packages I've circled.


Oh, the mockup has a massing element too, you'll have to turn massing on though. At first I thought I'd sweep a profile along the property edge defined by the upper surface. After I did that I thought of the railing. The learning curve is much less steep for a railing than massing, bonus being much faster too.

Decided to add a couple more images. I realized that I could have turned off the sub-category Interior Edges for Floors to hide the tessellation in the other images. It also occurred to me that another railing and profile configuration could deal with the top. I just created another type from my existing profile family to make it a 90 degree railing. A separate wide profile without a vertical portion would provide just a top surface. The floor and railing approach don't result in the same surfaces but within reason? If reason can be applied to a zoning requirement?



Here's both visible...


Monday, November 18, 2019

Revit 2020.2 - Internal Origin

A quick post to mention this since I've already run into this issue with users several times. The latest update for Revit introduces a new icon to mark the location of the file's Internal Origin. This is what it looks like in the 3D view.


It's off in all views initially, in the stock templates. Reveal Elements will display it quickly in a view without having to use Visibility/Graphics to show it. It can't be selected, it's just visible to help understand where it is.

Edit: It seems existing projects that are opened in 2020.2 have this Internal Origin turned on in all views (many). That's a bug in my opinion. They should not be turning this on. Though, in my own testing it is not getting turned on with upgraded files. It seems to be existing 2020 files that get this turned after opening it with the 2020.2.

Project Base Point - You won't see the clip when you select it. Move it away from the internal origin and it is automatically behaving as if it isn't clipped. In other words, it isn't clipped anymore. We couldn't really move the project origin, only the Project Coordinate System could be adjusted to provide a local coordinate reference for the Spot Coordinate tool, for example.

The Survey Point remains much the same.

When dealing with linked files you'll find that the icons for each of these is also visible but halftone (gray) to differentiate from the host file's own icons. You can snap to the links icon's to help align the files, using the Move tool for example.

I'll have to return to the subject once we've gotten fully acquainted.

Edit: 11/24/2019

I traded a couple emails with Autodesk staff on this. My understanding (not a developer) is this is not merely something they overlooked. Consider when a 2020 file is opened in 2020.2 it is not going through an upgrade because the file format is compatible. This creates a scenario where they are not activating upgrade code to resolve the existing file's structure with a new version's structure.

Unfortunately this new subcategory gets enabled and its visible status is "on" at the outset. It's my understanding that "off" isn't an option...in this scenario...without also creating an upgrade scenario...which is conceptually a no-go...within a release year.

Upgraded files go through an upgrade process which imposes rules on that process...which includes a task that deliberately "turns off" this new subcategory. It's a quirk of the file open sequence/process.

I think they didn't expect it to be a significant issue. It doesn't print after all. It can negatively affect zooming behavior in many views though. User perceptions can't be ignored either. An unexpected "thing" encroaching on views is "bad"...similar to seeing a view's crop boundary when not intended.

To their credit, they asked if I agreed they should create a Dynamo solution to turn it off in all views. Naturally I encouraged them to DO IT! Hopefully we'll be able to say that such a solution exists soon.

Tuesday, October 08, 2019

BIM 360 Sync Failure Retry

Lately we've been experiencing some poor performance accessing BIM 360 projects. The primary cause eludes us at the moment, but Location Services, Windows Updates and Anti-Virus systems appear to be factors for now. Most of the time it works great but then...it doesn't.

Today I'm having trouble syncing changes with a project and this dialog has been stuck on my screen for about a half hour so far.


It's the fourth cycle of trying to Reload Latest... I think after a second failure to sync it should exit more elegantly. At this point I'm wondering how many times will it try before giving up? There is no option to quit or cancel...just stuck with forcefully quitting Revit at this point? That's polite.

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Eccentricity of Wall Footing

I replied to a thread at AUGI regarding the Eccentricity parameter of a Wall Footing. They observed that Revit seemed to ignore their input and didn't understand what it was meant to do. In this case the width of the footing was less than the value they entered.

The parameter is intended to shift the footing over, from interior to the exterior face of the wall. The footing starts out centered on the wall above.

The maximum eccentricity is equal to (Footing Width/2)-(Wall Thickness/2).

The interior wall surface can be aligned (flush) with the interior face of the footing but not further, creating any overhang of the wall, which seems logical to me. A picture might help?

Monday, June 17, 2019

Reference Planes without Names

It is a common practice to add a name to the reference planes we create. If it isn't common where you work then it ought to be. The name helps give a hint to anyone that works in the model that this reference plane is more important than those without a name. It can also help understand what it is for, why it was made.

There are some who make the effort to clear out reference planes that are not named periodically, just another of any number of model/housekeeping chores. I've even seen Dynamo scripts intended for this task.

If you're using Ideate's Explorer you'll find it easy to see a summary of all the reference planes in the model. In the following image I've created two reference planes, one with a name and another without a name.


Notice that there are five (5) reference planes listed though. As it happens, when the Edit Profile concept is used on a wall four reference planes are created and internally applied against the sketch of the wall. They are only visible to us while editing the wall's profile sketch. We can't see these reference planes in the regular user interface, it only becomes very apparent with their Explorer tool.

It is also possible for us to create reference planes while creating any sketch based element, like a floor or stair for example. These reference planes are only visible to us while editing their related sketch.

The reference planes associated with a wall's edited profile can't be deleted via IDEATE Explorer. It can delete them when we've created our own within a wall's profile and other sketch based elements.

Attempting to clean up these unnamed reference planes might also be an issue if you're writing your own code or Dynamo script to delete them. We can/could add names to these internal reference planes (wall profile) but I don't think that's a task that worth the effort.

Something to keep in mind.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Structural Column Disappears - Part Deux

Yesterday while trading messages with a friend we discussed my previous post about columns disappearing. He suspected it might explain the issue he was observing. After looking more closely it turned out that it doesn't. In his situation the structural columns were modeled the full height of the building and Join Geometry was used on walls, that passed through (overlapped) the columns, at each floor (level). The result: at some levels no column appeared while at others they do.

It was necessary to pull the walls back so they stop at the surface of the columns. Join Geometry allowed for the desired appearance and the columns reappeared at the other levels where they were missing earlier.

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Filter Dialog and Reading a Long Filter Name

Dialog stretchiness has been an ongoing long standing user wish for all dialogs. Daniel wrote to me hoping that I'd echo his complaint about the Filter dialog. Yes you can stretch it but the frames remain less so. The Filter name frame does add a scroll bar at the bottom when a filter name exceeds the width of the frame, which does not increase in size when the overall host dialog stretches out. Ideally we'd be able to stretch/adjust individual sections of such dialog boxes. If memory serves that is dependent upon which GUI tools are being used to generate the dialog. If that tool set doesn't do it then...we don't get it...without a custom entity.

Daniel was writing about Revit 2019. Even when you scroll over to the right completely a filter with a long name gets truncated and you can't read all of the name.


I note that in Revit 2020 a tooltip will appear that displays the full name while the frame does the same truncating even when it has been scrolled completely to the right.


Naturally, we can avoid it if we can use Filter names that are not very long, an easy fix...there's that word again - easy. Easier said than done...it seems.

Monday, May 20, 2019

Structural Column Disappears in Detail View Type

When we create a Callout within a plan view we can choose between Floor plan and Detail. A structural column that uses a negative offset won't show up when a wall exists in the same location when a Detail view type is used. It works fine in a Floor plan view type.

Here are some example images. The first one is showing the negative offset used. If the offset is zero then there is no graphical issue, the column shows up.


This image shows both callouts in the overall floor plan, Detail on the left and Floor on the right.


This is the Floor Plan Callout, column shows up as expected.


This is the Detail Callout, no column is visible.


This is the same Detail Callout but my cursor is hovering over the column and Revit sees it, highlights it despite not being visible. The wall is masking the column.


This is the same Detail Callout but the view is changed to use Wireframe and the column appears.


It boils down to the negative offset applied to the column. The graphics hierarchy does not respect the full height of the column and the wall element is drawn over the structural column. We can also get around the issue if we edit the column family and remove the option: Show family pre-cut in plan views.

Wednesday, May 08, 2019

RevitForum.org Back

It appears to be restored via a new ISP and up and running again. Glad it's back!

...EDIT...some are saying it isn't fully set up at the new ISP yet...mileage may vary for a bit longer but it is on the way.

...EDIT...Site is still in transition to a new ISP, a message to that effect appears on the site until it is fully transitioned. (05/10/2019)

...EDIT...Site is UP, restored...aahhh

Monday, May 06, 2019

Linked Details - 3rd Party Tool Options

This is an update to a much earlier post after getting a couple comments on that thread. These are three companies I'm familiar with that are providing solutions that contend with sharing details between projects and multiple model projects.

Revolution Design - Revit Workflow

26 Degrees Software - ViewAQC

Parallax Team - Parallax Linked Details

Check them out!

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Revit Forum dot Org Not Working

It’s been about a week now where some of us can’t post/reply at the forum. I guess I’ll give up trying at this point. I can only spend so much time replying only to have the forum crash. Hopefully they’ll figure it out eventually. Maybe someone can tell me if/when that happens? Good luck!

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Keynote Legends and Keynotes not Updating 2018.3

In Revit 2018.3.2.7 I am seeing and getting reports that keynote legends are not updating to show the current state of keynote tags visible in views. The existing workaround to force a refresh by turning on/off the Annotation Crop Boundary works but is entirely impractical to expect a team to open every sheet and do that task for each and every view on a sheet.

This past Knowledge Network post seems relevant. A portion of the text at that article suggests...

Workaround:
There are a few ways you could work around this behavior, and the best method will vary depending on the model geometry and number of affected tags. Here are a few options:

Temporary fixes (these will restore the display keynote tags, but future view changes will clear them again): 
Temporarily adjust the location of the Cut Plane so that is above the affected elements (this will restore the value to the tags) and then restore the original cut plane location. Note: Some customers have noted that for views with dependent views, this process is required:
  1. Open the parent view and adjust the cut plane upward.
  2. open all sheets containing dependent views belonging to this parent view to refresh the keynote tags.
  3. move the cut plane back to its original position in the parent view.
(Note: this may not work for some elements such as Duct; in that case, see the Non-temporary fix below.) Recreate the affected tags manually.

Non-temporary fix (This will prevent future changes to the view from clearing the keynote tag): Adjust view or elements so that the cut plane is above the affected elements. (This could be done with a Plan Region.)

We really need this fixed ASAP!!