Autodesk University 2024 - The Old Revit Gang

 

Yesterday I made a quick road trip to San Diego to attend a breakfast gathering of the "old Revit gang" that were attending this year's Autodesk University. Jim Balding, center in red kneeling, organized it all. He expected 15 people might actually be able to attend we nearly doubled that number.

Some of these people helped create Revit from nothing, used Revit very very early, are still working on Revit or with Autodesk now as well as either working in or have created their own companies inspired by and to do things that enhance what Revit does...or some combination of all of the above. Put the names of the people you know/recognize in the comments. It's a test, haha.

While wandering the conference after our breakfast meeting, I got to see many other people, who have meant a great deal to me through the years. Later that evening I also got to briefly catch up with an old friend who was mixing the audio for the evening's entertainment, Counting Crows. It was a great day!

My hats off to you all, keep on keep on!

Managing RVT Link Visibility

 I stole this idea from Autodesk Revit Forum member de_smith, sharing it here now. 😀

Another member asked: We have multiple view templates set up for various types of plan views, so when a change needs to be made to the visibility of a linked model, that change must be carried over multiple times, for each view template. It easily becomes hard to track that the visibility is consistent everywhere. 

Is there a way that the linked model visibility settings can be applied independently of view templates, so that when modified, they can carry across the entire project?

de_smith replied with (some editing on my part): 

Control linked models with their own view template then layer the regular view's template back over it. 

Create a "REVIT LINK CLEAN UP VIEW"  view template (for each unique link)

• in the view template dialog box untick the 'include' column for everything except V/G Overrides RVT Links
• in this template do all your required visibility modifications to the revit link
• in all your other view templates under the 'include' column untick V/G Override RVT Links

Apply the 'REVIT LINKS CLEAN UP VIEW' to all your views in your project browser at once

• then go back and apply the other view templates to the views.
• This holds the info from the Revit Links Clean up view

If there are any changes needed to the linked models, make the changes once, in the Revit Link's view template, apply it to all views at once and then reapply your other view templates. This is much quicker than changing the Revit links in every single view template.

I've done similar for Imported Categories (DWG links) and try hard not to override RVT links but this should work nicely when it's absolutely necessary.

Short Curved Walls and Non Core Layers

At Autodesk Revit forums I saw a post regarding disappearing curved walls. These walls were shorter than the current view range cut plane. When the Wall subcategory Non Core Layers is turned off only these curved short walls disappeared. Other walls of the same type that were straight remained visible. It looks like a bug to me.

In my testing, when the sub-category for Non Core Layers (Detail Level must be Medium or Fine) is turned off the wall will disappear when it's height is not at least 2 feet above the cut plane setting. For example, I can make a wall disappear if it's height is less than 6 feet when the cut plane (view range) is 4 feet. Enter anything 6 feet or higher and the wall reappears. This image is some full height walls and some walls that are 4 feet tall (lighter gray walls).

This is the setting I turned off in Visibility/Graphics.

This is the result, the curved 4 foot tall walls are gone.

I suppose, in their defense, they could argue that the reason it is possible to turn off non core layers is to be able to isolate, only show, the structural portion of walls. As such a curved wall that is not tall enough to reach the cut plane is not likely to also be a structural/bearing wall. At the very least it is unexpected to have a wall disappear only because it is too short and curved.

Cue Randy Newman, "Short walls got no reason..."

Revit 2025 Some Keyboard Shortcuts Missing

Revit 2025 has been released and I installed it this morning. I replied to a question at Autodesk Revit's user forum regarding a missing keyboard shortcut to apply halftone to a selected element. I ordinarily would not consider overriding a single element to get a halftone appearance so the question caught my eye as unusual...at least for me. I assumed the missing command was for the right click options to override elements in view.

I find that Revit 2024 (and 2023,22 & 20) have multiple keyboard shortcuts for overrides (see image comparing 2025 with 2024).

One difference between my installation of 2025 and the other versions is that pyRevit is not installed for 2025. I disabled pyRevit for 2024 and the shortcuts are still there. No "path" is displayed for them either, which is "weird".

Is it an oversight or did they change something under the hood that prevents allowing for hotkey access to the command? Perhaps they could see that the shortcut was rarely used so it was decided to abandon it?

Regardless, there is at least one Revit user in the Autodesk Forum's that misses it and noticed right away!

Edit 04/05/2024 - Trey at Autodesk replied that they'll work to get them back in as soon as they can.

Can't Delete Toposolid Points and Guardian

 A quick follow up post on my prior post about deleting toposolid points. Scott Brown isolated the issue his team was having to their use of a 3rd Party tool called Guardian. When they disabled it they could delete points as expected again. If your firm uses Guardian too then check in with them about an update to see if it has been resolved yet.