Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Warning Message - Highlighted Elements are Joined but do not Intersect

Revit is telling you that someone used the Join Geometry feature on elements but now they no longer touch each other, intersect. When they were moved apart a warning appeared but the user didn't click Unjoin Elements (see image), they clicked OK so now Revit is keeping track of the joined relationship; doing what it was told to do.


If they/you/we do this enough we'll end up with a lot of warnings to review here.


You/they need to fix the problem, Unjoin the geometry, no warning anymore. The Warnings dialog even gives us a way to fix it, click Unjoin Elements. Fixing accumulated errors like this will improve performance. Please don't regard the warning as irrelevant, it's not!

Better still, avoid the problem in the first place, click Unjoin the first time the message appears instead.

Oh, I should also mention that clicking Unjoin Elements in the Warnings dialog does Unjoin them BUT it doesn't clear that warning from the list until you close the dialog and open it again. That's a little confusing.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Hold Off Warning Rescinded

Kyle wrote in a more recent reply:

The Cloud Worksharing reliability issue associated with the Revit 2016 UR4 update has been resolved. The issue was resolved on the service itself, so no updates to the downloadable files were required.

Teams are encouraged to download and install the latest update, as it contains valuable enhancements to reliability and workflow
.

Hold off on Revit 2016 Update Release 4

If you are using Revit 2016 and Collaboration for Revit (C4R) then you'll want to hold off installing the most recent update. Kyle shared the following in a post at RFO.

We have identified a compatibility issue with the latest Revit 2016 UR4 update, which is causing degraded Sync with Central (SWC) reliability for those that installed it. We have confirmed this issue internally, and are working to resolve the issue within our services.

Teams are advised to defer installing the latest Revit 2016 UR4 until we have resolved the matter on the Cloud Worksharing service. We apologize for the disruption this may be causing, and are urgently working to resolve the matter.

Friday, March 25, 2016

Revit Incompatible with Custom Display Scales

Revit appears to be incompatible with custom display scaling greater than 150%. If you've got a relatively new computer you may have a display that exceeds what Revit is currently designed to support, though I've seen reports of AutoCAD having difficulty with it too, FWIW.


I've been encountering complaints from people getting bizarre graphic display behavior when attempting to use scaling between 150-200%. It seems to be happening a bit more in the Apple camp of users that are running Windows via Boot Camp. I've even heard about a few that won't work above 100% at all.

If you're in this boat then I advise taking some Dramamine, set it back to 100%, and check your video card, settings, and drivers.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Revit 2016 Missing Content after Installation

If you've installed Revit and then found your library was empty you're not alone. I haven't figured out who is to blame for this yet because the people I've encountered with this problem so far haven't been very computer savvy, haven't been able to recall what they did during installation or they didn't install it themselves. When the Revit installation is underway it is important to select which content is installed. I suspect that this is either overlooked or something has prevented that task from being completed. During installation it is important to make sure you visit this section.


The content is a separate section below the Revit application itself. It is important to review the settings lurking within the Content section too.


Assuming that was done then we should find the content installed in the default location or where we decided to put the content ourselves. This is the default location with individual sub-folders within it for each unique library you've selected:

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RVT 2016\Libraries\US Imperial or US Metric etc

Still no content in this location, or the one you chose instead?

Revit downloads the content libraries you've selected to install so perhaps this task is being blocked by anti-virus, user permissions or internet access/restrictions? That's quite a conundrum for many people.

Making it a little more difficult, when you visit a related help document at Autodesk's Knowledge Network it describes the situation for 2015 and tells us to use the Control Panel Add/Remove feature. Fair enough for 2015 but for 2016 I find no such option for Content, despite the article specifically claiming it is similar for 2016. In fact I don't find such an option for 2015 either on my computer. FWIW, I only see an entry for Autodesk Content Service.


RAND IMAGINiT has made some of the content available via a blog post of theirs. It might help to try downloading it from their FTP site.

Autodesk Seek also hosts Revit content including its own library. If you visit the site, at the bottom of the page they have links for each disciplines library.


While I can download specific families and templates from that location I don't see an easy way to just download the entire library. They used to provide a page where we could just browse for and download a library bundle, for any of the localised versions too. I've not found its equal yet.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Temporary Dimensions and Activate Dimensions

I've written about Temporary Dimensions and the Activate Dimension button in the past (2007-9), these are some posts that discuss them.

Space Bar Subtle Effect on Temporary Dimensions
Dept. of Reviteristics - Activate Dimensions
Activate Dimensions
Activate Dimensions - Redux

Temporary Dimensions don't appear when two or more elements are selected. When that happens you should see the Activate Dimensions button appear on the Options Bar.


Temporary dimensions also don't respond to families that host nested shared families. That's because these families are also regarded by Revit, under the hood, as a selection of two or more elements.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Revit Updates for 2015 and 2016

New updates are available for both Revit 2015 and 2016 now. The latest for 2015 is Update Release 13 and we're up to Update Release 3 for 2016. Hopefully the Autodesk Application Manager let you know already, it did for me this time. Visit your Autodesk Account page to download them if not.

These are the three related release note files that The Revit Clinic shared the other day.

Revit 2015 Update Release 13 readme and release notes

Revit 2015 Update Release 13 for R2 readme and release notes

Revit 2016 Release 2 Update 3 readme and release notes








Thursday, March 10, 2016

Type Catalog - Family Type Parameter and Missing Spaces

This is for the Department of I could kick myself or Dept. of why can't I remember this.

These are two images of the same Type Catalog, one works and the other doesn't. The key location of the issue/difference is marked in yellow. This first one won't work.


Two little spaces on either side of the colon, like this: Family Name : Family Type.


Note to self, remember this next time around knucklehead!

Monday, March 07, 2016

Line Styles Embedded in Families

Reading a thread at AUGI tonight prompted this post. Line Styles aren't a thing in Revit families, the option is disabled if you attempt to review them while in the Family Editor UI.


The family discussed in the thread seems innocent enough until it is loaded into a project file. These are the line styles that are in the default template (imperial).


This is the same dialog after loading the family; nearly 100 more (98) line styles show up.


The culprit is Transfer Project Standards (TPS). It is easy to transfer line styles from a project to a family. We need Object Styles in families not Line Styles. Make sure you don't select Linestyles when/IF you use TPS.


If you've already got many rogue Line Styles you can delete them from the project and in Revit 2016 you can select more than one at a time and click Delete. Just remember if Delete is disabled then you've got a built-in (system) line style selected.

What about cleaning out the family itself? They don't give us a tool to do that. Purge Unused doesn't see them unfortunately. Robert Bell, in the AUGI Thread, offers a solution though. Load the bad family into a empty template (choose the None option for example). Delete all of the line styles you don't want. Then Save the family and overwrite the original. If the family is already loaded into your project just do the same thing, delete the line styles (it's just a little harder to tell) and Save the family to overwrite the original.

While you're at it, don't use TPS on Line Patterns, like shown in the image above. You'll probably get many more than you really want too. Those can be deleted a bit more easily though.

I checked the Autodesk Exchange Apps site to see if any offer a way to purge line styles from families. I found one that does it for projects but none that claim to do it for families; at least not based on searching for that criteria. It might be something Dynamo can be used to resolve; I'll have to check into that.

---------------------

Update 08/22/2016: Dale Bartlett has shared an app to purge these embedded line styles.
Update 05/09/2017: The file is no longer where Dale shared it, I don't know where it is now so I've removed the link.
Update 05/15/2017: Dale provided a new link to a 2017 compatible version VIA THIS URL.

Friday, March 04, 2016

Worksharing Display - Owners

The first thing I do when a project is open, to get a sense of things going on around me in the model, is to toggle on Worksharing Display - Owners (see image). That gives me a quick snapshot of who else is working on things around me.


If I see a color on anything I thought I'd start working on then there is no point attempting to edit those, I'll just get a warning from Revit in response. The mere presence of colors indicate other people are around, in this context. Hovering over one element brings up a larger tool tip than the usual information we get, including which person is currently editing it.

I use the Worksets option for Worksharing Display just to see if things are obviously assigned incorrectly. Again, hovering over any element tells me what workset it is assigned to in either the normal tool tip (first thing displayed, unless Design Options are involved too) or the expanded one for Worksharing Display.

I think most people forget about or overlook the Gray inactive worksets option too. That helps me cope with my nemesis Active Workset because it reminds me which workset is active because the things around me are either bold or not (see image).


Prompted by a reply to a thread at RFO.