Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Ghost Tooltips Be Gone

This seems to be a recent phenomenon. I noticed it first in Navisworks and then occasionally in Revit or AutoCAD. What is that you ask? Well it's hard to describe. When I use a command and then move my cursor away from it to do something else a tooltip appears for that previous command. In some cases I didn't use the command, merely my cursor was hovering over it before doing something else. It's weird.

I've tried disabling tooltips entirely but there doesn't appear to be a way to do that in Navisworks, or if it is possible I've not stumbled on to it yet. Similar for Revit and AutoCAD.

A practical very recent example, I used Refresh and after it completed I moved my cursor to the far right side of the screen to activate the Properties panel and the tool tip for Refresh appeared. The only way the tip will disappear is to move my cursor back over the tool. However in the fifteen or so minutes since that happened no tips have appeared no matter what I do. It is so weird and annoying.

Strange stuff, maybe it's just my PC...

Wednesday, August 09, 2023

Manage Cloud Models Dialog in Revit

The Manage Cloud Models dialog that Revit displays is a terrible design. Utterly ineffectual.

No search, no options for changing from icons to a list and it seems that it fails to list all of our projects at times. A very disappointing experience trying to use it...EVERY time. I have a sense of dread every time I think I need to open it. Lately I think...what's the point, it's not going to show me what I need.

Sigh...

Monday, August 07, 2023

Delete Toposolid Points

Seems like a simple thing but only the Delete key on the keyboard will delete a point in the toposolid, at least while using Revit 2024.1. No, the Backspace key doesn't "delete" either.

Tuesday, August 01, 2023

2024.1 Schema Warning

Glynnis with IDEATE posted information at the Autodesk User Forums that you should be aware of if you're using 3rd party tools and are going to deploy, or have deployed, Revit 2024.1. Ironic that this update is the one that has caused a potential disruptive issue since many firms wait for this point release to deploy. I've taken her initial post and copied it here, go read the entire thread for any more recent commentary. Thanks Glynnis!

There's been a lot of chatter about the Schema error that was landing in a post about What's New in 2024.1 so I took the good suggestion from @RobDraw to start a new thread here.

What is a Schema?

I welcome other people's input on this, but from my perspective, a schema can be best thought of as a blob of Revit metadata, held in Extensible Storage workset, that has a unique GUID. This blob of data is most often used by 3rd party developers but is also used by Autodesk (or companies acquired by Autodesk). The structure of that data, per each GUID, needs to be the same. If a developer alters the data structure, then a new GUID is needed to avoid the error.

What causes a Schema error?

In order to experience a Schema error, you need to have two files (or a file with a linked file) that have the same schema GUID but with a different data structure. Whichever file is opened first 'wins' within the active Revit session. This makes solving these problems REALLY hard because the file that displays the error is not necessarily the file with the 'problem' schema. It's also why this problem seems to be squashed sometimes and then resurface later. If you only ever open one Revit file at a time within a session of Revit, you'll never see the error.

What's the New Problem

The new problem seems to relate to Revit files that are upgraded to 2024/2024.1. The 11 July Revit 2024.1 release notes show that in there were changes made to the API to try and fix an outstanding schema condition. It feels like that change may have created some new conditions. We have an open case with Autodesk on this issue.


This is the latest schema article on this at Autodesk

Autodesk Revit schema issue article