Tagging Elements and their Area

Revit allows us to tag rooms and spaces to display their area. If I'm tempted to do the same for Walls, Floors, Ceilings or Roofs the list of available system parameters (built into Revit) does not offer Area. Revit MEP users can tag a Duct's area.

It seems to me a bit arbitrary to disallow the tagging of data that is part of the element. We can see it in the element properties and include it in schedules. While a schedule is an ideal way to summarize data a floor plan is useful to provide context AND display a variety of information, like area.

It would be excellent to see more parameters unshackled.

Ceiling Plans and Generic Model Families

A bit of inequity exists for Generic Model families. The casework and specialty equipment category have no problem projecting information into a RCP plan as long as some portion of the geometry is "cut" by the view's cut plane. The same family geometry that works for those two categories won't work the same if assigned to the category Generic Model. Seems unfair to me :(

Schedule Features Not Available

When you examine the Appearance properties of a schedule, say for doors or windows, you are teased with a couple options that are inaccessible.

Those are only accessible when you create/edit a title block family and deal with a Revision Schedule.

Only revision schedules can fill out Bottom-to-Top and/or have a fixed schedule height assigned, sorry!

[Edit: Oh, when I highlighted the images I included the check box for "blank row before data", obviously that is available in either schedule situation. I should have limited the width of the box.]

Managing Point Cloud Files

I've been working with a bit more than 200 point cloud files lately. That means I've been negotiating with the Manage Links dialog a fair bit. It's fun...

First of all, there is no way to import multiple point cloud files once. I've already mentioned previously that Revit shifts the first point cloud import (index to .pcg format) so that the overall z,y,z extents are centered at the origin of the project file. This means you need to carefully sort that out before you go nuts modelling.

Next, the Manage Links dialog doesn't sort the files alpha/numerically, it keeps them in the order that you import them. That might be nice if I were concerned about "when" I imported something. This before that I suppose? Practically speaking it's a pain in the bottom to "find" a scan later. In the video I show five. Imagine scrolling a bit.

Which brings me to re-sizing the dialog. They've been diligently fixing these over the last few releases. The Manage Links dialog does re-size (stretch/contract) and all the tabs information within does too, except...you guessed it...the Point Clouds data frame. This just adds insult to injury when I'm hunting for a scan and they aren't "in order"...and the frame I'm hunting in is a fixed size.

I find that making sure I've got something is easier in the Visibility/Graphics dialog instead.

That's stretchy and the order is sorted!! Oh, Mr. application specialist or product designer, please don't take that as an opportunity to leave the Manage Dialog the way it is...PLEASE!

Last item of frustration...for now, the file location of a point cloud doesn't have the option for absolute OR relative. It's just absolute. So pass a file along to someone else and they've got to fix the path of every point cloud file. It was so much fun to do the first time, I've got to SHARE!!

Okay you know I'm frustrated if I bother to MAKE a VIDEO too right?

Yes, it occurs to me that they didn't expect me to load 200+ .pcg files into a project file. If you are working with a few files, no big deal. If Revit let me load and position the files reliably/repeatably I would have been willing to work with a smaller data set and load/unload as I needed things. As such, once I got a point cloud in place I was really reticent to risk it getting out of whack again.

From a performance standpoint Revit is rather ambivalent about it all surprisingly. Each scan (.pcg) file was created from a FARO .fls file that contained between 25-50 million points (ish) and weighed in at about 1 MB each. The .pcg files ended up about twice as large as the original .fls files (roughly). Fwiw, I did assemble them into a separate project file and linked it to help resolve the positioning issues I had. Also to keep them out of the main project file.

So if you are one of the few that noticed my tweet ten days ago about my personal outlook being cloudy, now you know.

Dept. of Unfair - Pipes and Ducts and the Workplane

It's been a buggy week! Bummer! Walls and lines recognize the presence of the work plane grid being visible. Ducts and pipes however don't. This means we can't use the work plane grid to sketch ducts or pipes according to the grid orientation.

Technically we CAN use the work plane gird IF we are willing to set duct and pipe elevations at zero. Revit sees the work plane grid when the ducts are getting sketched at the work plane elevation, which is zero, if assigned to the Level. Hmmm, I suppose I could sketch a reference plane in section, name it, and then assign it as the work plane for the plan view I want to use and then turn on the grid, ow my eye!!

It would be helpful and nice if it were possible without any shenanigans. Here's a little video to explain what I'm writing about.

Dept. of Unfair - Filters in RAC/RME and RST

First off this post does not only apply to 2010, it also applies to 2009.

In RAC & RME filters can be applied to elements according to parameters associated with that element or elements. When you select the Filter tool you are presented with this dialog.

You choose a parameter, a condition, which element(s) to affect and name it. In Visibility/Graphics you can add the Filter to the view. Once added you can alter the appearance of the affected elements or even turn them off.

In RST filters do that AND you can build selection sets and use those as a filter too! When you start the Filter tool in RST you get the dialog hiding behind the foreground dialog. You get this foreground dialog when you click NEW.


So are you getting annoyed yet? With RME we use filters extensively to manage the appearance of duct and pipe according to the system they belong to. With RAC we use them to alter the appearance of plans for "FFE" (Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment) requirments and fire/life safety documentation to name just a couple.

Imagine you could build a filter by just selecting a number of elements instead? Select this, that and the other thing over there...okay now you are part of a filter and you can do all the same override stuff!! Very nice!! When you enter into the "Select" mode you get a new contextual Ribbon tab that looks like this.

Similar to Groups you can add/remove elements from the Selection Set. I did notice that the Filter tool isn't available while in this mode. This makes the Multiple check box on the Options Bar a bit anemic since you can't use Filter to remove a category of elements after using a crossing selection window. But then maybe getting to use the Filter tool while using the Filter feature would be "redundant"?? If so I'd have to post this in my Dept. of Redundancy Dept.?

I have to ask the obvious question...does someone think that Revit Architecture & MEP couldn't use this feature too? That said, I believe that this is the "Selection Sets" extension that was released for RST in past years getting incorporated into the native code of RST. It's a shame that it isn't in the others. Perhaps next release!?!