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. 

Shared Coordinates - Autodesk Reference Information

It's September already...no posts in August...time flies.

This post is brief, merely a referral. If you struggle with understanding Revit's coordinate system then THIS LINK, at Autodesk's Knowledge Base (KB) site for this subject might be helpful. I like the images and some of explanations or interpretations it offers.

Check it out, it may help!

Edit: I wrote this on Sept. 7th originally, received an unflattering comment about it, returned it to draft, revised it, and restored it to published on Sept. 14th.

I was lazy. I thought the information was an addition to their formal help documentation. When I saw the comment I read through the KB article again and realized that it was written by an Autodesk User Group member and submitted to their Knowledge Base system, which happens to be curated by different people than the product documentation group. I might quibble with some subtlety of it here or there but its approach may help someone get a grasp on the bigger picture. Just keep in mind that its claims are not gospel, nor written by Autodesk's own people.

View Range Help Doc Image

I was pointing out the View Range help documentation earlier and noticed that the plan view seems to have Thin Lines on, no particular difference in the lineweights depicted. At the very least it is a bit anemic looking. I think it would be a little more helpful to be more obvious which lines are affected by the Cut Plane by showing the Cut lineweight, like for the walls.

Fwiw, I think View Depth should be moved above the Primary Range when the View Range dialog is opened for Ceiling Plan Views...and maybe called View Upth? :)

Revit INI UI Calculator

When Revit 2014 offered a single installation (just called Revit) with all of the discipline specific Revit features included (aka "one box") the development team provided a calculator to determine the correct variable to assign a parameter value in the Revit.ini. This value is used to configure the user interface according to the disciplines that we want users to see listed on the Ribbon tabs. Since there are numerous combinations that are possible they are using "bit" logic to arrive at a single unique value that defines how the ribbons should be configured. The calculator provides a simple way to arrive at that number. Check the boxes and use the value at the bottom.

When the help documentation team began migration to the present online help delivery software (moving from the previous WikiHelp format) they decided to abandon the calculator since it seemed few people were really interested in it or using it. I complained that as software developers they ought to realize that it was already serving a niche among niches in the first place. It remains a niche item and I'm grateful they've recently taken the time to restore/re-code it to work in the new help documentation system. It's subtle but every little bit helps.

It can be seen HERE.

Autodesk WikiHelp is not a Wiki Anymore

For the last month or so the Autodesk Revit documentation team has been transitioning to a new system for help documentation. When you click the help icon (?) on the Info Bar in Revit you'll find a new format and different help web domain: help.autodesk.com.

You probably are well aware that a couple years ago they changed things to focus on a wiki based format that moved product help resources to a web based approach instead of the past Windows based .CHM help file format. This affords them an ongoing ability to deal with documentation. The results of their work appears online immediately and the very next time you click to access it. It's no longer tied only to software release cycles. It's certainly necessary to make documentation available as new releases become available but editing and additions no longer have to wait for the next release, nor do they have to consider issuing software updates just to distribute help documentation changes.

Wandering off on a tangent, people are often reticent to rely on help documentation or manuals, and not just for software. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for that bad habit. Personally, many times the quality of the information is lacking so it's tempting to ignore what I don't find useful. Overall, I find that the quality of the documentation for Revit has been steadily improving. They revisit topics and that means ignoring the information means I miss those changes. That written, I still think the help documentation tends to explain things without useful context. For example, Levels have a parameter called Story Above.

This is the description for the Story Above parameter on the help site (with my snarky comments inline).

"From Revit Help"

Used in conjunction with the Building Story parameter, this parameter indicates the next building story for the level. (Implied by the name) By default, Story Above is the next highest level for which Building Story is enabled (NOT necessarily the relevant floor above). To access a list of all building stories above the current one, click in the field. (Ooh, I have to click on it??) The Story Above does not need to be the next higher level or building story. (Cool, anything else I should know?) If the selected level is deleted later or if Building Story is disabled, any levels with this level as their Story Above will revert to default behavior. (Still confused, why should I care again?)

That description does not really tell me why I should care about this parameter. It does tell us that it has something to do with this other parameter called Building Story. The first time I saw these I imagined that the stair tools might use them to guess more accurately what the base and top constraints should be. You may have noticed that Revit just assigns whatever the next higher level is to the top constraint. This means that if I've got an intermediate level for something like a stage platform that isn't really a building story on its own the stair tool thinks that's the next level instead of the next real building story.

If I happen to read further down in the topic I notice that there is a link for Exporting a Project to IFC. Fwiw, if I use search for Building Story the first result is also Exporting a Project to IFC. When I read about that I learn from this section:

"From Revit Help"

Split walls and columns by level allows you to divide multi-level walls and columns by level. When you use this option, Revit cuts the walls and columns by each level that is defined as a building story {my emphasis}. (See Level Instance Properties.) For elements whose base level is a non-building story level, Revit exports them using the next lower building story as their base level, with an appropriate offset. Revit only exports levels for which the Building Story parameter is enabled, unless no levels are defined as building stories. In that case, Revit exports all levels that are used as base levels for walls and columns.

It would be a LOT more "helpful" if the description for Story Above mentioned that our day to day work inside Revit won't be affected in the slightest by this parameter BUT if we export to IFC it becomes important. The same is true of the Building Story parameter. Features and additions like these that have very specific implementation but opaque intentions just add to the complexity of Revit. If I wrote the documentation I'd have started off with something like, "This is only relevant for Exporting to IFC", if in fact that is true. If it isn't then what else are they not telling us?

Back to the subject of the help format. So far so good. It looks pretty good. The search results provide a portion of the subject to help see if it is relevant enough to focus on. The speed is pretty good. I don't like it's preference for Internet Explorer which I only use when forced to. {Per Jeff's comment this is defined by the browser setting in the Revit.ini (there is one for default and one per user profile) and we can choose which browser we prefer.}

At the moment the lack of access to a unique URL for each topic is annoying. I've read that this is something they are working on so eventually it won't be an issue. For now we have to rely on the Share widget to access one of the social networking share options.

I find that Twitter and Delicious are the only two options the show the unique URL without having to log into the social site first.

This means a Twitter account isn't required to access the URL so I can share it with someone else. Just be careful not to include the "Reading:" portion of the URL information (see the image above). As a member of online Revit user groups like AUGI and RevitForum.org I often want to share a link to the help documentation with another user to answer their question. It's tedious to do it at the moment but eventually it won't be.

Then again it's this kind of subtle "miss" that make me wonder what goes through their minds as they prepare to unveil the next great help concept from Autodesk. Maybe they are jaded themselves about how much people actually rely on their work? I hope not. If unique URL's were another week away then perhaps holding off a week would have made for better first impressions? Sometimes I think Seth Godin's "Ship it" is misconstrued to to mean ship it regardless of fit and finish and readiness.

If you rely on Google searches to find help documentation it will take some time for Google to index their new help site. Once it is indexed we should be able to rely on Google searches too. I read that the documentation for older releases is being transitioned to the new site format now so if you are looking for 2012 help you'll be directed to 2014 information for now. The standard line is offered, "We apologize for any inconvenience".

What is Revit and BIM Resource

Alex Gore and his firm F9 Productions have created, as part of their company website, a resource for people that are just getting started with Revit and BIM or those who are still trying to decide what to do.

The site offers these items of interest:

• A brief description of important modeling concepts
• A PDF example of a complete Construction Documentation set
• The Revit file of the above mentioned PDF
• A 2012 Revit Residential Template to start your own creations
• Links to tutorials for further help

A skeptic might read this and regard it as purely a marketing move. Alex's primary motive is to share the wealth with the community so to speak. For example a frequent question or concern people have is being able to see a completed set of documents. This is based on their fear, uncertainty or doubt that another software application, that is so intrinsically tied to how they make money, will truly be able to do what they need to do. So at the very least being able to examine their sample project and set may be useful, and if it is then the rest is "gravy". Have a look, see if you find something useful.

Workflow Audit

Seth Godin wrote a brief post today called Time for a Workflow Audit. It explains very simply one way people like me (Revit consultants) help others (and their firms) with Revit. As a consultant I tend to call it mentoring.

Seth wrote:

Go find a geek. Someone who understands gmail, Outlook, Excel and other basic tools. Pay her to sit next to you for an hour and watch you work. Then say, "tell me five ways I can save an hour a day." Whatever you need to pay for this service, it will pay for itself in a week.

Substitute Revit and/or Navisworks for gmail/Outlook, Excel and the rest, though I've occasionally even helped out with those "mundane" applications.

An aside... geeks and nerds combined are: a neek, a gerd, a gerk? I heard someone say that Nerds talk/think about doing cool techy stuff while geeks get cool techy stuff DONE. At least that's how I remember hearing it!

Help? Helped!

I got an email this morning alerting me to the fact that my post yesterday was a "perfect storm" of sorts. My post came on the heels of other users letting the "Factory" know something was amiss.

The web developers are always working to improve search speed etc. Some changes over the weekend resulted in 2012 information being left out of the search. This morning finds WikiHelp feeling much better!

Nice to have you back WikiHelp!

Help?

Observations about the new Wiki Help for Revit and other Autodesk products:

Internet Explorer 8 - some things just don't work. The controls to scroll move in the opposite direction and the cursor icon seems stuck on the "hand" for some reason. Okay I'm a bit behind, haven't installed IE9 yet.

[Edit: This bit is "knucklehead syndrome", my tablet device is the culprit for the interface change and me not being very observant. I'm leaving this because perhaps there is something in it that their web developer might find useful.]

Switch to Firefox 4 - all better...at least from the UI standpoint. Odd because Autodesk's web stuff almost always seems to have a preference to the IE browser.

As it turns out I never noticed the little "hand" cursor on my IE8 toolbar. I noticed it after recording the video. Clicking on it turns "on the hand" and that's when the page misbehaves. Turn it off and back to normal. There is no tooltip but turning it on allows you to use the mouse to scroll a web page. Turning it back off allows you to select text. I never noticed it before and have no idea how I turned it on earlier. Microsoft Word calls it "Panning Hand" so I imagine that IE8 should too? A bit more research yields, the "panning hand" becomes available in IE with tablet PC's, so my Wacom Intous 4 must be "adding" it.

I'd like one thing to always be true for help documentation. If I type in the name of a feature in the product I'd like the help search to return an actual topic, not this:

It's not like I made up the text string I chose, I pulled it from here:

Tried "Sun Path", also found in the Properties Palette for a view, no results found.
Tried "Title on Sheet" - I get a link to a tip to create a small 3D view submitted by a member of the User Experience Team

From my perspective I'd like to be able to take something that I'm curious about and find what help has to "say" about it. Since the Display Analysis Styles feature was new to 2011 and there is something more to look at with 2012 I was curious to see what the Help documentation had to "say". I wasn't surprised that I got my result. I'm used to it happening unfortunately. With the Wiki concept it nows becomes a question of whether or not I dare to start a section for it or not...or wait till "someone" else decides to.

Back to the thing that started this post, Display Styles for Analysis. There is a section for THIS. Since I searched for the text found in the Properties Palette I thought I'd use a simpler string now that I know that the topic exists. I tried "Display Style"... "Your search query did not return any results". Nuts! When I try entering the exact title for the topic displayed below...same result, zip nada.

Hoping for the day that the search functionality works!

Troubleshooting Graphics and Visualization

Harlan with The Revit Clinic posted that there are two new pages dedicated to helping users resolve graphics card and visualization issues.

Autodesk Support Sites
Tested Graphics Hardware List
Revit Graphic Card Troubleshooting Center
Revit Visualization Troubleshooting Center

Dept. of Reviteristics - Component or Loadable

For many years now Revit families have been called Components. The 2010 and 2011 release help documentation calls them Loadable families. I don't remember if 2009 started calling them this or not.

The ribbon offers us the Component tool however.

I see how loadable is more descriptive of how we get them into a project. I find it interesting that we have to think of them as components when we want to place them but as loadable when we need to design them and add them to a project. I suppose it isn't that hard to blur the distinction.

Language is fun!

Think Like Me

I spend most of my time teaching Revit actively in a class setting or one-on-one/one-on-few mentoring. I also end up doing it passively like with this blog or editing AUGI | AEC EDGE for example. One important thing (as instructor/teacher/writer/editor) I must do is connect with students/readers, in a manner that they relate to. Fortunately I manage to do this pretty well. I can't really expect 100% but it is a nice goal.

It is important to remember this bit of wisdom, Seth Godin wrote in his post today, "The problem, of course, is that people don't always think like you." His focus is on marketing your product but it applies pretty well to most anything you are trying to push uphill. I'll go so far as saying that anything Seth bothers to write is worth reading (if you think like I think).

You may not teach Revit but if you are using Revit you are probably trying to help it along, help co-workers etc...it's a good thing to keep in mind as you go about your day and try to help others along.

Revit 2010 Help Online

Posted today on the Inside the Factory. You can now read the help documentation online and even provide a hyperlink for an item/section to someone who is asking for help. Erik posted the following links in his blog post.

Revit Architecture
Revit Structure
Revit MEP

Web Database and Revit Inside

I'm writing this here because I don't want to muddy the waters at the Revit Inside blog with a new post. First, thanks to every firm that has asked to be on the list. It has grown steadily and even more so lately. The number of requests has tripled in the last few weeks. Which brings me to the point of this post.

I lack the knowledge and time to take the Revit Inside list to the next logical level. I'd like to be able to provide a searchable list that provides more information to visitors and even makes the process of getting added more automatic.

I've received a number of suggestions lately that indicate to me that the list has reached the tipping point where it ought to become a bit more mature and informative. Let's face it I was selfish, I made it easy for me, sort of. It is just a list of hyperlinks to web pages. The burden is completely on the visitor to do the research. I still believe that responsibility remains with the visitor but I could do a lot more to make it easier to do that research.

For example a firm could provide: (based on some suggestions)
How long have they been using Revit?
How many active projects?
How many Revit users?
How many completed projects?
How many projects involving other Revit firms? (collaboration experience)

These are just a few of the possibilities. I don't want to get into judging a firm myself and thereby possibly insult or alienate a firm and its staff. So the site would permit each firm to do their own "talking" through various criteria.

The first step toward doing this is using a database. That's "easy", I know how to make databases. What I lack is the web side of making it accessible. Currently the blog is easy, it is free and hosted by Google's Blogger. Making it a web application means hosting elsewhere and that means cost. To avoid advertising or other funding approaches I'd like to first look at economical approaches. I could use "kindred spirit" help with the web development side. Are "you" interested? Let me know via steve at aecadvantage dot com.

Thanks to those who have contributed ideas, thanks for caring enough to do so.

Cheers!

P.S. Thanks to Chuck, the inspiration for it (Revit Inside) in the first place.