Autodesk Revit Sunrise - Online Preview

The Autodesk blog Inside the Factory announced yesterday that Autodesk Revit Sunrise is now available. Want to download it now? CLICK HERE

If you're curious about what the next major release of Revit might include it IS an indication of projects they have been working on. That probably can be translated into "we'll probably see it in the next release". If I grab my crystal ball and look back to last year I see a Autodesk Revit Sundial. If I gaze into it longer I also see Revit 2015 R2 arrive in September (2014). Hmmm...I wonder if history might repeat itself?

Need a little more info to check it out first? Here's a list of features you can check out...(do read their post for explanations)

• Global parameters
• Cancel print/export
• Occlusion culling
• Color fills
• Family Editor
• Sheet Issues/Revisions dialog
• Revit links
• Worksharing
• View range
• Underlay
• Filters dialog
• Reference plane names
• Perspective views
• Spot slope
• Wall joins
• Display of walls
• Railings
• Autodesk Raytracer rendering
• Energy Analysis:
• Electrical settings
• Assigning a distribution system
• Display of ducts

Need a Picture to help? Here's a screen shot of the proposed View Range Dialog.

Nice to include more graphics. It would be cool if they changed the dialog for ceiling plan view range orientation. Cooler still if there were some grips we could drag up and down to adjust the planes eh?

Family Thumbnail View

One little thing you can do to improve the user experience when choosing and loading a family is to prepare the thumbnail view nicely. Revit will use the view that is open (has focus) when you save and close the file to generate the preview we see in the Open Family dialog or in Window's Explorer. Here's an example of a preview for a family in the stock pipe fittings folder.

I really can't tell what it is at all. The connector graphics are making it impossible for me to tell what sort of fitting I'll get when it is loaded. Here's how it looks after I tweak it a bit. Now it is a lot easier to tell what it is.

Most of the stock Revit content already has a 3D view called View 1. If I make a family from scratch I create one too. I make sure I open this view and close others before Saving and Closing the file when I'm done working on it. I caution users to be wary of content that does not have a clean preview, at least if they are using anything I've made. Messy means not done or not ready. Ideally content that isn't ready shouldn't be in a live folder at all but sometimes we get distracted and our own rules or habits aren't followed.

To clean up a family's preview:

• Use Temporary Hide/Isolate to control what is visible in the view.
• Use Thin Lines. (I hide host walls and faces for example)
• Use Detail Level setting to show off the family.
• Use Zoom Region to maximize the important geometry we see in the preview.

It's all meant to make it easier to understand what the family is and decide if it is the one they really want.

If you examine the stock door folder you'll see that most of the families have been oriented so that View 1 is a Front or Back elevation so you can see the panel design head on. I usually prefer a 3D axon orientation because it can give me a better sense of the frame and other proportions. Try to pick an orientation that best describes the family from the user's perspective, whatever will help them decide that this family is the correct family to load.

A cool feature of KiwiCodes Family Browser is that you can use your own custom Thumbnail images. This means you can set your custom library up in a project setting and take advantage of Graphic Styles like shadows and ambient shadows. This image is a sample of Aaron Maller's handiwork for Beck Group. His thumbnails include context and it really helps to understand what the family is, what features it has. He's put more effort into this than anyone I know of so far and I really like it.

It's the little things in life, every little bit helps the end user experience.

Hide Those Connectors

A recent question at Revitforum.org asked about hiding the connectors in family content for the sake of cleaner previews.

To accomplish this:

• In the view you want to use as the preview
• Select the connectors
• Click Temporary Hide/Isolate
• Choose Hide Element
• Save the file
• Close the file

Autodesk Research

The beauty of an RSS feed is that new stuff gets added to a pile and I can sift the pile really fast instead of traveling to each and every blog I'm aware of. The time it takes just waiting for web pages to load even in this day and age of fairly ubiquitous and fast access would add up to serious time. I use Google's Reader, maybe not the best but it works for me either on the notebook PC or my phone. It isn't as rich an experience as actually visiting the blog itself but if there is some meat in a feed then it's a simple matter to go there for more.

Aaron at D|C|CADD's BLOG posted a bit about Project Dasher, an Autodesk Research project they are sharing some information and videos for now on their site. I heard about Dasher during a marketing session I attended on Monday at Autodesk University. It was pretty cool looking but the discussion was fairly brief so it slipped my mind since.

Here's their description for Project Dasher:
...snip
Project Dasher is a web-based application that helps to augment existing Autodesk® Revit® design models with real-time building submeter and sensor data on electricity and occupancy. Using meter and sensor data, Autodesk Project Dasher aims to demonstrate the value of integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) and building instrumentation to provide building owners more insight into how existing buildings perform in real time and throughout the lifecycle of the building.
...snip

Here's what their site has to say about what Autodesk Research is:

...snip
Autodesk is working to help solve some of the world's most complex design problems, from pressing ecological challenges to the development of scalable smart infrastructure. Designers use Autodesk tools to not only create plans for buildings, for example, but also to simulate their impact on the environment and track their performance over time.

Autodesk Research is unique in that we are dedicated to innovation and discovery in this realm. Our interests range from methods to help users learn powerful digital prototyping tools, to visualization and simulation techniques which enable designers to achieve new levels of performance. Advancing the state of the art in human-computer interaction, computer graphics, and digital design technology, we collaborate openly with researchers at leading universities around the world.
...snip

My first thought after reading this was how does this connect to Autodesk Labs? It doesn't appear to literally connect and I didn't see any mention of a connection but I suspect Labs can get involved once research moves beyond academic research and can become a product focused concept? Enough conjecture on my part.

You can watch a Project Dasher VIDEO. I didn't see a way to embed it here because it isn't hosted at You Tube. There is a second VIDEO which is an interview titled "Extending BIM to Real-Time Energy Performance Monitoring".

Dept. of Wishes - Make the Active Preview the Default View to Open

A post at AUGI reminded me of a little feature that Revit has and something that would make it a bit nicer still. When we Save a file or use Save As to create a new file we can use the Options button to display this dialog.

When we choose a specific view Revit will only display the chosen view as our preview when we see it in the Open dialog. It does not however force that view to be displayed when the project is opened. That is the essence of the wish, to be able to tell Revit which view to open by default instead of whichever view was open when the file was closed. I created a video to explain it a bit more in detail.