Zoning Clearance Thoughts

A long time fellow Revit traveler reached out to me via Revit Lifeline last night asking about zoning clearance ideas. Where he lives and works they want designers to demonstrate the building is not too tall. They also want them to prove it doesn't extend into a zone that leans back into the site. All in all the code reduces the size of the building that can be built on any given property that falls under its jurisdiction.

I have heard and read about this concern many times over the years. But in response last night, I mocked up a quick example to see if it met his needs (waiting to hear back). I thought, "Blog post? I just posted something the other day...don't get carried away. Yeah, but you've only posted like twice this year slacker! So a blog post it is then..."

Here's a few images to ponder first. Pretty fancy house design eh? Doors and windows are so last century. I CAN design YOUR next home, just call when you're ready...operators are standing by.

The upper surface is a thin floor which is manipulated through Dynamo and Shape Editing. Lauren Schmidt's LandArchBIM blog is a very nice source for land techniques and I stole her graph ideas in this post to make it. Her post explains the technique relies on a sub-region to match whatever hardscape shape (property boundary in this case) is necessary. I used the floor's offset parameter to move it up above the surface by the zoning height required.

The front and back property boundary clearance requirement is built with a railing and profile. The fact that railings can be hosted by toposurface now opens this door wide. The surface form might not lend itself to a nice clean railing though, mileage will vary. You can see the rear railing is a little deformed in a couple spots. I built parameters into the profile so I could (using types) vary the height of the angle portion, change the angle, change the height above property (spring point of the lean) and the thickness of the railing.

I created a specific material to assign to it all so it can be mostly transparent.

My example is admittedly simplistic. How many property boundaries are really a simple rectangle? Pretty rare, about as rare as a purple unicorn that uses Revit? A front or rear boundary that has arcs and many segments will probably pose some issues creating a hosted railing. I can imagine things going wrong but I'll wait until I'm dealing with something specific to worry about that.

The file I mocked this up is in Revit 2020.2 and the dynamo graph (link has both RVT and Graph) is so simple that this screen shot would help you build it nearly a fast as downloading and opening it up. That's what I did with Lauren's example. You do need the packages I've circled.

Oh, the mockup has a massing element too, you'll have to turn massing on though. At first I thought I'd sweep a profile along the property edge defined by the upper surface. After I did that I thought of the railing. The learning curve is much less steep for a railing than massing, bonus being much faster too.

Decided to add a couple more images. I realized that I could have turned off the sub-category Interior Edges for Floors to hide the tessellation in the other images. It also occurred to me that another railing and profile configuration could deal with the top. I just created another type from my existing profile family to make it a 90 degree railing. A separate wide profile without a vertical portion would provide just a top surface. The floor and railing approach don't result in the same surfaces but within reason? If reason can be applied to a zoning requirement?

Here's both visible...

How Often to Synchronize with Central - SwC

Grist from a recent support conversation..."How often should we use Synchronize with Central (SwC)? We have some users doing it every minute."

Well....every minute seems a bit much...but...

The number of people actively working on a file affects the truth of the statement too. Every 30 minutes, for example, is too infrequent in my opinion. My own habit is to SwC as often as I complete any given task. I tend to take small bites, tasks that are 1-10 minutes, and SwC as soon as they are done.

More frequent SwC is less data transmission than every 30 minutes, potentially. Replacing or reloading a title block for 1,000 sheets is not a small task and probably ought to be done at lunch, advising people to create new local files afterward. Otherwise each sync will need to needlessly update each local file's copy of the sheet's title block too, for everyone. If that is done while they are all away they just inherit the new version of the project with their new local file.

It's all relative though because the transaction comparison between syncing that kind of change and closing a model and opening it later is subtle. In fact opening a file again might be slower, but reasonable, depending on how many people are involved. It can be justified though, especially if they are out of the project anyway such as out for lunch or after hours etc.

I think it is more important to be aware of other users also using SwC, than imposing a specific time requirement. When more than one person uses SwC at the same time Revit has to parse those changes and it does so, more or less, in a single threaded manner, not like a multi-thread OS (though they are improving that all the time) doing simultaneous tasks. It has to reconcile changes and move to others once it is satisfied it can finish successfully. The more people forcing Revit to do that at the same time the slower it gets for everyone. That's where the advice to schedule or increase the time between SwC came from. One client decided to build their own tool so users can see if someone is syncing. A button on their Quick Access Toolbar parked next to the SwC button is red when someone is syncing and green when nobody is. Green means go for it.

Any sort of "Every 30 minutes" rule is often an over simplification, a rule meant to be easy to implement. In practice it can be just as harmful as helpful. If I slip and go 60 minutes or longer then that starts to slow down SwC times for everyone else too. Pushing and pulling data through a pipe takes time, smaller chunks of data generally take less time and less time to reconcile with the model too.

I'd focus on developing awareness of other users syncing as the priority and it's increasingly important the more users that are working on the same project file.

Family Templates and Reference Plane Inequity

This is subtle but still a source of amusement or annoyance. Start a new family using the Generic Model template and try to copy an existing Reference Plane. Nope, the Copy tool is disabled.

Now try it with the Furniture template. Ah, Copy is enabled.

Try it in the Casework family template. You'll find Right, Left and Front Reference Planes are forbidden while the Center (Left/Right) and Back Reference Planes are not. That makes sense. Wait, what?

Okay, the rule is copying a Reference Plane working on furniture is okay and doing that in Generic Model templates = BAD? Doing it in the Casework template is, well it depends...

Actually the only rule is that you can expect some reference planes in some templates to be forbidden to copy while others are not affected by such thinking. Ralph Waldo Emerson cautioned us to avoid a foolish consistency. In this case a little more consistency wouldn't be bad.

...I'm not asking for all of them to be forbidden either...if you're wondering.

Visibility Pecking Order

Worth an echo. Ryan at The Revit Clinic wrote a post this morning that lists the order of power, the pecking order, the order in which visibility settings and override tools stack up...who wins when multiple things are applied. Good info, check it out! Here's the list...you need to read his post to get the graphics.

(10 is the lowest and 1 is the highest, using walls as an example)

1. Line Work Tool
2. Override Graphics in View > By Element > Halftone
3. Graphic Display Options – Silhouette Edges
4. Override Graphics in View > By Element
5. View Filters
6. View Depth – “Beyond” Line Style
7. Phasing Graphic Overrides
8. Visibility / Graphic Overrides > Override Host Layers > Cut Line Styles
9. Visibility / Graphic Overrides > Projection \ Cut Lines
10. Project Object Styles