Dept. of Wishes - Center Options Bar Options

I've often thought about this but don't recall complaining about it before. I "wish" that the options offered on the Options Bar were closer to the work at hand. Perhaps "center" all the options being offered by default, at least? Here's the Option for "Copy" when using the Mirror tool. It's soooo faaaar awaaaay from the work at hand. With the mirror tool I can use the CTRL key to toggle it on (if off) and off (if on). Still, if the options themselves were closer to the "action" that would be nice, no?

Autodesk Desktop App Up but Mostly Down

I was pleasantly surprised when Ada started working right after installing Revit 2018. It managed to work long enough to get most everything else installed. I wrote long enough because it attempted to apply FormIt updates for 2017 and 2018 yesterday and ended with failure to install messages.

No sign of Ada since and now I get a nice FormIt error when I launch Revit. I guess I'll just have to get along without it or Ada...until Revit 2019?

Autodesk Desktop Application - Again

Boy this app doesn't get much love. I've read a couple of posts elsewhere that are far less charitable than I've been. As I mentioned in the podcast I did with Bill (Grumpy Steve) I think it had a better name before when it was called Autodesk Application Manager. At least then the name suggested what it was meant to accomplish. Now its name is ambiguous at best and meaningless at worst.

A couple comments in response to my last whiny post pointed out that if I'd read the readme file for each update I would have realized that it would be necessary to uninstall the existing versions first.

My reaction? Okay my bad ... but then I thought that's not much of a application manager is it? Tell me there is an update but you need me to go elsewhere to read a document and uninstall the software so I can come back and run the update. I'm imagining that the user experience of applying an update to an app ought to be just a little bit like doing that for an app from the iTunes store?

Then again with its new name...it's not a manager anymore.

This morning a little progress though because I see AdA has started up AND there is another update indicated by the icon in my system tray.

I've already been told this application has an Update quite a few times now. Each time I've attempted to apply it, no success. It just shows up as available again the next time around.

This time I thought I'd listen to the advice offered in the comments I mentioned earlier. I clicked on the Readme link (blue text in the update listing). Instead of taking me to the readme document or the page that has it I find myself looking at the primary BIM 360 product page.

That's not what I expected (implied by the term Readme), nor is it helpful. Okay, I can deal with this. I'm reasonably resourceful (I think). I'll just go chasing after the update via the Knowlege Base. I run a search against each of the four BIM 360 applications listed ... nothing found. Okay?! Since it is for Revit 2015 maybe it's an update that is hiding under Revit 2015? Run a new search against that criteria instead ... yeah, you guessed it ... nothing found.

Yes, I submitted feedback through the built-in comment dialog that AdA has. That it has one built-in should be a clue I suppose.

I think, if AdA is going to tell me there is an update and make it worthwhile, it should do everything necessary to help me actually apply the update. For example, I was told (via comments) that it was necessary to un-install the existing versions of the other apps I was trying to apply an update for. I've since done that and applied the updates, great! The update item in AdA should have been formatted like this for example.

Better still the update should be smart enough to un-install the precedent software first, if it is required. It's not like there isn't a precedent of software updates doing that.

Since my most recent attempt to use the readme link ended with no joy, most likely just the victim of being assigned the wrong URL, it seems reasonable to provide the most important warning related to succeeding with an update, that it will be necessary to take separate action to remove the existing version first. Seems easy enough?

For now I'll just ignore the update since I won't be needing Revit 2015 this week. I'll see if it factors into my situation later, if it ever does.

Seek and Ye May Still Not Find

...may not find "Contentment"...

In the continuing disappointment that is Seek, please stop making it so easy to pick on you. This is the tale of a lowly pipe fitting, a vent cap. It was encouraging when I typed the criteria "Vent Cap" and it returned one result and it matched!

I downloaded the bugger right quick. Loaded it into the project and was met with "nope you can't use this fitting Steve" messages whichever way I tried to use it. I took a closer look at the family. Oh, it's looking for a lookup table file called SV-159.csv. Funny, Seek didn't offer me that (note above image again).

The fitting is from Charlotte so I wandered over to their site and found their original version.

I downloaded the zip file that contains these files.

I put the .csv file in the Lookup Table folder, still no joy. Turns out that there is an error in the family, how the revolve is defined. While editing the family, when I try flexing the diameter I get this error message.

When I look more closely at the revolve the axis and the sketch is just slightly past the Center (Right/Left) Reference Plane.

Move it over every so slightly and test, it works. Really subtle. So a novice Revit MEP user's experience with this family? It was a pain in the butt to track down for me...and I've got a few years experience under my belt. If this was a 1:100 experience I wouldn't even bother to mention it. It isn't. :(

Family Category and Parameter Dialog

Sure wish this guy was more flexible!

This is a minor thing but it suggests that someone assumes that visiting this dialog is a pretty rare event. It is a rare event for someone working inside the project environment all day long. It's a pretty constant stop when making content for a day or week... a living. It is nice that the dialog stretches overall. It would be nicer still to be able to stretch the area dedicated to Family Parameters.

In Search of a Side Door Managing Links

I wrote about the Manage Links dialog yesterday. Something else has been bugging me about it so here's another post. I'd love a side door to Import a file from the Manage Links dialog!!! It would be nice to be able to click Import File when I've realized that I need to do that instead of closing the dialog and then clicking the front door buttons for the task. Each tab could have its own side door for the appropriate file type. Crazy?

There are other precedents like the Materials browse button in the Edit Assembly dialog for walls, floors, roofs, ceilings. Another precedent, the browse button for accessing Assembly Code data?

See, not so crazy me thinks!!

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.