Irreconcilable Differences

In the current build (Release 8.1 build 20051214_2200) there appears to be a compatibility issue between the two types of structural beam families. There are two templates to make them as shown in the image below.


When you have both types of families loaded, place a Complex and Trusses.rfa. Then sketch a Beams and Braces.rfa family. Then try to place a new truss instance. You should get this error message. The only workaround I have settled on so far is to use a Generic Model category instead which is unfortunate. I've submitted this to support and am waiting to see if they can reproduce the error.

Hope this saves someone a little troubleshooting time.

Need a Watermark?

At present it isn't possible to create a watermark with text on a sheet so that it is behind the drawing itself. That is, to allow the linework of the drawing to write over the top of the words of the watermark. Text wins! Drawing loses!

Here's one way you can...yes, work around warning!

Create a text string in AutoCAD...yes I said AutoCAD...at the desired plotted size in model space. Then import and link this string into a Legend View set to a scale of 1:1. Change the dwg setting to Background.

Now you can place this legend view on any sheet you need it on and it will be masked by the model and annotation but still be present. Since it is linked any update to the dwg file will show up in the legend view as well. Here's the result as well as examples of some alternatives that don't in view.

Propagate Changes to Grid Lines

If you are getting used to the 3D/2D behaviour of datum elements in Revit you may still not be very familiar with the Propagate Extents button.

When you apply an override to a grid in one view you can tell Revit to apply the same change in other similar views. When you select a grid for example, the button appears, click it and a dialog box will appear that offers you other views the change could be applied to.

Here's the result...


You can apply this override to several grid objects at one time for example. Very handy!!

Edited: AUGI member Tim Gibson asked a question about this feature today as a result of this post. When the 3D extents of a grid is beyond a crop boundary the Propagate Extents feature no longer works. As long as we keep the 3D extents within the crop boundary it will work.

Carl Bass is New Autodesk President and CEO

A hearty congratulations goes to Carl Bass formerly the Chief Operating Officer of Autodesk! Read the article HERE

Carl has maintained a presence in the Revit community by visiting classes at AU, the mixer's and even an occasional post at the AUGI Revit community forums. Thanks for the attention Carl!

Congratulations again, Cheers!

Best wishes to Carol Bartz on her new role and getting her golf handicap back where she wants it! Thanks for keeping the heat on Revit!

Tom Dorner starts Blog

His initial post is just a welcome/introduction message but look for future posts that angle from his unique professional background. Looking forward to your insight Tom!

His site is: Reviteer Check it out!

News at 9:48 (SOM + Z = Wow!)

Finally a message I could understand made it in from Freddy. He's learned that my friend (me bragging!) Chris Zoog has decided to join SOM (Skidmore Owings & Merrill)in NYC. I'm very happy for him and wish him the best!!!! Go Zman!

Just in case you've only recently become aware of Revit and don't know who Chris is? He's been using Revit professionally since Revit was in "diapers". He is one of the several guys who really helped make Revit viable for the "on the bleeding edge" crowd who started using Revit very early. How? By sharing so much content and knowledge that the rest of us climbed up on his coat tails and succeeded that much earlier. He'll blush a bit perhaps but it is true in my view!

Not only did he do this, but he started www.zoogdesign.com and hosted a Revit community bulletin board on a Linux server in his basement, just to see what would happen. We'll it grew fast, really fast and in the end he merged his database with AUGI's and what you now know as the Revit Community at AUGI was born in his basement. I'm grateful he did. I'm also glad he gave me a chance to contribute to the community in a meaningful way!

Thanks Chris!!

News at 9:48

This came in via a garbled phone message from Freddy Latherdon, my ace reporter. Unfortunately it cut off and I didn't get the rest of the message. A quick try to call him back got voice mail...drat! Here's the message...

Skid.......rrill.......chr.........g.... I sure wish I knew what he was trying to tell me!!

News at 9:48

What do the letters Z S M O C have in common?

Freddy sent me this cryptic note tonight...I can't help but wonder what he is up to and what sort of story he's cooking up now? I'll let you know as soon as I find out more!

Home For Unwanted Doors

During a recent meeting with a client the discussion turned to phasing and tracking "stuff". A typical issue they described is the door that "was" and then "isn't" during the design or even construction phase. During a project a door might be eliminated from the scope of work but using the demo tool doesn't really make sense because it leaves a "new" wall infill where the door was supposed to go.

Their contractors want to know what changed from the previous to the new. We discussed a number of approaches...such as saving a dwf or dwg export of the view so they'd have a record of the object the way it was before deleting it. None of the solutions seemed really effective.

So yesterday, Gameli, one of the guys I've been working closely with says, "Hey Steve, I thought of a way to do that cancelled door issue". So he suggests we could "copy/paste current view" the wall and doors that are cancelled before they are actually constructed to a empty project called "Home for Unwanted Doors".

This project is then linked back into the main project, a view is set up to display it with overrides to make them "half tone" and turn off walls, a schedule told to include linked projects and a "What Was" sheet is created. Naturally this project needs to have the same level structure so they'll show up in the correct locations.

So theoretically you can provide data about what is no more because we planned to put them in but someone changed our minds. Practically it is a bit tedious because you can't just paste into a linked file so you have to paste into an intermediate file and you have very limited view override options for the linked file categories.



I think it is intriguing enough to share and hopefully the "factory" is already curious and working on this sort of problem. In sense we are asking for a schedule of what changed since the last issue, a database compare function that generates/filters reports using conventional architectural views and schedules.

As I finish writing this I think, "What if?"...We just swap this eliminated door for a simplified door family that doesn't cut the wall and uses subcategories for an eliminated door panel and swing and uses a shared parameter for "Eliminated"...now it stays in the project, we can see it whenever we want, schedule it, tag it etc. hmmm...I love problems! Off to try this on!

Case of the Missing Section Mark

This is a file pulled from the Department of Frequently Asked Questions Department...

One of those gotchas that get folks when they starting cranking in Revit...you make a section view, just because it is soooo easy. You open another view and it isn't there! You look in another and it is! Check yet another and it isn't! Confusing to be sure.

The solution to this is a wordy parameter called "Hide at Scales Coarser Than" lurking in the properties of the view.

If you create a section in a view that is set to a scale of 1/8"-1'-0" (1:100) the section view will acquire the same scale unless you choose another. The "really long wordy parameter that I won't write again" will also acquire this same scale. Any scale that is coarser than 1/8"=1'-0" (1:100) will not show the section annotation. A scale of 1/4"=1'-0" will show it because it is a finer scale value. Make sense?

You'll either love it or hate it...but I think you'll learn to like it even if it gives you a hard time the first time around. It is intended to automatically prevent the section annotation from littering your coarser views.

Here's a screen shot of the property dialog with the "RLWPTIWWA" parameter circled.

Tag You're It!

Are you curious why a certain tag is offered to you when you tag something? How does Revit decide which one to use when you have more than one loaded?

Revit will use the last one you loaded. If you want to change the primary tag to use you need to visit Loaded Tags. You can find it under the menu Settings > Annotations > Loaded Tags.


When you choose a tag type in this dialog Revit will use it the next time you tag an object. You can also load a new tag family by clicking the Load button.


Naturally there are no Multi-Category tags listed since the listed is organized around object categories.

Oh, tags for rooms are an exception to this behaviour since you can choose from the available types using the Type Selector on the Options Bar. For other objects and their tags you need to use this dialog or change them after you've placed them.

Family Origins

In past releases of Revit you may have noticed that moving Reference Planes that had their Origin property checked had no effect on the actual origin of the family. Revit simply ignored this and continued to use the original intersection of these Reference Planes.

In effect the origin location was hardcoded. As a result many of us have made it part of our routine to avoid moving the Reference Planes at all.

Good News!! In my limited testing it appears that the most recent build has addressed this issue.

New Revit 8.1 Build Posted

As the title says a new build has been posted. The following list of issues addressed by the new build was posted at AUGI by Tatjana Dzambazova, Autodesk Revit Building Product Manager, thank you!

Here are the improvements in this build since the last RTW (Release To Web) from September 14th:

• Fixed a bug that caused a crash after changing a type parameter followed by an instance parameter.
• Adds the Revit icon to the Windows Add/Remove Programs tool.
• Corrects a problem that prevented some installs when using Windows 2000 OS.
• Fix that allows for less memory usage
• Performance improvements or save to central
• Fixed a problem with lining up DWG files in Revit if they have far away origin
• Fixed issues during rotation of roofs
• Fixed crashes provoked by the offset command
• Fixed crash provoked by editing Color Fill Scheme settings
• Fixed a problem when that made ACAD'a Batch Plot Utility not work when Revit was uninstalled
• Fixed the issue that select all mullions on curtain wall provoked crashes
• Fixed a response lag when creating Ref plane
• Fixed a problem with Plan region improperly exposing Structure elements in link file
• Fixed an error in German, Italian, and French localized versions that prevented viewing parts of the Help file.
• Improves install performance for certain aspects of German, Italian, and French localized versions.
• Fixes a problem that caused the incorrect default template to be loaded in some localized Revit versions.

Check it out!

New build number: Autodesk Revit Building 8.1 - 20051214_2200

Here's a link to the download page

Cheers!

{Edit: A newer build has been posted, refer to the above number, was 20051205_2200}

A Cut Above

Only two kinds of families have special behavior when viewing them in a project with respect to a view's cut plane. Those are doors and windows. All others use the view's cut plane setting in the project environment.

Doors and Windows use the cut plane defined in the family to determine how the object will look in a project's views.

When you need a family that is above the cut plane in your project to be visible you can use the Invisible Model Line trick and in many cases a Plan Region.

The Invisible Line Trick...an oldy but goody...is where you add an invisible model line (working in an elevation or section view) from the reference level to another reference plane, usually at the highest point of the family, aligned and locked to these planes. This line is also usually aligned and locked to the Center (Left/Right) reference plane if one exists.

This model line travels through the cut plane of a plane view and lets Revit "see" the family that is actually above the cut plane. You can take advantage of Symbolic Lines to show dashed lines to represent the object above.

Be sure to check Joe Kendsersky's comment, I forgot about columns and he provided some more good info!

Got My Eye On You!

With the release of Revit Structure 1, then 2, along with the release of Revit Building 8.1 we got a new tool called Copy/Monitor. This feature allows two projects, one Revit Building and one Revit Structure to copy and monitor Levels, Grids and columns so we can keep these coordinated between our separate projects.The workflow? The architect passes a building project to the structural engineer using Revit Structure and they Copy/Monitor Levels, Grids and Columns to save the effort of creating them in the first place and to permit Revit to keep an "eye" on them so any changes can be coordinated.

Intrigued?

An interesting side effect is you can use this feature between two Revit Building projects internally if you like. So you can put your structural model in a separate project to remove that data from your architectural model to improve performance perhaps. You can still provide this model as well as the building project to a consultant if you like. The upside is you can have actual grids in the architectural model, copy/monitor them into your separate structural model just as if you were the structural consultant.

The Coordination Review tool allows you to see if any changes to these three categories has occured and decide to accept, reject or postpone a decision regarding any changes reported.

Cool Beans!

I'll dig into the details of this feature more next time out.

Split Sections in the Right Place

In recent versions of Revit the split segment option for Revit has been useful. As anyone who has used it very much knows, the section line wasn't accurately indicated for both ends of the section. Good NEWS!! It does now! Just noticed in the latest build (may have been fixed earlier?) that each end of the section is shown in the correct location in the opposite elevation views. THANKS!

AU 2005 - Day Three - Nov 30

Just a sec...trying to remember...okay!!

So how good is AU? The social aspect of this event should not be overlooked or undervalued. If I attended without any expectation of learning a single thing in a class, I'd still attend. The things you learn from casual conversations with other attendees can justify attending by itself. You do have to expend some energy and bravery perhaps to put yourself in front of other people but the rewards are worth it. You meet people you never would have met otherwise, learn things that might never have been discovered and get to ask questions that occur to you during all this stuff happening, that might not have happened any other way.

And no I'm not a marketing shill for Autodesk. While I was compensated for my participation as an instructor for AU this year I spent several thousand dollars of my own hard earned money to be there, not an employer's money.

So a late night of socializing found me catching up on things (sleep) in the morning and I arrived late for "Getting Along: Coordinating architectural and structural design with Autodesk Revit Structure". At one point I found myself getting confused with the attempt to explain worksets! Otherwise it was an informative class.

Next was my personal favorite of the day (perhaps of AU), Danny Polkinhorn's class on the Revit API. Very polished and he tackled the arcane subject in such a way that a non-programmer could hang on, if even only by their fingernails. His code examples were very cool. Funny moment when he clarified who might not want to be in his class, If you don't know the difference between a Do Loop and a Loop-d-loop.

Donned my lab coat as lab assistant with Mike Gatke for Chris Zoog's "All New Tips and Tricks" class, the second of two. After the first we learned to warn people not to run Revit Structure! So...no repeat of that!

As a co-presenter, I felt a bit like a "fifth wheel" in David Conant's "Take Your Family to the Next Level" class. Last year's version felt better than this year's to me though many people were very complimentary of our efforts when speaking to me afterward. I guess you can never completely trust your instincts with this stuff.

The MGM party that followed served as a nice distraction from my introspection, picking apart my performance as a speaker this year. It was really great! Unfettered access to the rides complimented by food and drink on every corner. I overcame my "scaredy cat" attitude and did the "Tower of Terror" and found it fun! I think I reacted to the idea of an elevator going berzerk the same way the elevator company Disney approached for design help...shock and dismay. Tom McCann (Disney Engineering VP) told us in his keynote address that they said something like, "You realize we just spent the last century striving to prevent this from happening and you want us to help you make it happen?" (paraphrasing here).

Naturally as with all good things the event ended much too quickly and we headed back to the buses! Fortunately no one was really ready to quit and several of us continued to reduce the available supplies of liquid refreshment until nearly 2am.

AU 2005 - Day Two - Nov 29

First..I should say that I can't attend every class at AU about Revit so those I mention are those I attended. The others get short shrift because I wasn't there. I'd be happy to include info about them if someone lets me know about them.

I started off the day with my lab for the Family Editor, 48 pages of step by step procedure to build a door family. In general the comments I received were very positive with one dissenting gentlemen, very unhappy with the pace and format. That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger as the saying goes and I'd like him to know that I will learn from his comments and be better as a result, thanks! Thank you also to each of you who shared their time and opinions with me.

I neglected to say this in the original posting of this article. I wanted to also thank the lab assistants. They were David Conant (co-speaker and designated driver), Steven Campbell (Autodesk Revit QA Specialist), Cyril Verley (CDV Systems) and additional special guest assistants Wesley Benn (Benn Design) and Mike Gatzke. Wesley and Mike filled in for Scott Davis (WLC Architects) when he was unable to get to the lab until much later. Three cheers for great help! They did their best to keep a fast moving train on the tracks.

Next was lunch and I learned from Day One and actually ate lunch!

The Keynote address by Carol Bartz (Autodesk's CEO) and Carl Bass (Autodesk's COO)was entertaining and informative. A massively wide rear projection screen with nested projection images was quite impressive. The message was 3D is coming whether you like it or not, are you ready? Those are my words, my impression or reaction to the message. Further, we better keep our eye on DWF...it will be getting very interesting.

We also saw an informative and entertaining presentation from Tom McCann, Senior Vice President of Engineering for Walt Disney Imagineering, that gave us insight into how they do what they do and what it takes to make the Disney Magic. He seemed quite nervous at first but perhaps it was more just his energy level and manner because he seemed quite in control and consistent throughout his talk. He also mentioned that contractors get concrete on their tracks all the time and his repeated mention of it at various times worked well for comedic effect.

Then came the industry sessions where each attendee went to a presentation focused on their unique needs. We heard the familiar assurances about ADT and Revit.

If my remarks seem light on substance, they are, because the things that were discussed in front of 4,000+ attendees are still simply ideas and shouldn't be used for future financial planning (we all saw legalese to remind us of this).

The end of the day brought on two parties, both of which sparked energetic dancing to salsa music first and then later to the sounds of Dr. Ruth, a band consisting of at least one AU attendee, that played many Journey songs. Everyone sure looked like they had a good time...MAN I'm tired!

Cheers!

AU 2005 - Day One - Nov 28

Today started off with Phil Read of Autodesk Revit speaking about implementing Revit. Focusing on the things he and his fellow Autodesk implementation team members encounter as they help firms transition their processes to Revit. I've always enjoyed Phil's humor, plain speaking and intellect. He always has a great phrase ready such as, "Someone dangerous with a hammer is more dangerous with a nail gun" and "You can't accidently implement Revit". If you ever get a chance to work with or hear Phil speak, "Do It Right Quick" (a slight rewording of another favorite of mine that he said in his class last year at AU 2004).

Next I wandered over to assist Chris Zoog with his Tips n Tricks lab along with Scott Davis, Mike Gatzke and Clyne Curtis. Fortunately nearly all the lab students were pretty comfortable and we didn't have to work too hard. Funny thing though, a few students started up Revit Structure by accident and it proved amusing while trying to figure out what happened to the all the architectural features!

Lunch...skipped it...shouldn't have...

Paul Aubin and Matt Dillon (yes ADT guru's! Paul is working on a Revit book too btw) presented Revit Basics together and did a fine job, no surprise there. Seasoned trainers and speakers they were polished and entertaining. They reminded me very much of the Balding and Zoog team in many ways from previous year's New Cadd on the Block and Revit B to Z. Nice work guys!

Speaking of Chris Zoog and Jim Balding they launched into a presentation on multifamily homes and unit plans using groups and linked file strategies. Chris led the way primarily with a closing portion from Jim. Lots of good ideas discussed throughout.

Last class of the day saw Jim Balding (WATG), James Vandezande (SOM) and Mario Guttman (HOK) speak about implementing Revit. I personally found Mario's discussion the most interesting, not because Jim and James were not, but because I had never heard him speak before. He was funny, candid and I think "spot on". Here I go flattering again...when it is due...it is due! Nice!

AUGI's annual meeting was full of information about the future plans for AUGI, saying goodbye to BOD members who's term ends this year and saying hello to the new president elect, Richard Binning. I'll leave the details to BLAUGI and the other bloggers from AUGI's ranks to fill in the rest!

The AUGI Beer Bash was crowded and every booth on the exhibit floor was busy with curious visitors, exactly according to plan I imagine.

My lab is tomorrow morning so I'm outta here! Overanout!

Mixing It Up

AU 2005 is underway and the Revit Mixer hosted by Jim Balding and EmCee'd by Christy Landry was very well attended! A fine spread of finger food complimented by a nice selection of wines, beer and soda dealt with the gastronomical and the "Stump the Chump" event provided the "Revit" entertainment.

A nice collection of images supplied by fellow Revit users at AUGI ran in a slide show during the beginning of the mixer and a Revit Trivia segment led up to the Stump the Chump show. The clump of chumps were, James Vandezande, Chris Zoog, Tim Lannen, Ben Kane, Scott Davis and coaching the chumps were Matt Jezyck, Phil "do this right quick" Read, David Conant, Scott Brown and me.

I have this nagging feeling I'm missing someone right now and will realize it later. When I do, I will amend this list accordingly. The chumps met the questions head on and were only truly stumped a couple times. There were a couple instances where they were known issues with Revit already and didn't really qualify as a true "stump the chump"...even though those questions earned a prize for the person doing the asking.

There were just too many people (350ish) to really meet everyone and I wish it weren't so. I'm looking forward to meeting those I didn't as the week progresses.

Stay tuned!! Classes begin early tomorrow!