Department of Quirky - Stair Sketch in Workset Projects Update

I posted THIS back in March of 2007. I was visiting an office recently and we were chatting about this issue and one of them said, "Oh I found a way to fix that situation!" I said, "I'm all ears!" (not literally...it's a figure of speech).

She said the key is to draw the boundary lines continuously, don't stop them at the top of a run and the beginning of the landing. In other words don't draw them from point to point along the sloping part of the sketch draw them from the bottom of the first riser up to the end of the landing and repeat for each side.

In the image above I show one of four sides that would need to be done this way. After you sketch in this way, use the Split Tool to split the boundaries into the required segments. The sketch will finish without complaint. Certainly easier than pasting into a stand-alone project file or building the stair in the stand-alone file.

This deserves to be in the Dept. of Strange but I don't want to start another whole department. I'll have to place an ad to get another reporter and Freddy has been so unreliable lately I just don't have the patience.

Aligning Views between Sheets

This is a common question that the answer, for some, causes angst. Stated in the words of one user, "whaddya mean I can't align the view on one sheet with the view on another sheet exactly??!!??"

With other software people are accustomed to orienting their work with a notion of a Cartesian coordinate system (X,Y,Z) even for a sheet. With Revit the sheet is a bit nebulous. This is just a view that a title block family is placed in automatically when you create it AND can also host other views, a special version of a regular view. There isn't a coordinate system in this view, there is, but it isn't obvious to us. The title block family provides this reference for us but if it were to be deleted you'd be lost with no way to determine where you really were looking relative to another sheet.

Technically Revit just uses the outer boundary lines of a title block family to define the scope of the view to print. I'm referring to the rectangle boundary lines you find in the title block templates provided by the installation. It really doesn't matter where you put the views on the "sheet", well....not to Revit.

What is the objection? People want a floor plan on one sheet to sit directly above the floor plan on the next or subsequent sheets so that it doesn't "walk" back and forth or shift its location as you flip from page to page. Revit's "attitude" on this has been..."close enough is good enough". This is the characterization that drives some people crazy. I too was a bit perturbed years ago. I guess I've mellowed some since.

Here's my take on it. In a set of many sheets the portion of the set that will benefit from such precision is probably a relatively small number. Plans of the same scale certainly ought to be positioned on sheets so you see the project from the same "viewpoint" for each. As soon as you start showing partial, enlarged or other plans the relevance of the alignment between sheets is lost or at least less relevant.

That might seem an excuse to not bother to provide the ability to align them? I suppose at some point it might have been a factor in the decision to devote time to it from a software developer's perspective. In the scheme of things they probably thought that a roof tool would bring more value or importance than aligning views between sheets, so it dropped somewhat in the "To Do List". I imagine somewhere, in some office, they are wrestling with this sort of "can we do this or can we do that" argument every day.

What are your options then?

A view placed on a sheet is very much like a piece of paper on your desk. You can slide the paper around your desk (assuming it isn't cluttered) but there really is no point of reference between the paper and the desk. On the real desk eventually the paper will fall to the ground if you push too far. In Revit there is no real edge except for those lines in the title block family, outside of those Revit stops trying to print your work.

Two sheet views are a lot like two separate desks with their own paper and no real relationship between the two at all.

If you want these views to "stack" on these sheets you need to provide some point of reference and that reference can be the title block family itself. Some users will draw a detail line from a fixed point on their title block (in the sheet view) to a location on the sheet where they'd like their plan view to "sit". This line is then copied to clipboard and then Paste Aligned/Current view in the next sheet view. This gives you the same point for reference. Unfortunately the model visible in the plan's view port will not snap "through the view port" to this line so you are back to "close enough is good enough". If you zoom in you can get it so close that it won't be noticeable unless you export to dwg and then externally reference those files together, which does happen now and then.

Another technique is to provide a set of lines in the title block family itself that can be turned of by using a yes/no parameter associated with the Visible parameter for the line(s). Imagine the detail grid of the NCS/UDS (National Cad Standard / Uniform Document System). You can also store a "cross hair" somewhere or in several locations for this purpose. Think a little outside the proverbial box and you can get much more satisfying though not precise results.

Remember that "close enough is good enough" happens all the time...our tolerance for it just changes depending what the activity is.

Space Room Update Tool Available from Avatech

I approached Beau Turner with Avatech prior to Autodesk University 2008 about creating a routine to manage the relationship between spaces and rooms in Revit MEP. It has been a good month for extensions as I very recently posted that Autodesk released one too! While the Autodesk tool is good the Avatech solution does a bit more. Autodesk's is available to subscription members only while Avatech's is free to anyone! You'll have to judge for yourself.

Some features of the Avatech solution:
a) You can change only those spaces you have selected (filter first then run the tool) and choose that option.

b) Handle projects that use phasing.
c) Handle situations where there is more than one space in a room (common for analytical purposes) and provide a configurable setup so you can input your numbering standard (ex. Room 101 with 2 spaces becomes 101.A, 101.B (or whatever scheme you need to use via the config file).

d) Once run it will tell you how many spaces it changed/updated
e) Once run it will inform you whether there were any spaces that could not be updated (typical of UnPlaced Spaces created in schedules similar to Rooms)

f) This does not require a subscription account to access
g) This can be installed via batch script to multiple users

Download it NOW!
Scroll to the bottom of the page. Thanks Avatech, Beau and Matt!

Reviteristic - Revit Links are More Important?

When we link a Revit model into another project file there are number of instances where the linked model seems to interfere with selecting elements that are actually native parts of the model. I encounter this the most when I'm working with Revit MEP.

For example, using the Create System option for an Air Terminal the option to Select Equipment seems to only have eyes for the architectural model and it can be nearly impossible to select the very nice Single Duct VAV box right in front of you.

What to do? Well you could write a blog post like this and complain to start 8-).

If you change your view to Model Graphics Style: Wireframe you'll find that Revit is no longer as focused on the linked model. Another solution is to have a view with the linked model and another where the link is not displayed. When you are ready to create your systems just switch to the other "cleaner" view and no such issue.

Happy selecting!

Backward Compatibilty (or rather the lack of it)

Revit does not save backward. Said another way, you cannot save from "this" version to a previous version's format. It never has..maybe never will...but never say never?

One common concern or comment is based on working with consultants, "What if my consultant is using the previous version of Revit? What then?"

The only thing preventing a consultant that is currently using 2008 from collaborating with "you" using 2009 is their subscription status (that and a willingness to install it). They can work with you using 2009 even if all their other projects are in 2008 as long as their subscription is in force. Technically all they'd need is a single seat installed for 2009 (for each user) and a valid subscription for that seat, even if they didn't have a valid subscription for their remaining seats.

(I should clarify that I'm not a reseller and you really need to make sure that your firm is in compliance with the Autodesk End User License Agreement(s), EULA for your products. You really don't want a visit from the piracy folks. Please don't make such decisions on the basis of my post alone! Agreed??)

This means for "your" project the consultant would need to renew their subscription for each necessary seat to get the current version up and running apart from the "EyeTee" department exerting some effort. How much cash is required depends on how many people will need to work on the project and how long ago they stopped subscribing.

Note: In effect a Revit firm that abandons subscription is truly deciding NOT to collaborate... Autodesk definitely has us coming and going on this point.

A "team" of firms using Revit really MUST agree WHEN to upgrade to another version. One part of the team arbitrarily deciding to do so will unfairly burden the others with the timing of an upgrade. It is not necessarily a hard thing to do, normally, but it is very likely to be inconvenient depending how soon the next deadline is.

No backward compatibility has been and continues to be motivated by a greater urgency for moving forward than working out the complexity of supporting firms that don't "want" to upgrade. Anyone trying to truly collaborate with all disciplines right now will agree there is MUCH that needs to be done for every discipline to allow greater and tighter integration of our data.

Some might say that Autodesk "likes" or "enjoys" this situation, being necessary to maintain subscription, and perhaps there is some truth in that. The reality is that in order to progress they must be able to focus forward. If we demand that each release must save back to earlier releases then a considerable force must be applied to make that possible.

Consider that features added in 2009 might not be possible to create in earlier releases at all. A Swept Blend did not exist in an earlier release, what shall it become when saved to an earlier release? Just delete it? Recreate it unfaithfully because the geometry can't be represented? Create an ACIS "exported" and then "imported" instance in the model that can't ever be altered? I imagine that whatever elements are affected by such conditions that the resulting form(s) will not have the same fidelity as the original which calls into question the logic of doing so at all.

An enormous amount of effort would be necessary to permit this when the much "easier" (for Autodesk perhaps) solution is for customers to use the same release. Compare the few hundred dollars for a subscription per seat required of the customer as opposed to the kind effort required to make this possible in any fashion and you'll see it isn't a very motivating project for them.

Seth Godin wrote about Love and Annoying the other day. He wrote this:

...The goal is to create a product that people love. If people love it, they'll forgive a lot. They'll talk about it. They'll promote it. They'll come back. They'll be less price sensitive. They'll bring their friends. They'll work with you to make it better.

If you can't do that, though, perhaps you can make your service or product less annoying...

Read more...he goes on to say that Apple makes products people love as an example and that an Airline ought to work hard to make air travel less annoying. Seems to me that this issue and Revit as a product is on that "fence" now. People have been and continue to be passionate about Revit and willing to forgive its quirkiness. Increasingly many users however are more interested in it becoming less annoying.

Seth closes with this:

...Put a sign on your office door, or send a memo to the team. It should say either, "Everything we do needs to make our product less annoying" or "Everything we do should be idiosyncratic and engage people and invite them to fall in love with us. That's not easy, which is why it's worth it." Can't have both. Must do one...

It might seem that I am apologizing for something that Autodesk should just "do". Perhaps. At this time I am much more interested in Autodesk spending time and resources to add functionality so that firms can collaborate better. Every penny spent to support backward motion is "negative equity" and as we know that sort of equity has been contributing to the current state of our economy in a fairly significant way.

That Other side of Mr. OpEd

You may have read this EARLIER POST? Obviously I've been a bit quieter on the blog than previous months.

I took the Holidays off and then some! I got sick during the Christmas Holiday, my daughter and then Wife followed. In the midst of all that we also moved, not far, but moved nonetheless so the kids could "keep" their current schools. Folks without kids may not be able to relate to that. It seems like I've had enough to distract me already but then this "other" thing came up and I've been doing that too (being secretive...sorry).

But the REAL reason that I've been quiet on the blog is THIS!

I finally get to cross IT off the To Do List! I picked it up on clearance just after Christmas when the music store was getting ready to move to another location and they didn't want to have to move it and I was willing to move it to my house. Now I have a problem when I walk into my office (when I'm actually home that is)...play drums or play blogger? Well you know how that equation has worked out so far! No worries, work is forcing me back into Revit mentally again, unfortunately you'll be hearing from me again.

Revit MEP - Space Tool Available via Subscription!

Well I complained about spaces and rooms and every other Revit MEP user I've met has too. In the "they are listening" realm of things they have and have provided a tool specifically aimed at helping RME users deal with the disconnect between space numbers and names and their counterpart rooms. As sports fans sometimes say, hooray!

I do hope that it will be rolled up into the RME product release for 2010 naturally so a separate installation of software won't be required for such a relevant task. I suggested that they provide a separate tool via subscription so it could be done much sooner than waiting for the next release and I'm sure others did too.

I'm really glad they did!

Thanks!!

Visit the subscription site to download your copy!

Stephen Roth, Revit MEP's Product Manager posted the following at the AUGI forums today:

I am happy to announce that a new add-in is available for the 32- and 64-bit versions of Revit MEP 2009. The Space Naming Utility software is an intuitive tool that automatically assigns the names and numbers from architectural rooms to Revit MEP spaces.

By downloading the Space Naming Utility software, you can eliminate the need to manually assign names to the spaces helping save a tremendous amount of time and simplify your workflow.

Specifically, it does the following:

1. Can both name and number the spaces similar to the enclosed architectural rooms.
2. Can automatically name/number all spaces in a model, or by specific level.

Moving or Dragging Multiple "Ends"

I received a question this morning asking if it is possible to select and change the position of ends of more than one wall by dragging them at the same time. When I read this I imagined that the walls are parallel but they don't have to be.

The answer is, sure, hover over the end of a wall and use the TAB key to highlight the "shape handle" of the wall. This end line/edge of a wall is called its Shape Handle. Repeat that process and by using the CTRL key you can add the other shape handles to your selection till you are done.


Then either drag them or use the move tool. Dragging is not precise unless there is something you precisely you can drag "to". Move can be more precise because you can specify a distance.


Then again the Trim/Extend tool might take less effort?

Holidays 2008

I intend to take a low profile and do little if any posting during the holidays.

I wish everyone who visits my little corner in cyberspace a great holiday season and may you each enjoy the company of family and friends. Cheers!

Room Name - Full or Abbreviation

Sometimes a name is just too much, too long, it just doesn't fit in a room. The stock Name parameter for a room is easy, it's already there waiting for us to us. When we use abbreviations in this parameter we end up with some full names and some abbreviations. An abbreviation of "T." for Toilet might be fine on a plan view but it is less than stellar in a schedule. We could use another stock parameter like comments to store an abbreviation instead but that subverts its usefulness for actual comments.

Shared Parameters to the rescue!

I've written several posts about shared parameters in the past so I won't go into making them again in this post (see bottom). This is what you need to do to get a new parameter working in a project.

Create a shared parameter (called Abbreviation for example)

Create a room tag family that uses your shared parameter, save the Family and load the family into your project

Add a Project Parameter (Settings > Project Parameter) using your shared parameter too. Assign the parameter to the Room Category

Use the parameter in your rooms, set-up a schedule and tag your rooms with the appropriate tag.

This gives the best of both worlds. Supply abbreviations for names that are unruly and don't bother for reasonable names. A schedule will make it easy to define either and those that don't have abbreviations don't "need" them. Just make sure you use the correct tag to display the value you really want people to see.

I've posted a revised copy of my Egress Example project that contains a working example of the shared parameter, tag and schedule.

This post Shared Parameter File: A Little Clarification provides a full list of the posts I've made in the past on the subject of Shared Parameters.

News at 9:48 - Revit Rock-n-Roller donates Hair

Steve Shell the "Rock-n-Roll" Architect, famous for not only his membership at AUGI but his rock-n-rolling ways as a guitar player in Shell Shock has decided to donate some of his "locks" to a deserving fellow Reviteer, Jim Balding (at right). Jim, who says he "lives up to his name" Balding was attending Autodesk University last year when Steve (at left) suggested that he could help with his "problem".


A schedule for the transplant has yet to be defined but Jim was quoted as saying he already plans to learn how to play the bass and join a band as soon as possible.

About the Author, Freddy Latherdon:
Revit OpEd's ace reporter, Freddy recently moved to Wapakoneta, Ohio to get away from the LA party scene. Brittany, Lindsay and the "others" were just too "out there" and he needed a break. He has a one bedroom studio apartment now that he shares with his three "Lavender" Retrievers, don't even try to tell him they are Labrador Retrievers...he'll get mad and punch you. The judge gave him one more chance to deal with his anger issues or he'll do some real time. Might account for why he's been so quiet as this is his first story in quite some time.

Schedules and Data Entry

I often think that Revit users ought to spend a few days getting acquainted with database use, like with Microsoft's Access for example. If more users had such experience then they would probably find Revit's scheduling to be more "obvious"...maybe.

One of the more overlooked capabilities of scheduling is to supply a new value or change a value for many items with a single entry. Many schedules that people use list every instance within the project. This means you have to find some other way to update all those families quickly. Unless you revisit the sorting criteria of a schedule.

Let's take a simple example a room schedule. I have a number of rooms that need to change, they are all lower case instead of upper case (The Change Case tool from Avatech makes this easier still). I also need to supply a department value for each room.

When a schedule lists every instance of the rooms we get a nice long list of each room. Like this one...not nearly as long as most real schedules though.


If we change the sorting/grouping criteria to use Name instead and un-check the option "Itemize Every Instance" we'll get a different result.


Like This...(I added a count column to show how they've been condensed according to the same "name").


Edit the Name and Department parameters and the values will be applied to each instance of the multiple rooms, like this...(removed the sorting change and restored the sort by number and "Itemize every instance").


Typing EXAM in the Name field supplied the value to all seven of the rooms using that name. The same is true for the SERVICES department name. The same is true for the other repeated values.

In the future, to use this, just remember that you need to sort a schedule by THE value that needs alteration AND you need to un-check "Itemize every Instance".

Remember too, there is nothing wrong with having a schedule that makes your daily work life easier and one that your clients/readers see, a quality assurance schedule and the final "report". Happy "reporting"!

Tongue Twister

Said by me during a training session discussing making families...

"a Famula" as in a Family & a Formula are a "Famula".

Structural Column - Quick and "Evil"

I was checking out the new Mastering Revit Structure book by Tom, Jamie, David and Eric (yes...too lazy to spell out their whole names but then I wrote this instead, hmmm). On page 144 is a grey section that describes the following tip, written here in my own way.

Need a Structural column that leans, quick? Don't want to make a column family first? You could use a wall? BIM purists, cover your ears and eyes..."you know where to put the cork" ("The Who" fans quiver with recognition). You can use a wall and then edit its profile to create the appearance of a leaning column in about the same time as it takes to choose the correct family template first.

Naturally this assumes that we are talking about concrete, it doesn't work quite as well for steel shapes.

Just a little "out of the box" thinking courtesy of the four RST "muskateers", check out the book!

Echo Dept. of Echo - Zooming in Dialogs

David Light posted this bit waaaay back in November, before AU and I thought I'd echo it here too. He observed that we can actually zoom in and out of some dialogs by using CTRL + Middle Scroll Wheel. The link above is for his follow up post which tells us that this works in the following dialogs: managed links, view templates, element properties, view properties, worksets and export layers.

Thanks for being observant David!

TurboSquid Contest - Revit Content

Warning...Sales "pitchish"...

TurboSquid is a popular site for 3D content that is branching out into the Revit Family realm. In partnership with Autodesk, they just opened up their "Revit Market", a marketplace especially for user-generated Revit families. "Revit Market" is designed to complement Autodesk Seek.

To encourage users to publish Revit families for sale, TurboSquid is holding a Revit Contest with cash prizes up to $2500. Deadline is Jan. 31, 2009.


A little bit about them clipped from their site:

TurboSquid is:

The largest library of 3D products for sale in the world.
A clearinghouse for digital artists to make money selling their content.
A place to find premium plug-ins for 3D software applications.
A forum for 3D professionals to exchange ideas.
A service accessible by a traditional website as well as our free, downloadable client applications for PC and Mac.
A production tool to help digital artists more rapidly find, preview and acquire essential content.

The TurboSquid Mission:

Our goal is to revolutionize the way that 3D products are bought, sold and delivered by creating a new and focused digital marketplace designed to offer large selections of affordable products while providing maximum returns to intellectual property owners. We strive to provide unmatched value and support to our partners, content creators and customers while creating a stimulating and exciting environment to accomplish our plans.

EDIT: They've started a blog called Revit Market.

RME - Connectors and their "Arrow"

This is referring to the arrow that appears on a duct or pipe connector icon in the family editor. This arrow indicates where the pipe or duct is...it must point toward the connecting pipe or duct. You can flip this easily when you place a connector on a face but not as easily when using the work plane option.
Connectors placed on a "work plane" define their "arrow" orientation based on the "positive" side of the Reference Plane used. The positive side of a Reference Plane is the left side of the "head", where the name appears (when you assign a name parameter to the ref plane). This is true for Reference Planes we add to a family. The stock reference planes that you find in the template behave the opposite way, go figure...positive is to the right side of the "head".

I suppose the connection arrow is just there to tease you in this instance. When the connector is applied to a "face" the "flip" arrow works. Remember the connection arrow represents the duct/pipe...it should point toward the connecting duct/pipe. Actual Flow direction is defined inside the properties dialog of the connector.

Oh...if the arrow is "wrong"...flip the reference plane, drag the end control grip at one end over the other, don't mirror because Revit will want to delete the connector.

Another worthy tip, brought to us by AUGI member Truevis aka Eric, is to use the "Split Face" tool on a face to define a portion of the surface to contain a connector as opposed to adding another solid to do so which you'll find in many of the stock families. May you "connect" well!

AU 2008 - Day Seven - Saturday

Seven days of AU? You probably didn't realize it was that long? Well this was my travel day home. I drove to AU and therefore...drove home. At the valet I waited and waited...then a valet shows up with a piece of paper in his hand, uh oh! I'm thinking it was stolen, or damaged or...I'm not sure...

He says, "The battery is completely dead and this paper needs a signature for him to "jump the battery"". Oh is that all...sigh of relief... signed and I got my car back. I topped of the gas tank and left the car running, just in case. I drove four hours, even...home at last! I was very pleased that the several serious traffic jambs that I saw on the South bound lane of I-15 last Sunday were not to be found on this particular day.

The reason for my "panic" is that two weeks earlier this same car was vandalized while I was teaching a class. Someone with some pent up anger decided that the paint job needed some alterations. They scratched up the hood, the trunk, the passenger door and passenger rear quarter panel. They also etched a frequently used four letter word on the hood too, nice touch!

They apparently lacked the time or skill to write the accompanying "You" and just left a "u" instead. I was angry at the time, frustrated now that the car will need to be painted completely to fix it. The lease ends in a few months so we may just work something out with the dealer... I don't think I've made anyone mad enough to do this so I'm inclined to think it was just a random act of stupidity.

Revit is so much easier than real life!

AU 2008 – Day Six – Friday

I began my day as a lab assistant for Paul Aubin's Family Editor session. I got their early and discovered a few pc's with “problems”. The other two assistants from DC Cadd were able to get a couple up and running but two pc's had no pc...a much harder issue to overcome. Autodesk scrambled to get them sorted out but we ended up without one of them for the duration. We were able to keep these from delaying the class at least.

The session maintained a comfortable pace and everyone did their best to keep up. Paul planned more material than fit in the time slot but that's pretty easy to do, I did it every time I did a lab too. Better more than too little eh? In a quick thank you email Paul wrote that the class survey results were very good with a pretty high ranking, congrats!

When that wrapped I rushed to make my lunch meeting with Cyril Verley and his gang of trainers for CDV Systems. We seldom have a chance other than AU to all be in the same room so it was both nice and necessary to get together. I left the meeting early to have another AUGI session, an AU wrap up meeting. At 4:20 I bailed from that meeting in order to catch the ride to the CDV dinner and show that Cyril's “right arm”, Carolyn, arranged. We enjoyed Tenderloin at the Luxor followed by the Chris Angel “Believe” show. Very nice end to AU! Thanks Cyril and Carolyn!

AU 2008 - Day Five - Thursday

I managed to steal some Revit time for myself and attended two Un-Plugged sessions sponsored by Robert and Krista Manna, a husband and wife team that work for different firms but whose sessions dovetailed together pretty well. In fact two other sessions by two Scott's (Brown and Womack) did as well but I couldn't attend them, my loss. Each of the four presenters are AUGI members naturally!

AU Party featured the conclusion of the AU Design Slam where various participants designed either building or products using Autodesk software in a short amount of time. The event began the night before and AUGI member and blogger Craig Barbieri won the design portion from Wednesday night.

I was disappointed in the audio during the party, too tinny and very difficult to understand Lynn Allen at all. Fortunately the comedic talent's of Don McMillan were able to transcend the poor audio. Don is a gifted story teller and his somewhat distorted view of things as an engineer turned comedian contribute to a laugh riot. If he didn't pause now and then his audience could become physically ill from continuous laughter.

I got to spend a little time (too little) with my friend Bruce Gow (BeeGee at AUGI) from Brisbane. I managed to miss each of his classes this year, oh well. I hope to see some more of him in Melbourne in June 2009 at the Revit Technology Conference. His cohorts from Karelcad, Shane and Adam...among others were also present and they are always fun to hang around with.

Later I traded text messages with Wesley Benn trying to find each other in the hall during Don's show. Funny how hard it can be until he realized that the columns are numbered...we wrapped up the night with a stop at the Grand Lux, the all purpose "diner" at the Venetian.