Do U Revit?

Multi-Disciplinary View Coordination

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:47:00 +0000

Back in 2008 I posted a response to an AUGI thread which contains tips that are still relevant to this day and might be unknown to some users. So I thought of echoing it out here.

The main question was about what the best process is to ensure that view extents (ex: plans) are coordinated between different sheets and different disciplines. The discussion then centered on Scope Boxes:

“When you create a scope box, it's just like drawing a rectangle in plan. You can specify a height too (that's why it's a scope box and not rectangle!). Make sure you give it a good descriptive name (Ex: Area 'A'). You can then go to a plan view's properties and under Extents, assign the Scope Box that defines the area you want to see. The crop region will automatically coincide with the scope box. In fact to change the crop region, you now have to modify the scope box by moving the drag handles and the crop region will follow.
So for a large project, the workflow would be as follows:

In an overall plan view, place scope boxes to "chop" your plan in meaningful pieces so it fits on your drawing sheets. Name them accordingly and place any matchlines and view references here;
Create dependent views (let's say you have 5 plan areas....create 5 dependent views and we'll assign them to the 5 scope boxes created in step (1));
Go to each dependent view, name it something meaningful (ex: Area 'A') and assign the appropriate scope box to it. You can turn off scope box visibility to remove clutter as you typically overlap scope boxes so you can show some context (you have to do this to properly use matchlines);
If you want to make changes to the crop region, always go to the parent view, turn on scope boxes or use the Reveal Hidden Elements button (if scope boxes were hidden, they'll become visible in magenta)....you can now modify them and when you're done, click on the Reveal Hidden Elements button once again and they'll go away or hide the category. Your crop regions would have automatically followed the changes in your scope boxes;
The above is done typically by Architectural. Now consultants just link in as usual, they set a plan view that shows the scope boxes, match lines and view references (perhaps set to "By Linked View" to facilitate this) and copy all these elements into their project file. You do that by tabbing until the object in the link is highligted, then copy and paste in the same location*. Now you just need to carry on from step (2) once you have the same scope boxes residing in your project.”

* As Steve Stafford noted in the thread, scope boxes tend to paste exactly in the same spot automatically, regardless of the paste option picked.

Resolving locking issues with Revit Server

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:26:00 +0000

Hi everyone, hope this New Year brings you all lots of health, happiness and prosperity!

If you’re using Revit Server (why not?), then you’re probably familiar with this particular WIKI article on Model-Level Locks. If you have not noticed, when users report that they cannot access a particular project or synchronize, you also cannot lock the project in the Revit Server Administrator. Without the ability to lock a project, users cannot do anything so it is of utmost importance to get locking-unlocking to work first. Unfortunately we’ve had a couple of occasions where models were in limbo, even though we followed the instructions in the WIKI article.

There are various reasons that could cause a project to break and I won’t try to analyze that. But it seems there is a way to restore balance to the universe once the permissions get sorted out.

First, clear the .lock files as described here. As a precaution, it seems sane to stop the Local Servers in the IIS Manager first, and then stop the Revit Server Autosync service on each Local Server. Alternatively, you could shut them down completely, but as long as you stop the communication between all servers, you should be good to perform some minor “surgery” on the main patient: the Central Server, which has to be up and running. However you also need to stop the Revit Server Autosync service on the Central Server. It seems that in this state, project files that were previously unlockable, can be locked once again, so cycle through them…wax-on, wax-off. If this doesn’t work and you previously deleted the two .lock files for each problem project, go ahead and re-create them manually (notepad is your friend…remember to remove the .txt extension) and try again. I cannot say with certainty whether this is a necessary step since we did perform this task and I honestly don’t know whether to attribute success partially to this fact or not.

When you’re satisfied that locking/unlocking is working, re-start the Revit Server Autosync service on the Central Server. Go back and cycle locking back and forth once again (preferably at the Central Server master node) to ensure everything is working properly. Finally, bring the Local servers back online and don’t forget to restart the Autosync service.

I hope this helps someone in the future. If you have had similar experiences or found alternative solutions (don’t tell me “re-create the central file”: been there, done that!), I would love to hear about them.

#AU2011

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:04:00 +0000

The boarding pass is ready, packing is not yet started, and departure is in 20 hours. I’m finally going back to AU after a two year hiatus. Fingers crossed for an exciting event and the usual great networking! Follow along using twitter #AU2011 which is embedded in this post.

Plugs

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:18:00 +0000

No, this is not about Revit MEP. I just have a bunch of announcements/news items that are probably of interest to the Revit community and want to condense them into one post. I’ve been a bit busy and frankly don’t want to fill your inbox with a ton of infomercials. I receive a lot of “press releases” but don’t want to turn this blog into more spam so, since this is my blog, I get to decide what to post and when! And probably most of you have already heard those from other sources, so here we go…

Apps/Plug-ins/API

Kiwicode’s Family Browser has received some really great upgrades recently (thanks Phillip!). The browser window can now be re-sized without having to enable borders and we can now link families from various folders. I cannot wait to set aside time at work to assemble some custom palettes (favorites of sorts). There is also a Favorites tab where you can add/link families so they are literally at your fingertips. Say you are detailing for the rest of the day: you would use this tab to place the most needed components so you can be fast and productive. It’s a brilliant idea! The search function is also quite snappy now. The first time you click into the box, it indexes the families (takes a few seconds) and then, subsequent searches are almost instant.

As you can tell I’m really excited about these improvements, but in my opinion the best one yet is the revamped insert behavior. Now when you click on a family in the palette, it automatically previews with no need to click in the canvas. A single click places an instance, just like native Revit behavior. And if you click on another family while actively placing other instances, it automatically switches to the new clicked family and you can continue placing the new instances. This is also native Revit behavior and makes this plugin feel like it’s part of the software. These were real sticking points for users in the previous version (from personal experience) and now it feels completely seamless.

Kiwicodes really listens to user feedback. Check out my previous post on this topic and note the list of wishes; they’re almost all implemented and then some!

Steve Faust of Revolution Design has some really great apps too. I just want to mention Keynote Manager and the recent Selection Master. Steve has graciously given me a license for the latter and I plan on writing in more depth about his tools, but wanted to plug them now so you can check them out.

Have you ever had to delete unwanted levels in your project and couldn’t because it would have taken a lifetime to find all the families hosted on them? Thanks to the re-host feature, now you can with Selection Master. This tool is a must-have in every BIM Manager’s arsenal. More on these tools in future posts.

Digipara’s Elevator Architect is another tool I’ve been aware of for a while. Unfortunately I tried using it in a recent project but it has failed me. Due to time constraints I have not had time to troubleshoot in depth, although the authors have been very responsive in trying to collect data. Hopefully in the future we can get to the bottom of the problem and use it successfully. As always I might write more in depth in the future.

Learning Revit (and Vasari)

Renowned author Paul Aubin has a new Revit family building course on Lynda.com. You can read all about it here. If you want to sharpen your family building skills (and you know how important this is), you cannot go wrong using this great resource!

What!?! You don’t know what Vasari is? They are up to version 2.1 on Labs and I really wish I had an extra 10 hours a day to play with the cool features that are not in Revit. If like me you’re finding it hard to keep up with everything and don’t have time to test yet another application, you can go to the newly launched Vasari Talk (yep, another link for your bookmarks!). You can participate in live webinars after signing up, or you can watch past recorded sessions.

Navigating Revit

By now you all know that 3Dconnexion’s devices work with Revit. I have not had a chance to try one yet but it looks like it would be a great tool. In the meantime, they are having a drawing for a trip to Autodesk University in Las Vegas on Nov. 29 – Dec. 1, as well as airfare, accommodations and a SpacePilot PRO 3D mouse. You can click here to enter. And speaking of AU, I was lucky enough to make plans for attending this year (thanks AUGI and PhiloWilke!) and am looking forward to meeting up with some old buddies. See you at the AUGI booth!

Evangelizing Revit (and digital simulation)

Abstract submissions for SimAUD 2012 (the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design) are fast approaching. The upcoming symposium will be in Orlando, Florida and you can find more about it here. You can also go to this link for the proceedings from the past two years.

Face Painting in the Family Editor - FIXED!

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:59:00 +0000

Following up on my previous post on the topic, the Factory provided a hotfix for this today. You can read all about it courtesy of Kathryn at Revit Clinic. 13 is such a lucky number, isn’t it?!

To use this functionality, create the parameter first in the Family Types dialog. When you then launch the Paint tool, the parameter will be available as a material in the dialog.

Installation of the hotfix is a snap…just copy and paste the dll.

Immaterial? I don't think so

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:12:00 +0000

This is a follow-up post to Immaterial? from almost a year ago. I promised to write about a new method we’re employing in one of my comments but got too busy. Finally I’m getting around to it. Be warned: it’s long.

I originally held off posting to see whether 2012 would bring any solutions on this front but that didn’t happen. At least now the bottom of the Custom Parameters section adjusts with the Materials dialog…hurray!

The least-worst solution I prefer is ugly workaround #1 as mentioned in the previous post. I hit a serious snag while experimenting but finally got through it. I like to refer to this methodology as the Materials sample board concept. Think about your office for a minute: you probably have a vast library of samples. This is analogous to the Materials dialog in your Revit project file. You don’t use all materials in your library in every project, nor do you schedule all materials used in your finish schedule (Ex: insulation, gypsum board, etc.). The same applies to Revit projects. Even assuming every material was actually used in some form or fashion, you’d want to only schedule a select few as finishes, which requires some filtering mechanism.

When crafting office-wide workflows, you have to be careful to keep things simple. This is a hard thing to do when the tools don’t do exactly what you want. So compromise is absolutely necessary in order to arrive to the best-possible solution. It won’t be perfect or satisfy every requirement, but will result in an improvement over how things are done today.

We all understand materials sample boards: designers pick paints, flooring materials, ceilings, glass, cladding, masonry & brick finishes etc. and present them on a board to get client approval. Those materials then find their place in the project, usually within room finish schedules, tagged elevations, etc. So my goal was to extend that concept into Revit. Presentation of those materials was not at all considered as you just cannot achieve that through print.

As discussed before, Revit will only schedule a material if it is used on a placed object. So the starting idea was to place “material swatches” in the project template and make them very difficult/impossible to delete by mistake, without resorting to obtuse ways of concealment such as through worksets, phasing or design options. This was a very important requirement so everything could be pre-set in the template, including the finish schedules. It was also very important to have the same materials used in the material finish schedule as materials in the objects themselves and utilize built-in & custom material parameters to store information that we want to see scheduled such as Manufacturer, Color, Pattern, etc. This would open up possibilities of building material libraries per client and/or project type to be re-used in the future.

Another important requirement was grouping of finishes by surface/object, such as Floor, Walls, etc. Since various materials (such as paints) could be used on different surfaces, it was also essential to have the ability to add unique schedule notes to each material in each application, which meant that this information could not be stored within the material itself. This issue, coupled with concealment methods, turned out to be a head-scratcher.

Material Swatches

The starting point was a simple generic model family that was to be placed multiple times in the template. After several iterations and reasons, it became clear that shared and nested families were required. Each shared “swatch” was nested multiple times into a base family that would represent the application/surface of those materials.

Multiple types were then placed in the template and editing these family types becomes the UI when building the finishes information. Type Comments is used for the schedule sub-headers and Schedule Order is for defining which application order is displayed in the material schedule.

In this example, I have 5 placeholder materials for each application but of course you could add more to suit your needs. Since we have 8 applications, 8 instances were placed in the template. The solid geometry of the swatch family was then set to not be visible and finally reloaded, making them completely invisible and unselectable.

Concealment

Here are some interesting family facts that made all this possible:

If family geometry is made to not be visible, material take-off schedules still pick up the materials used and properly report quantities (volumes/areas of materials on non-visible solids are excluded). Hence the use of this technique will not skew your take-offs.
Families are selectable in-canvas even with no visible geometry unless all reference planes are set to “Not a Reference”.

These are the key elements needed to let us place “swatches” to host finish materials and prevent accidental deletion. Note that one can still pick the family in the browser and delete it, but you also get a warning that you’re about to delete “x families”, so it would be a deliberate mistake or done purposefully and not accidentally.

Material Facts

As mentioned in the other post, only the material name can be used in room schedules. Revit does not permit duplicate names so this can be used very effectively as a “Type Mark” since duplication cannot occur. The only hitch is that you cannot rename a material in the schedule: you have to rename it in the Materials dialog.

By using the Material Class, you can isolate the materials that represent finishes to make navigation easier.

In the above picture I’m also highlighting a big shortfall in Revit: the inexistence of multi-value parameters. For example walls in certain rooms often receive multiple finishes: a paint and ceramic tile or FRP panels. My workaround is to create materials whose name represents a group of multiple finishes. This is solely used in room schedules. For the record, this is not something I’m happy about! However there’s no other way to achieve this and when using text parameters, we’re essentially doing the same thing.

The Finishes Schedule

To build a material take-off schedule (for Generic Models) to filter only the materials in the “material sample board”, I simply filtered for shared parameter “Schedule Order” as “parameter exists”, which is also used for sorting the application order (Floors, Base, etc.).

Conclusions

So why all this pain you ask? Well, keep in mind that once this is set in your project template, all it takes is for users to pick the materials and edit as necessary or create new ones. It also opens up the possibility to save material libraries rich with information that can be re-used. Not to mention that with material tags that read the material name, you’ll have flawless coordination with the “type marks” used in your finish material schedule. Room finishes can also utilize these materials in lieu of text parameters, although for multiple finishes you have to resort to the workaround mentioned above. Finally, we also have to make another check: that each finish that shows up in the finish material schedule is actually used in the project since these are manually added. For this purpose we also set up a “checking sheet” that contains a series of filtered schedules to make sure no finishes have been missed or added. Obviously it would be great if things were all automatic, but at this point this is as good as it’s going to get.

Securing links through worksets

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:08:00 +0000

In my projects, I typically create a workset for my consultant linked models and check that workset out permanently to prevent accidental deletion/movement of links (ex: to user "RevitCOP"). The username just needs to be a unique one to prevent anyone from accidentally making an undesired edit.

I have never been a fan of Copy/Monitor functionality but recently I started using it and am running into a problem. When I try to stop monitoring elements or go through coordination monitor to make changes, I'm told that “RevitCOP” has the workset for the links checked out and has to relinquish it before I can make changes. Why is this necessary? All I want to do is move my grids & rename them to match the link (through coordination review). Because of this, I have to open my file under the RevitCOP in order to do copy/monitor & review operations, which seems totally unnecessary. Or I have to quit "securing" my linked files altogether, which I’m really not ready to concede.

During a copy/monitor and when going through warnings, all you're doing is to change the elements in the host file (unless you reject changes, in which case nothing is physically changed), but nothing is being done to the linked project. So why is Revit being so inflexible about a permission that is (intuitively) not required?

I sincerely think that the current logic of having to own the element/workset in order to perform copy/monitor and coordination review is something that really needs to be looked at closely by the Factory. Probably Revit is writing some kind of tracking information to it, but since the only mechanism of securing links is through forcibly checking out worksets, this is causing undesirable consequences and related frustrations (and we don’t want that, right?)

While we’re on the subject of Coordination Review, it would be really nice if we didn’t have to use the steering wheel in order to pan, and simply use the middle scroll button as we do in regular view navigation!

Revit Server is Desktop no more

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 02:41:00 +0000

Well, we finally gave up. Reluctantly.

Our Windows 7 setup seemed to be working just fine. However we were plagued by Revit crashes following a successful synchronization with central at the location connected to the Local server. At first we thought bandwidth was to blame so we upgraded our connections by installing business cable at the location with the least bandwidth, fully dedicated to Revit Server to Server traffic (2Mbps up, 12Mbps down). We left the previous connection in place to other uses such as VoIP, VPN, etc. In the main office we left the bonded T3 (3Mbps up, 3Mbps down) alone but removed traffic shaping to make sure Revit Server received maximum capacity.We also configured the Revit Servers with their own public IP address so traffic was outside of VPN and thus not slowed down by encryption. The servers are protected and not accessible from outside the network through various router rules and protection safeguards.

Unfortunately this did not eliminate crashing at the user’s desktop. Our next experiment was to switch the Central and Local servers around to see what effect this would have (not the physical machines). We ended up with the Local server in our main office with around 6 people working on server-based projects and 2 at the remote location saving directly to the Central server. Through our upgraded connection, we could now create central files through the Local server, which was not possible in the past. So we know that at least bandwidth cured that issue. The crashing unfortunately followed the Local server and users in the main office started experiencing this crashing following a successful SWC, 90% of the time. Go figure.

Our next step was to install Windows Server 2008 SP2. We did this on the Local server first. Lo and behold, the crashing ceased even with the central server still running Windows 7! At this point we don’t know exactly why this is happening and gave up on our endeavor. We still think Windows 7 should do the job but somehow, there’s some setting somewhere that is causing Revit to blow up. Or maybe WS2008 is more efficient at handling limited resources such as RAM? But why would Revit crash, with no debugging info. available?The machines we’re using as servers are low on RAM so who knows? The journals do not point at the culprit and Revit mysteriously crashes after successful saves (servers keep running fine, projects do not corrupt and the Revit Server administrator reports the saves are successful), so at this point we bow our heads and wave the white flag. Bummer.

Face Painting in the Family Editor

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 02:06:00 +0000

You might recall Steven Campbell’s post Revit Families: To Split or Not to Split… (no, this isn’t his photo. I know, he’s in hibernation at the moment or so it seems). I honestly was unaware of that hidden feature until his article as in the past, I habitually just assigned material parameters directly to solids and never thought of face painting as a parametric option.
Unfortunately in Revit 2012, we lost that ability with the arrival of the new UI that gives us a visual palette of materials when painting surfaces. I really hope we’ll get it back in the upcoming service pack. The functionality is still there as families upgraded to Revit 2012 function properly. However if you “unpaint” the surface, you won’t be apple to re-apply the material parameter. So in the meantime if you need this functionality, start your family in 2011 and upgrade it once you’re done.

EDIT: This has since been fixed through this HotFix. Thanks Factory!

Subtlety - Crop Region

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 15:03:00 +0000

Here’s one for Steve’s Department of Subtle. Prior to Revit 2012, when you assigned a scope box to a view and the crop region adjusted based on that, the view control bar still showed the crop region icon as follows:

When a view is assigned to a scope box however, you cannot disable the crop region, even though the icon leads you to believe you could (and so does the properties palette). I have no doubt this confused some users, myself included.

To make matters worse, if the crop region was “disabled” and then you removed the scope box from being assigned to the view, the crop was still in effect. To get it to function properly, you had to re-enable it and disable it once again.

In Revit 2012, the crop icon is now greyed out if a scope box is assigned to a view in both the view control bar and the properties palette. I think these subtle changes help users realize why those shape handles are missing from the crop region!

Now once you remove the scope box, these controls are enabled and with one more click, the crop region can be disabled. Thanks Factory!

Missing panels in contextual Modify tab

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 14:40:00 +0000

This has been happening sporadically in Revit 2011 and I believe it’s been fixed in 2012. Basically you would be editing a profile sketch such as a wall through Edit Profile, you switch your view to a standalone RFA family and upon switching back to the project environment, the contextual panels disappear and the contextual Modify tab switches to the usual Modify tab only, leaving you stuck in sketch mode with no apparent way back to the project.

The first way out is through assigning a keyboard shortcut for Finish Edit Mode: all 8 of them in 2011 (and 9 in 2012!). Honestly, I think there should only be one as the user doesn’t care which particular sketch mode is active: they just want to learn one shortcut that gives them the ability to finish any sketch mode. I sympathize with the technical reasons why there’s more than one, but if that is truly necessary, why make them look identical with no way to distinguish them except through endless hours of trial end error?

The second method makes the panels reappear so you can continue editing the sketch or finish/discard; here’s how you do it:

Start a new family, pick any one;
Load it into your project;
Once you get the error that it cannot be placed in this mode, hit Ctrl+z to undo.

For some reason the panels come back. Obviously, do not switch back to the open families or you’ll lose them again! This has happened to me several times now, especially when I open a profile family to “steal” the linework and paste it into the profile sketch of a wall. So if this happens again in 2012 in one of the 9 sketch modes, one of these methods might help you get out of a bind.

It's not me; It's you!

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 03:30:00 +0000

After a year or more working in a certain version of Revit, it is natural to notice subtle changes when switching to a newer one. So it comes as no surprise that I’ve been noticing how difficult it is in Revit 2012 (even with SP1) to select something. I’ve had other users point out the same thing so I don’t think I’m losing my mind just yet. What’s up with that?

When hovering over objects, they used to pre-highlight seamlessly but in 2012, this seems to have broken down. I wonder if this is a side-effect of the new solid color you get when selecting something, or perhaps the ghosting functionality? Who knows…it’s really annoying and I hope it gets fixed soon!

Edit: Seems that this issue is specific to HD 3000 on-processor graphics on the second generation Intel chips (i7) and also coupled with curtain walls used for tilt-up walls (basic walls used for panels). The combination of these made things very weird when pre-highlighting but it seems that disabling hardware acceleration helps reduce the problems.

More API goodies

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:00:00 +0000

This is yet another subject I’ve been meaning to write about for some time now. Advanced Solutions’ BIMAssist is another set of tools made possible through the ever-expanding Revit API. I got very excited watching the video of the new feature “Room Surface Parameter Extractor”, which is not part of the tools available in IMAGINiT’s Utilities for Revit. It’s nice to actually see different tools packaged by each of these companies. Their main target audience however is their subscribers, and from what I’ve seen over the last years, pricing for non-subscribers could easily make Anderson Cooper’s The RiDicULiST.

The BIMAssist page contains video clips of each feature, which is probably what convinced me to try it. It was a period when I was struggling with finding an acceptable compromise (recently, the word of the day in politics) to documenting finish materials in Revit. Which reminds me that I really need to post my wrap-up thoughts on the subject from almost a year ago, but back to the subject…you can go and see each one for yourself.

My testing experience was somewhat conflicted. It took forever to get the 30 day trial license to function. And tanks to a busy schedule, it expired before I finished my testing, however they were extremely helpful in extending the license, so thanks a lot for that!

Unfortunately I was not as excited once I found out exactly how the room surface parameter extractor worked. Rather than bore you with a lot of writing, here is my list of notes I jotted down:

Door Mark Manager: Numbers doors based on the To/From Room number;
Project Cleaner is a very nice tool to have. Useful when sharing a 3d model and you want to make it lighter or remove sheets, views etc. without having to do it the manual way (such as grouping and saving out the group or linking the project into a new file and binding it);
Sheet Number update: Also quite nice when you need to renumber sheets without having to do it the long way (we usually have to rename it twice if the final sheet number is already in use: append a suffix, renumber the other sheet and renumber again by removing the suffix);
Fire Rating Coordinator: I was excited at first about this tool, but as I read the help, all excitement faded and turned to disappointment. This tool is making the wrong assumption that the door fire-rating will be the same as the partition fire-rating: Wrong! Take a look at (for example) IBC 2009 Table 715.4 and you'll notice only a handful of situations where that holds true. Also notice the importance of the partition/wall type: The fire-rating alone does not tell the whole story. So a 1 hour wall can mean a 1hr, 45min. or 20min. door depending on whether the wall is a Fire Barrier, a Shaft Enclosure/Exit Passageway, and Exterior wall or a Smoke Barrier. Clearly this tool does not address any of these issues;
Room Surface Parameter Extractor: I had really high hopes for this tool and was very excited. Unfortunately
I'm a bit disappointed after testing:

Painted materials are not recognized. This is a big issue because creating unique wall types just to designate different colors is just not the way to go. This tool should be able to read the materials on the surfaces around the room and not just the ones in the definition of the element;
Only the material name is reported; why not give the user the ability to report certain material parameters instead, such as Type Mark? I also tried doing a thin finish floor above the floor slab and it worked if there was only one floor (finish) in the room. However if you had 2 floor finishes, there's no way to list only the finish materials of just those floors. The option "Comma Delimited List" in "Surface To Use" ends up reporting all the floor layers, which is not what we would expect of a “surface extractor”. I also found it to be a bit slow when running, even if I selected just one room.

Anyway, if you want to see these tools for yourself, you can participate in a free webinar coming up this Wednesday 10th August.

While we’re talking of tools, make sure to visit the ADN Plugin of the Month page at the Autodesk Labs site, where various tools are made available for free in exchange for user feedback. For example there is a Door and Room renumber tool that I find very easy to use, and recently they released another handy one called eTransmit. Finally, Jochen of b.i.m.m released the updated tools for the Revit 2012 version, so be sure to check those out too. So many tools, so little time to keep up with them all!

Details (where the Devil is)

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 05:01:00 +0000

Are you still spending countless hours detailing your Revit projects? What if you could find most of the details in native Revit files, properly built with detail components linked to Building Product Manufacturers (BPM) in a library of (currently) 125,925 drafting views organized nicely and very easy to preview and navigate through? Oh, and did I forget to mention it’s for free to the user?? Sounds like a pretty good deal to me!

Mark Siever of ARCxl has successfully transformed this venture from being a fee-based service for the end user into a totally free service thanks to the involvement of BPMs through direct links to their product offerings. Now I know that most firms will have something to say about how this and that looks and how they don’t fit their standards, etc., but keep in mind that with these details you get very close to the end goal much faster than starting from scratch. I really think you should create an account, take a peek and see for yourself.

Revit Server update

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:24:00 +0000

What a slacker! 2 months with no post, like I fell off a cliff. Well, I’ve been a bit busy especially trying to take care of some stuff I’ve been procrastinating on for a loooong time and it’s going to take a bit longer than anticipated. But enough excuses.

Our maverick Revit Server setup has been working quite good. Unfortunately we cannot get support since we’re not running on the required Windows Server 2008 / SP1 OS, but so far it seems to have been working perfectly fine. We did encounter some hitches that we were not quite sure what was causing them.

We’ve come to realize that our bandwidth was just not enough. Or at least that is the current indicator, especially based on some tests. Here’s what our setup looks like:

Central office: Bonded T1 with 3Mbps up and 3Mbps down

Remote office: DSL with up to 768Kbps up and up to 6Mbps down

Clearly the bottle-----neck is the remote office upload speed. The 768Kbps is not an absolute number (just like your 401(k)!). In our case we had some “traffic shaping” at the routers which allocated a certain percentage to VoIP and some other things, which meant that we barely had 200 to 300Kpbs for Revit Server uploads from the remote office to the central office. Here’s the conversion for reference (all this talk of bits and bytes is confusing for every-day users like myself):

1 Byte = 8 bits; 1 KB = 1,024 Bytes (8,192 bits)

Data transfer: 1 Kbps = 1,000 bits/sec

Data Storage: 1KB/s = 1,024 Bytes/sec (8,192 bits/sec)

So with our connection, the remote office was uploading to the central server at a familiar rate of 24.4 to 36.6 KB/s, which is probably too low (reminds me of dial-up downloads!). One of the issues we were having was with creating central files at the remote location: they kept failing, citing a “network failure”. However if we created them at the central office and then opened them at the remote location, everything ran just fine after the main copying was complete. Assuming we were getting 1Mbps, the upload from Central to Local server was happening at a familiar 122KB/s, which is a lot more acceptable. So it’s clear that you need to pay particular attention to your upload bandwidth. We temporarily disabled traffic shaping and were getting about 650Mbps (79.35KB/s) consistently from remote to central office. In theory this number could go up to 768Mbps (93.75KB/s) but it is unlikely you can get that throughput consistently, apart from the fact that you will also have other network traffic that will reduce this number. We have now finally been able to create moderately sized central files at the remote location. Increasing bandwidth will probably cure the failures but we have to assess what the cost implications are at this point. It is also noteworthy that round-trip ping times from each location are around 85ms. This seems to be a consistent baseline in our case but we have also seen it fluctuate pretty high. I think these fluctuations could also account for the network failures.

Autodesk has just released 3 documents which you really need to read before deploying Revit Server. They will help tremendously in planning your hardware costs and bandwidth requirements. You can download them from HERE.

Media Summit @ADSKAEC #2 (late) wrap-up

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Tue, 24 May 2011 05:04:00 +0000

All I can say is, better (very) late then never.

First, this is the image that Robert was referring to in his post…my sincere apologies for completely forgetting. It happens when you fill up your phone with your kid’s photos and videos…kinda what happens to your email inbox eh?

Below are some images of the city of Boston that I previously promised to post.

The Boston Skyline

VIEW SLIDE SHOW

DOWNLOAD ALL

From up here, you cannot help but wonder what’s brewing in the great minds across the Charles River.

Back on track…with regards to the migration path for existing subscription customers on stand-alone products or existing suites, Autodesk has made it even more attractive to move on to the new Suite products. I just wish that existing customers are notified in a timely manner when these things are on the horizon. A friend of mine almost shelled $3k to go from an existing Autocad Revit Architecture Suite to the new Premium Design Suite, which was cut in half by the reseller after some back and forth arguing (like the kind of haggling you have to do as a tourist in some countries). Once rumors were out regarding the possibility of no up-front cost upgrades, holding off a few more weeks paid off and he can now upgrade for “free” (plus cost of higher subscription). I honestly think it’s a deceptive practice to come out with these pricing schemes well after announcing the new packaging of products.The two should be announced simultaneously. As I customer, I would be very disappointed and feel ripped off if I bought the new suite right away (in my friend’s case, he was tinkering about getting 3dMax Design so a suite was a better option). But then maybe they would have some sort of money back guarantee for those that were too eager?

Anyway, I heard about this first from Luke of What Revit Wants. Then Steve posted conclusive evidence a day later. There have been several conversations going on, such as this one on LinkedIn BIM Experts group. Seems like there’s still some confusion as to how Suite licensing/pricing works but hopefully all dust will settle eventually.

One of the presenters (yah, darn contractor) described our typical building process as “Design as you go”, due to the amount of re-design that needs to happen during construction when conflicts finally surface. He said that we need to move to a “Building Manufacturing” process or “Built as Drawn/Modeled”, a shift from the “As-Built Drawing” process where as-built drawings have to be generated at the end of construction to reflect exactly how the building went together, which clearly implies that we’re not constructing as designed. Savings can be achieved if we were to build as (properly) designed, no arguments there.

He also referred to IPD as “Legislated Collaboration”, which did cause a good amount of chuckling and gasping in the room. I suppose if the AGC came out with that instead of the AIA, he wouldn’t see it as “legislation”? Funny how things take a life of their own depending on which side of the proverbial wall you’re behind. I hope the presenter was not suggesting that we start designing, building and collaborating based on good will, without contracts (Boy, wouldn’t that be a recipe for disaster!). He clearly sees architects as responsible for design intent only and contractors responsible for constructability such as coordination and documentation.

I think it’s no secret that contractors are significantly driving the BIM movement, especially on larger, more complex projects where a small percentage of savings through better coordination results in a significant amount of money in the contractor and owner’s pocket (from actual material savings and less construction days wasted). Sadly, Architects don’t seem to get their share of this bounty, except perhaps from a reduction in losses due to a decrease in lawsuits? Who knows. I think with our old tools or with the outdated way we use today’s highly sophisticated and more capable tools, we can only achieve a certain percentage of overall coordination. But to close the remaining gap, the effort needed to achieve the higher degree of coordination might be out of balance with profit expectations based on current fees. Clearly, something has got to change in how we price and deliver our services. I think that 2D drawings in the traditional Design-Bid-Build environment (and their close relatives) will remain a big sticking point for some time. In the meantime I think owners will continue to keep seeing a reduction in the value they get out of Architect’s services especially when contractors keep stepping up their game and argue (successfully) that they bring more value to the table if they are given the latitude to take coordination efforts away from the architect and do it themselves with their subcontractors rather than as traditionally done before a contractor is hired. And in doing so, Architectural services will keep thinning down until they merely become just one of many project specialty consultants, which in the future might be hired by the contractor, who would be the first team member hired by the client. Disagree? I’d love to solicit more comments and points of view from the readers.

It is time we start seriously thinking beyond paper.

Revit Server goes Desktop

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 04:10:00 +0000

So you have plenty of vacant workstations lying around in your office (I know of a lot of firms with whole graveyards worth of equipment sitting there collecting dust). And if these machines are already running Windows 7 64 bit, you can get up and running with a Revit Server setup at a whopping cost of $0. How does that sound?

“Sure” you might be saying, “it’s unsupported”. Maybe that’s true (meaning, Autodesk doesn’t guarantee it will work since it has not been officially tested) but the key to knowing that Revit Server will work is in the System Requirements: at least IIS v.7 and Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1, all of which can be installed on Windows 7 x64.

However if you tried to do this, RS (Revit Server) won’t let you install it since it is checking for the existence of Windows Server 2008. In the following step by step guide, you’ll learn how to get things working properly and I can tell you from at least a week’s worth of experience that things seem to be working just fine.

Disclaimer: Use at your own risk and please, don’t bother Autodesk about any of this!

Our “Servers”

We re-purposed two old Shuttle boxes that meet the minimum CPU system requirements (core 2 6600 @2.4GHz) with 2GB RAM. Autodesk recommends 8GB minimum, however in our first week of testing, we have not encountered any problems. Note that we only have one team currently working on this setup (4 to 5 users), so the more users you have and the larger the number of projects, the higher the specs. you might require. However I’ve been told by Mr. T that RAM probably will not make that much of a difference; time will tell I guess. In fact our next upgrade will probably be a bigger, faster hard-drive (and maybe someday, a better connection between offices!). At the moment we have about an average of 85ms latency.

Setup

You can start from scratch and install a fresh copy of Windows 7; I opted to clean out the machines instead. I started by deleting any Windows profiles and associated files, all applications, and made sure to enable Remote Desktop on them (I did miss setting one up properly so now I know better! Start>type “allow” and select Allow remote access to your computer; set properties and you’re done).

Next, I made sure to download and install all updates and set them to automatically install at the default time from there onwards. I then renamed the machines properly (set the Computer name to something that identifies each server easily).

A very important step is to set a static IP address for the machines. In the Network Adapter properties, set the IPv4 to your IP of choice (don’t forget the subnet mask) and make sure to set your DNS server address to each office’s gateway IP. In your router’s DNS settings, make sure to provide an entry for the server that will reside in the network behind that particular router & firewall (the machine name and associated IP address). This will ensure that name resolution works as expected: when your users type in which Revit Server to connect to by name, this is resolved properly.

Next, make sure to install IIS7 and Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1. Go to Control Panel>Programs>Turn Windows features on and off and check the appropriate options.

I used a registry cleaner to make sure performance is as optimized as possible since I didn’t install the OS from scratch. I also installed BgInfo to make it easy to identify which machine is being remote controlled in the event we needed to. It’s nice to have some on-screen stats when remote-controlling and BgInfo is perfect for this, so customize the fields to suit your needs. We also set our browser to open automatically to the Revit Server Administration page on Startup so when we log in to the machine for any reason, we have what we need right there: Browser docked to the left and BgInfo on the right side of the desktop.

You also need to install Microsoft Silverlight. You can wait till you finish installing Revit Server and are accessing the Revit Server Administration utility for the first time or install in advance.

These Servers will probably be running behind secure firewalls, so there’s really no need to leave Windows Firewall running on them. I suppose you could leave them if you wanted and then open only the appropriate ports. We chose to turn Windows Firewall off completely and not worry about it as there is no documentation regarding exactly which ports are in use (port 80 for HTTP traffic is a must but I’m sure there are a lot of others we’re unaware of).

Installing Revit Server

Now on to the key tweak to get Revit Server to actually install!

Run Setup.exe and once it decompresses in C:\Autodesk and the installer is waiting for your next step, cancel out of it. The reason is that we need to make an adjustment to the setup.ini file so we circumvent the OS check. As long as IIS v.7 and .NET 3.5 SP1 are properly installed, everything should be fine.

Go to C:\ Autodesk, open Setup.ini in Notepad and look for the following excerpt:

I opted to copy & paste the highlighted line and remove RevitServerOSVerCheck; from it. Then I commented the original line (prefix with a “;”) to preserve it, saved the file and exited. Now you’re ready to install Revit Server as usual (pick up from #2) and start by setting up your Central Server. Then move on to your Local Server installations once the Central is up and running.

Troubleshooting

We did have some trouble getting the Local server to recognize the Central server once each machine was in their final destination (initial testing with the two servers was all done in the same subnet and everything worked). We traced the problem to an incorrect gateway IP on the Local server, which was set to the public DNS server that we use. Since private IPs were being resolved internally by the gateway, everything worked fine but once the incorrectly set Local server was in it’s new home, the new gateway couldn’t resolve properly and requests/traffic was routed out to the public DNS servers, which obviously don’t know anything about our machines! Unfortunately Revit Server administrator is as helpful as a door knob to troubleshoot networking & routing issues and gives you absolutely no hint as to what could be wrong. Once we got this corrected, everything worked like a charm. So make sure to have some knowledgeable IT guys around for troubleshooting.

If you try connecting to a Revit Server by name and it doesn’t work, use the IP address instead and if it works, it means that you need to tweak your router’s settings to fix the name resolution issues.

One interesting thing that I didn’t know was that you don’t have to have the machines logged in for Revit Server and webserver services to run. So just fire them up and you’re good to go.

Implications

What does this all mean? Well, for starters, Revit Server is actually accessible to a lot more people than I previously thought. I think the “required” Windows Server 2008 OS is a huge psychological barrier, but it doesn’t have to be. You do need to set things properly from a networking standpoint, but once you do it’s really a breeze to use and processes don’t change a whole lot for the end users. As I said, it cost us $0 in additional hardware and software to get it going, so there should be no financial barrier to even start considering it. I think even small practices that work with long-distance collaborators stand to benefit from taking advantage of this technology. All it should take is VPN access (or a VPN tunnel between 2 or more networks) and the rest is as mentioned above.

In an earlier post, I briefly mentioned my limited success with installing a Public Revit Server (further testing is required…I really need to get me a decent desktop to test with and keep learning as much as possible about IP addressing, routers, etc.!). Aaron already hinted on his blog that they are running Local Revit Servers on laptops with Windows 7 and I hope that the above “tutorial” can help others actually getting it to work.

I’ll make sure to post again once we have a little more experience running this system but so far, silence on the part of our users tells me that things are running efficiently and as smooth as silk.

Media Summit @ADSKAEC #1

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 04:28:00 +0000

The title format of this post is a tribute to all Media Summit attendees who were tweeting and chirping like crazy during the various presentations that took place today. I think that everything of significance that was said has been twit-scribed and available for your reading pleasure!

Today’s sessions included numerous real-world accounts of companies using a multitude of Autodesk technologies, substantiating claims of savings and various other benefits through the use of such BIM workflows (the word/phrase of the day) and putting their money where their mouth is. As clients become more sophisticated and these stories continue to come out in the open, the use of catch-phrases by your organization such as “we do BIM” used solely for marketing gains, will be short lived and won’t hold water for much longer. It’s about time we move beyond paper, line weights and 2D representation. Sadly, until the practice framework of our profession undergoes an extreme makeover, this might not come to fruition till after I retire (and I’m not THAT old).

The big news buzz centered around the new bundling of Autodesk products: the Infrastructure Design Suite (available later this year), the Building Design Suite and the various tiers available. I think it’s going to be a no-brainer for a lot of single-practitioner to small firms in making the transition to the Premium suite. The Ultimate suite is targeted towards construction professionals.

For larger organizations, I don’t think it makes sense to have all your licenses as Suites since the economics work better if you “engineer” them to your specific needs (in other words, you would be better off having a mix of some suites in addition to a traditional number of single-product licenses). If you have highly specialized users that work mostly in a singular application, then suites wouldn’t make a lot of financial sense. But if you have users that wear various hats, purchasing suites is definitely the way to go since the additional purchase premium/subscription upcharge is a fraction of the combined price of standalone product licenses. I think this is a smart move by Autodesk in this economic climate, where they’re obviously seeking to collect more revenue by offering “volume discounts”. No good comes out of having a lot of unsold goods sitting on the shelf when instead you can make an irresistible offer that could potentially set profit margins higher overall (some reductions will undoubtedly occur from small businesses, but in the end it will be a win-win for all). One could also interpret this as a commoditizing of design and analysis tools.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow afternoon’s closed-door huddle sessions with the development teams. Unfortunately due to NDA, no scoops can be shared here (sad, sad, I know!), but I guess that’s the privilege you get for spending your free time typing away about Revit eh?

A big thanks to Autodesk for the evening events and the fabulous dinner with Boston city views as a backdrop. I’ll post a few more details and photos in another post as it’s time to snooze.

Where is Baldo?

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Ok, so my April fool post wasn't funny eh? I actually wasn't trying to be, so there :p

The next couple of days are going to be a real treat. I cannot say much yet but if you're a regular reader of this blog, you know what happened at the end of September 2010. So stay tuned for some more news.

As for my Revit Server post, it was quite cool to see several users play around with the admin panel. What was REALLY cool was getting it to work properly with my buddy Daniel, collaborating on some goofy files across national boundaries: from Houston to Montreal! It looks promising but not totally reliable. I was also really happy to see Phillip of KiwiCodes (Family Browser) actually save a file to the central server! One of the main concerns was that the admin. panel was unsecured and open to all. This was obviously the first test, but I can tell you that I was able to lock it completely and have it serviceable only through the machine hosting the Central server itself. This opens up more possibilities, such as remote controlling the Central server machine directly and administering through this means. Even with the admin. panel completely locked (blocking port 80 in the Windows firewall), syncronization from local server to central server was still successful.

I have received several emails expressing interest in how to set this up and also wanting to know how it performs. I will share more details in the coming weeks as I'm still trying to learn a few more particulars prior to posting. You know that I like to have all my ducks in a row as they say ;) A huge thanks goes to a very smart guy named Kevin who does not settle for "can't be done" for an answer ;) I sure learned a lot from him over the past few months.

I'll leave you with one tip though: if you're wanting to install Revit server on Windows 7, you need to install IIs7 first and edit the setup.ini file. Remember thay this is UNSUPPORTED by Autodesk, so please don't go about pestering them about it. You've been warned!

Stairs and railings

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 21:19:00 +0000

I'm really excited to see the upcoming stairs and railing tools in Revit 2012. I have no idea why they were not covered by other bloggers in the past weeks. I'll do my best to work up some examples and post back. Stay tuned!

Public Revit Server?

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:45:00 +0000

Imagine you could work efficiently with others outside your office on workset-enabled Revit files without being within the same network infrastructure or connected together via VPN. Wouldn’t that be cool?

I’m not implying this will work (yet) but I think it’s actually possible. See for yourself by clicking here! Note that this is a temporary URL and will only work for a short period of time after this post. If testing is successful, I’ll follow up with details.

Type Mark

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:45:00 +0000

Model objects in Revit are identified by a unique Type Mark parameter, which Revit makes available only after a family is actually loaded in a project file. As of late, this has become a bit of a stickler.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to templates: the “load it up baby!” group and the “minimalists”. I’m more of the former, but I guess it’s mostly due to some productivity shortcomings in Revit. Now that we actually have a solution in place (Family Browser), I’m officially in the new, middle-of-the-road camp: Load it up, but keep loadable families in your office library only (mostly).

If you load up your template with a ton of families and types, you make it next to impossible (or a big time waster) to use the Insert Component tool coupled with the Type Selector. Unless you have developed a rigid naming system to flock families of a feather to stay together (ex: prefixing with “pfix” for plumbing fixtures, etc.), then there’s a good chance that you have total mayhem in the Type Selector. At which point it makes more sense to simply drag the family type from the Families node of the Project Browser into your canvas. However with Family Browser, you have a more efficient method of loading what you want, when you want it, so that is now my preferred choice.

Unfortunately, on-demand loading presents us with a problem. Until recently, we edited the Type Marks in advance in our template to suit our needs and made sure all details, notes etc. were coordinated with that value. But with on-demand loading, your type mark is populated after loading into a project, resulting in “loss of information/intelligence” as the user has to manually fix type marks in every loaded family. And as Aaron states in his great post about templates, why let your users do something on every project when you can do it once in the template?

This has led us to discontinue the use of Type Marks in our families in favor of our own “Master Type Mark” shared parameter added to each family. I totally understand why Revit adds a Type Mark to a family once loaded into a project, but at the same time there’s no arguing that the current behavior is problematic. Why not let us fill out the Type Mark in advance and just warn us about a conflict once loaded into a project? This would be a much better workflow than forcing us to create redundant shared parameters.

Miss Representation

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:45:00 +0000

Exhibit A: Section at roof. What’s wrong with this view?

I know, you’re probably answering…”The deck is not resting on the joist, call your Engineer!”. Well, I did. Sent several emails actually and had the engineering team scratch their heads and think I’m nuts. There’s actually nothing wrong with the model and we’re coordinated! I should have noticed this, but my brain played a nasty trick on me.

Exhibit B: The truth.

This particular 2D view is not telling the whole story and should also include the additional green linework above. So next time you’re presented with a similar puzzler, don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions! Hmmm, and I thought Revit never lied…

A sneak-peek at Revit 2012

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:40:00 +0000

The blogger webcast was held earlier today and I’m sure plenty have already posted about the upcoming features. Some bloggers are just too rapid but I’m not going to compete for the scoop! So I’ll now bring you my take based on first impressions, at my leisure.

Almost every year, the camp is split between those that are very excited and those that are bummed. In past years, I’ve almost always been in the first camp and couldn’t understand what the rest were fussing about. However this year, I am feeling a bit disappointed about the quantity of improvements for the Architectural discipline. This is just a personal opinion based on the perceived frequency of use of the new features. Personally, I like to see a balance between new toys and fixes for long standing issues (in other words, how is my team’s productivity going to improve and by how much?). My feeling is that it’s quite light this year. That doesn’t mean however, that you won’t be thrilled with the new improvements, especially if you’re in the Engineering and Construction disciplines.

During the webcast, only the top new features were highlighted and those are the ones I’ll be discussing here. There are other upcoming enhancements that might seem trivial to some but could potentially be at the top of your own personal list, which is why opinions about a new release tend to vary greatly.

Architecture

A welcome new feature for the construction industry will be the ability to take an architectural model and add further model granularity without having to start the modeling process over from scratch. Parts can be automatically created for system families such as walls and floors, which can then be further manipulated to your heart’s content. So for example you can take a wall, add parts and end up with a solid for each later in your wall. These parts stay tied to the main parent family and can also be adjusted individually and phased independently from the parent family. I can see these new tools used effectively in IPD environments, where constructors can start refining and testing strategies as the design evolves. Changes to the design model can then automatically propagate to the construction parts.

Another good use case is the division of pours in a structural foundation slab. So you can now pick the Architect’s floor, create parts from it, and then divide those parts further using existing datums that intersect them (such as levels and grids). In addition you can also sketch your own divisions. This is much more efficient than re-modeling each concrete pour as a separate floor sketch.

Note: A use case that was suggested for the architectural discipline was to model the various floor finishes. I think this has potential, but I have not been able to come up with a whole lot of other scenarios where I would actually use this tool. Unfortunately due to the current implementation, parts add yet another line item to your visibility troubleshooting list, as each view can now show the original families only, parts only, or both. Perhaps a separate tab for parts in the V/G dialog would be a better long-term strategy. Another new construction modeling feature, Assemblies, was discussed later in the Revit Structure segment. A scenario in which I could see myself using this feature would be in the creation of documentation 3D views where I would want to “peel” away layers to explain how materials come together. Since I can create such views using parts and still maintain model integrity in regular views through the original system families, I would think this is a possible use case for Architects (trust me when I say that I’ve been trying hard to come up with opportunities to use this functionality, but I have been less than successful!).

A nice new feature is the ability to import point clouds directly into Revit and thus model existing buildings based on this point data. I think this tool will be valuable in the immediate future while lots of firms are busy working on a larger-than-usual percentage of renovation projects. That is, if the project can actually afford the extra expense of laser scanning! I suppose now that integrating this data is possible with relative ease, there is a good chance that laser scanning costs might even come down to more reasonable levels as demand increases.

Finally for the first segment, User Experience enhancements were discussed. These are platform-wide enhancements that aim to improve the experience while interacting with the model. For example now you can enable edges in Realistic views, enable Ambient Shadows (formerly known as Ambient Occlusion) in views set to Consistent Colors or Hidden Line, and (drum roll) they print too! A new Ghost Surface option has been implemented. This can be enabled as a display setting and will render all model elements with a 30% transparency, or it can be applied individually as an override to filters, to individual views through individual categories in V/G or at the element level. This should open up a world of possibilities for presentations, although I secretly yearn for the moment when the Transparent and Ghost columns are combined into a single Transparency control that is user-adjustable at the category, subcategory and element level. Don’t you love more control? Selections now can also be transparent, revealing elements beyond. This setting can also be turned off globally if you don’t find it useful.

Structure

I don’t have an overall slide of new features for Structure. I probably missed it while chatting with some fellow bloggers. But I did manage to capture a few screenshots of the new enhancements.

Analytical visibility is no longer scattered as various subcategories between multiple object categories. Instead it has now all been promoted into a dedicated tab (and I believe parts ought to follow this strategy eventually). I‘ve seen many engineers and structural designers struggle with the analytical model (especially bracing) in past releases, and I think this version should provide greater control over the analytical “wireframe” without causing heartaches in the building/documentation model. Here you can see the control widget that allows you to move the various nodes around in all directions.

Creating 3D rebar has been significantly improved and it seems one can model with relative ease and efficiency. I was quite impressed actually with this functionality, which I think really highlights the power of Revit’s sketching paradigm to quickly model seemingly complex elements.

An Assembly example was demonstrated using 3D rebar. As further assemblies are created, Revit will create new definitions for unique assemblies or utilize existing definitions if such assemblies are identical. I have to confess that Assemblies confuse me a little as they seem to be “groups”, but kinda backwards. So if you modify one of multiple instances of an assembly, it will not modify identical assemblies. Instead it will create a new assembly definition. It’s almost like taking a group, duplicating and renaming it. I don’t fully understand why this was done and personally think that perhaps Group functionality should have been leveraged and expanded to add this concept to the toolset. This way the user can decide whether to propagate changes to other assemblies or to create unique definitions. I think this grouping/assembly concept could easily apply to other mainstream uses. However I don’t know the whole reasoning behind how the tool came to be in its presented form. I’m sure we’ll learn more over time!

MEP

My impression is that out of all the disciplines, MEP engineers should be the happiest bunch of us all (What? You said “good luck getting an engineer excited!”?? Come on now!).

There were several enhancements/overhauls aimed to improve usability. For example one can now explore all parts of systems in the new System Browser. One can hover over each element in the table to cause it to highlight in the canvas (3d or orthogonal views). Selecting one or more elements will now also select the element/s in the project (shown in red below).

One can filter systems based on Discipline (ex: Piping above) and drill down to each individual element in that system, all represented with their own icon.

You no longer need to use filters to identify systems in views. Instead, each system now has a graphic override incorporated into it. So basically the filter has moved out of the views and into the system itself, which should greatly simplify view creation.

You can now also add placeholder ducts (with no connectors) which can later be turned into actual systems. This workflow is ideal for the early phases of a project where conceptual layouts are required to start exploring routing strategies. This first conceptual “stab” at the problem can then be refined and tweaked without destroying the initial effort.

Other demonstrated enhancements were those pertaining to warnings. As you can see from the image, icons shows up in-canvas to warn users of potential problems. Clicking on he icon displays the warning that pertains to the object, system or connection. I think further additions of in-canvas controls is a very positive development direction and should occur in all flavors of Revit. As we all probably agree, warning review in all versions of Revit leave a lot to be desired.

That’s all for now folks. Stay tuned for more news in the days and weeks to come before the new versions ship out to you (probably delivered digitally…no “ships” required!).

It’s that time of the year

d.baldacchino@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 03:59:00 +0000

The most wonderful time? Well, if you’re an Autodesk geek maybe so, but let’s not take it too far! It’s time to learn what new features your favorite software will contain in the upcoming 2012 versions (released in 2011…confused?). Just like you, I can’t wait to find out what’s in store for Revit and have my fingers crossed that it will be a strong release (I’ll now stop pretending that I know nothing about it).

If you want to be amongst the first to get a sneak-peak of Autodesk’s new products for the design, engineering, and entertainment industries, then mark your calendars: There is a live, public webcast to kick things off, hosted by Senior Vice President Amar Hanspal on Monday, March 21^st at 5p Eastern Daylight Time. Since I’m posting this late Sunday night, there’s a good chance you’ll be reading this on Monday, which means the webcast is TODAY! You can preregister at http://autode.sk/glzUsA.

I’ll be attending a private blogger webcast that will go live after the kick-off and am hoping to have some more information to share with you. I know for sure that the next few weeks are going to be very exciting, so stay tuned!