Revittize

General Notes-NCS

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 00:31:00 +0000

Over the last couple of years I've been seeing a misunderstanding of the use of General notes. I refer to the US National CAD Standard (NCS) for how to use General Notes. In the NCS, General Notes are categorized to provide clear and organized information across different aspects of a project. Here are the main types of general notes:

General Notes:

These notes apply to the entire project and are relevant to all disciplines and sheets within the drawing set. The purpose of these General Notes is to include general instructions, guidelines, and requirements that are applicable to the entire project. This can include safety instructions, general construction practices, and project-wide standards.

Example: “All dimensions are in millimeters unless otherwise noted.”

These General notes are typically found on the G-Series of drawings

Code information is typically seen on the G-series

General Discipline Notes:

These notes are specific to a particular design discipline, such as architectural, structural, mechanical, etc.

Example: “All structural steel to be painted with primer before installation.”

These types of General notes are found in the 000 section of that specific discipline.
Often I find Structural, Mechanical & Electrical uses these types of general notes.
Architectural uses these sheets for conveying typical architectural information like mounting heights, symbols and abbreviations.

General Sheet Notes:

These notes apply Only to the Specific Sheet on which they appear on.
Example: “Install door as per manufacturer’s instructions on this sheet.”

Reference Keynotes

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Basically NCS Reference Keynotes is the serious big brother to Sheet keynotes. While Sheet Keynotes are like friendly post-it notes on your drawing Reference Keynotes are the scholarly footnotes of your drawing. Reference keynotes are rooted in the specifications (those hefty documents that architects and engineers love to go to sleep to, I mean pore over).

When it comes to Refence keynotes Precision Matters, having exact specification numbers in reference keynotes is like having a GPS with pinpoint accuracy. It ensures that readers can navigate your document without getting lost in the wilderness of ambiguity. Without specificity, readers might end up referencing outdated or irrelevant material. Imagine citing a Wikipedia page that changes faster than a chameleon at a color-changing convention.

That's why it's always important to make sure you coordinate Refence keynotes with the specifications. There are always some simple changes in the specification that could get the reader in the general area. as an example you have a door fame keynote of 08 1000.A, but in the specification you don't have a 08 1000 section you have the 08 1113 section. In this example the keynote really should be changed to 08 1113.A. Yes the 08 division got you in the right area but was the door a hollow metal frame (08 1113) a aluminum frame (08 1116) a Stainless steel Frame (08 1119) a frame for a sound controlled door (08 3473) or a Frame provided by a metal building manufacture (13 3419).

Remember the Devil’s in the Details. Sometimes, the difference between success and chaos lies in a single digit. So, when you’re specifying a standard, be as precise as a Swiss watchmaker adjusting a timepiece. Precision in reference keynotes isn’t just about being pedantic, it’s about guiding readers to the right oasis of knowledge .

E-Transmit

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Tue, 21 May 2024 18:49:00 +0000

One of the earliest Revit Add-in's I've ever used has been E-Transmit. I say add-in because it still shows up on the Add-In tab, even though it installs with all current versions of Revit it was initially something you had in to install separately.

For years I've just used it to gather all the files of the project to be able to cleanly send my model to the other designers(engineers) of the project or the client in some cases. Another function I've used E-transmit for is to move the Revit model to a different location on the my network. E-transmitting a Revit model cleans up the network paths so the original location isn't called out. This was always useful when archiving the model.

Besides for gathering all of the files that are linked into the model it can cleanup the model and upgrade the model. The best part is that it can not only do this to the model that you are E-transmitting but all of the models that are linked into the model that's being E-transmitted. If you have a campus plan with a master site model that you have ten to fifty building models loaded into it you have set E-transmit to upgrade the models over night and it will.

At the end of the project you will want to archive the project. When archiving most of the time you could just copy the Revit file to the archive location. Doing this you end up a archiving a model with unnecessary information and breaking the links. AS already discussed E-transmit will fix the link issues, but it can clean up the model as well. With a toggle you can have E-transmit purge all unused items like detail, or model components. It can delete unused groups. It can delete all views that are not on a sheet or all views and sheets in the model so that you are just left with the model geometry.

At the end of a project I am starting to do two sets of E-transmits, 1 that purges out all unused views and components, then 1 that purges out all the sheets. The reason I'm doing the second if for future remodels of the building. we shall see how that works.

Light Well Part two

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 22:33:00 +0000

To Supplement my Light Well blog I created a video where i've gone through the process.

I would have said short video, but it is a little over 10 minutes long and that is only because I edited the heck out of video. cutting some part out and sped up some of that parts, otherwise it was closer to 30 minutes.

Survey Issue

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:33:00 +0000

Yesterday, I had an issue with a survey drawing that I got from an owner. The PDF that the owner gave me showed contour on the site. But when I opened up the Autocad file instead of seeing the contours all I saw was a bunch of dots.

At first I thought the file was corrupted and asked the owner for the file again, and the same thing, Normally when I get files from the surveyor or civil engineer they five me a file that I can open in Autocad or link into Revit, but i had a thought that maybe it was still a Civil 3d file. Since I'm an Architect I don't have Civil 3d on my machine, well I do now, and sure enough when I opened the file in Civil 3d I saw the contour lines.

Within Civil3d I exported the file. Yes vanilla Autocad and Civil3d use the same DWG file, but Civil3d files are a little different. If you have the same issue as me export use the Export Civil 3d Drawing setting

Now that the contours show up I can link the topo information into Revit. Then I can drape the Toposurface (Revit 2023 and before) or Toposolid (Revit 2024 and after) over the contours and begin working on the Architectural site design.

Managing Worksets in linked Models

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 03:49:00 +0000

There are a two of ways to manage the Worksets of linked models. The first is the official Autodesk method the second is kind of a hack that worked before the official method came about.

First method

From the link manger there is a button called Manage Worksets that highlights when you select one of the Revit links. From this button the Manage Workset menu of the linked file comes up and you can see all of the Worksets of the linked model. from there you can turn off or rather Close the worksets of the linked model.

Second method

Duplicate the worksets from the linked model into your model. With the same named worksets as the linked model you can control the worksets as if they were in your model. In the workset manage dialog you can click if the workset is Visible in all views.

Differences of the two methods

In the first method when you Close the workset of the linked model it is off in all views while the second method you can decide which views the workset is off in. For me being able to decide which view it is off in instead of just being off in all views means it can be on in my coordination views while it is off in my sheet views.

In the Second method you need to have the additional worksets in your model that you could accidently put something on.

In the Second method you can set the worksets to be automictically off in views even if they are on in the linked model by toggling the Visible in all views button.

With the second method you should incorporate a naming convention where duplicate worksets like shared levels and grids are named discipline specific.

A-Datum (Shared Levels and Grids)
S-Datum
M-Datum

Not real sold on renaming Shared Levels and Grids to Datum, but that was what a former coworker called it and it's remained that way for years in my firm.

Light Well's in Revit

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 05:10:00 +0000

Over the years that I've been using Revit I've detailed light wells Revit. These are had usually been windows that have windows on the exterior of the building that have wider openings on the inside of the building. This is usually done in a double wall, so I'm only talking about ten to eighteen inches in thickness. In most cases these light wells were in stair wells to bring more light into the dark space of the stair well. Since I wasn't rendering the light well I didn't over model the model by modeling the sloped walls, all I did was detail a section so it could be built.

Last week I was asked how to model something that was like a light well but in reverse. and it was defiantly going to be rendered. So modeling it will be necessary. There were a couple of ways I could think of modeling this. The depth of the double wall system I was asked about was three to four feet in depth, so I'm talking about interfacing with two walls. The inner wall will host the window, while the outer wall will have the larger opening.

Option 1

Withing the cavity build two sloped walls, a sloped soffit, and a sloped sill from a floor or roof.

Option 2

Build a family of some sort.

Since this project is in Design Development and the team is wanting to look at different options Option 1 is way too much work and doesn’t give a way to quickly flex multiple options.

From the Balkan Architect I watched a video where he showed a way to create a window family to allow for a sloped sill, head and side walls. For the family I’m looking at if the concepts the Balkan Architect suggested will work for me. For now at least it will.

I started with just a generic family to see if the concept worked.

When making any family I started with the plan. So I asked what I needed to accomplish with the family, which in this case was I needed an adjustable family that could make the walls of an opening that went from a large opening to a smaller opening. From that I figured what parameters I would need.

Outer Width
Outer Height
Inner Width
Inner Height
Sill Height
Depth (depth of the light well)
Thickness (this is the thickness of the material, which doesn't need to be very thick)
Bottom Offset
Left Offset
At first I had a top and right offset but that over constrained the family so I eliminated those parameters

Once I had my plan I built the skeleton of the family. Adding the Reference planes to the family, then adding the parameters to the reference planes. After adding the parameters I flexed the family to make sure it worked the way I thought it should. In this family I did make all the parameters instance parameters that way when I brought it into the wall based family the parameters could be linked.

Once I worked the way I thought it should I built the geometry. To tell the truth I hadn't used the blend tool in years, but in this case that was the correct tool to use. First I extruded a mass that was locked to the reference planes. Then I extruded a void, that was offset from the mass, and used the Thickness parameter to make the thickness adjustable. Then flexed the family to make sure it still flexed properly.

With the generic family working correctly I started a new Generic Wall Based family. where I put all of the same parameters and the Outer Reference Planes in. With the Outer Reference Planes I created a void in the wall. Then added the previous family and locked it's parameters to the Wall based version as well as locking the family to the wall's edge plane. Then I flexed the family wall based family.

A generic faced based could be used instead of a wall based generic family.

Setting up a Revit Site Model-Commentary

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 05:55:00 +0000

Setting up a site model needs to be setup as soon as you receive a Site Survey. Now that I'm back to working on Revit projects this is a subject that I've been researching for the last couple of weeks, to be able to write a proper process for the firm I work for. Five years ago I wrote this process for the government client I had been working for, so I hadn't had to think of the process since for that client we had set up a master site plane that all of their new building acquire the coordinates from.

To wrap my head around the concept again, I've watched video from, BIM Pure, BIM Lounge, Aussie BIM Guru, BIMandbeam as well as a few others. I encourage you to look into their videos.

All of these videos started with receiving the site survey and cleaning it up before bring it into Revit, which means saving as a separate file first. Because surveyors put things out in the middle of nowhere in their Cad file I totally agree with this process. BIM lounge said to start a new file and copy the data into a New Autocad file, just wblocking the data does the trick as well. Most of the videos have you fattening the file as well so that all the data is at the same elevation, I agree with this if you save an unflattened version as well. Having the contours at their proper elevation might be helpful when modeling the Toposurface,

One trick several of the video's talked about was to have a level at 0, I corrected my template to call this level "0 Survey". What the videos didn't explain, or i just missed it, because it didn't make since to me at the time. But this hack is necessary because when you Acquire coordinates from the Cad survey file it makes the lowest level 0'-0" even if you had it at 100'-0" before acquiring coordinates. So if you link the survey on the Survey layer you can keep you Level 0 at 100'-0" like the Structural engineers like.

Oh if you didn't catch it I said Link the Survey Cad file in. Everyone agrees with this, never insert your cad survey into the Revit project always, and I mean ALWAYS, LINK the cad survey into Revit.

Once the Cad file is LINKED in you can rotate it around to get it in the correct orientation to put on a sheet. Once rotating the file one of the things most of the videos showed was how to go through the process of going to a site plan view that is set to True North and rotating the project back to True north. When I was testing the process on several test site models I discovered that you can skip the whole rotation to true north, because once you Acquire coordinates from the CAD file True North is automatically set. I created a video for my firm showing the process. since that video show office directory paths and other specific Firm related subjects like creating Worksets I might come back a make a simplified version for this blog.

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Key Plan Detail Component

It been awhile since I've posted anything but I had created this video about Key Plan's and I thought I would post this on this blog.

Key plan are an orientation devices to understand where you are in the building. Over the years I used several different methods for show a keyplan of sheets in Revit. I've used live views so that it changes when the plan changes, I've used Revit Legends, but the best method I've found is to use a detail component.

The component I use is setup with nine Key plan areas. Typically I will not have that complicated of a project that will require nine areas, but if it does it is setup. Depending on the configuration of each floor a key plan of each floor may need to be set up.

Each area in the component has a filled region and that that is tied to Yes/No Instance Visibility parameter.

To use the component I follow the process below. This process does break one of the cardinal rules in Revit, importing and exploding an Autocad file. When using the Autocad file you have to clean and strip the file so that it is a simple line diagram.

Process

In Revit open a view of the plan
Export plan to DWG format
Open plan in Autocad
Clean up Autocad file

Delete lines as necessary to make the plan a single line diagram of the plan.
Put all lines on a single layer
Do a full purge of the dwg file
Save and close

Open Revit Key plan family
Import ACAD file into Key Plan Family
Scale ACAD down to fist within the area of the Key Plan
Modify each Key area to match the building foot print

Select Key Filled Region, and click edit
Delete original lines
Trace lines of plan
Save edits
Repeat for each area

Explode ACAD file and place all lines on the Building Outline
Modify Key Plan Text

Change Text to appropriate language or delete

Load Family back into project
Place Key plan on sheet and check the appropriate area to be visible

AU 2020 Digital Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 17:37:00 +0000

AU 2020 Digital Day 1 started with me checking out a 30 minute virtual session of Using Revit to Design for Social Distancing: New Tools and How to Use Them this was a good session that discussed the People Flow toolkit. This presentation explained how this tool pushes the Revit travel path tool more.

Then can the AU General session and the AEC keynote. It was interesting to watch these sessions live with some of my co-workers. It was interesting because I was at home and they were in the office. Texting back and forth on things that were stated. Autodesk Build, Collaborate, Doc's and Digital Twin. It was cool to see the Media workflow. That Generative scheduling tool of theirs really looked cool. After the AEC keynote I did miss the wall opening up to expose the Expo, maybe next year.

Love the Idea of OPEN STANDARDS

Revit 2020.2 Travel Paths

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Sat, 30 Nov 2019 18:00:00 +0000

One of the new features that Revit 2020 has been Travel Paths. There are probably many uses for this new feature, but for me it will be used for egress code analysis. In the past I have used about three different hacks to get the egress lengths. I've uesed several generic components and added up the lengths, I've used an adaptive component to get the egress lengths, but what I had used the most a Revit railing system I specially made for calculating the egress lengths. Now with this new travel paths feature I no longer need to use any of these hacks.

I've started one project in 2020 and have begun to use and understand the new feature. I will say it works pretty good, but I can tell it is a first generation, and still needs a lot of work. The Travel Path function automatically calculates the shortest route between two points. This is great, right well, no. I need a little more control of where the points go. So to control how the path goes I've had to create some fake objects to get it to go in the direction I want it to go in. Now comes the 2020.2 update, in this update Revit can now add nodes to the path so I now have the ability to control the path goes, So I don't need the fake objects. Now we just need the ability to control the look of the arrow heads, and the nodes.

Revit 2020.2 Base points

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Sat, 30 Nov 2019 05:39:00 +0000

For a long time now Revit has had three different Base points, Project Base point, Survey Point, and an internal base point. The Project Base Point and the Survey Point have had an icon that you could turn on and off so that you could Identify them, but the Internal base point had always been a hidden point in the project. One hack I had seen to identify this point was to create a component that would be placed at the hidden point. Sometimes this hack works well and sometimes it does not.

With the Reivt 2020.2 update this hidden base point can now be visible. In visibility graphics there is a new category called Internal Origin. When this is on an icon that looks like the origin point in Autocad appears. This is the origin point of the model, that can not be moved. When this is on you can see how far away from the origin of the model you have modeled your building. Why this has been so important to understand how far away from the the origin of the model is, because when the model is miles away from the origin this creates inaccuracies in the model, which then creates errors.

This is one great update to Revit
one thing to note though, on existing project the Internal Origin will be turned on by default, so if you do not want to see this point you will need to turn it off in every view, a good use of View templates.

AU2019 Lego prep

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 03:30:00 +0000

A couple of months ago I created a Lego scene with the Autodesk Lego figures I got at #AU2018 and posted it on my Twitter feed. Every week since than I've post a Lego AU picture. Some of these pictures I used Autodesk's Sketchbook to do some photo editing, adding backgrounds and some text to the pictures

September 1
Lego guys remembering the AU stage

September 12
Lego guys sharpening there saber skills instead of Dynamo

September 17
Autodesk Lego guys standing near Las Vegas

September 19
AU Logo with Autodesk Lego guys standing between Las Vegas and San Francisco

September 22
Rebels and Imperials getting ready to leave for AU

September 29
Missing the train

October 8 -Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

October 14
Hitting the road for AU

October 20
Hitting the range

October 21

October 28
Hogwarts express leaving for AU

October 29
Harley Quin riding with the Potters to AU

November 3
First timer getting ready to get on the plane to AU

November 4
Veteran clarify which plane they are taking

November 10
Packing to go to AU

November 16
Flying to AU

Revit 2020 splash page

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 14:10:00 +0000

I know it's been a while since I've posted, for the last year or so I've been on projects that were using Revit 2018 and there wasn't anything new I felt I needed to share with the world. Recently I've gotten a project where I've had the opportunity to work in the latest Revit(2020) and I have to say the very first thing the splash page I am really happy with. It is not the design of the splash page but how it actually works.

99% of the projects I work on have worksharing enabled, and because of this the splash page to quickly get to the project you've recently worked on was practically worthless. The reason why it was worthless was because if you double clicked on one of this project shown on the splash page it would open the central file of the project, and you almost never want to be working in the central file that cause all kinds of problems when multiple people are working on the project. Best practice was to open the Revit then browser your network to find the central file and click it, since when you did that you were given the option to open the central file or to create a local copy.

In Revit 2020 if you double click the project on the splash page it now tells you that you are opening the file as a local copy. This make the splash page actually useful, and also makes it so if you want to get into the central file it is a conscious and intentional option not an automatic one since that should not be the automatic option. To do weekly audit on the file you will still want to browser to centeral file, but this again is an intentionally option.

AU2018 Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 03:19:00 +0000

Another AU is over, everything is blending together.

Today I had a class about failing as a BIM Coordinator. Much like a lot of my classes toady it wasn't exactly what I was thinking it was about, but it was a good class. It was a lot about communication and how the Role of a BIM Coordinator is a new role and has different tasks than a BIM Modeler(he didn't quite those words). My last class of the day was with Arron Maller and Robert Manna about Auditing Revit Models, well sort of. Arron's part seemed to get into the gest of the Auditing process, while what Robert was talking about was data mining his projects and using a database to figure out the health of a model with some automation process.

This year the exhibit hall had a cool Lego build wall, where attendees could build something and put it up and the wall to display.

AU2018 Day2

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 15:51:00 +0000

Day 2 of AU 2018 had me going to a class by John Pierson Robert Mana and one by Matt Dillon.

Matt's class reinforced some of the Model management techniques I've been harping on for years. Robert's class gave me some more insight on how to manage BIM360 sites. and John's was a great intro into writing Python scripts for Dynamo.

The Night ended with the AU party at the Linq Promenade. The Bowling ally there always has a great concert.

AU2018 Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 15:32:00 +0000

I know it's been awhile since I've posted anything, but I'm here at #AU2018 and thought I'd post again. First day of AU is done. It has already been an interesting AU fro me. Not so much the learning but the people you meet, or rather the people you haven't seen in years and you run into. I actually ran into a guy that I hadn't seen in at least 10 years or more. Now about the AU classes.

My First class was an interesting class that I don't think we will see in practice for another 5 to 10 years. It was a way of having a live virtual project meeting. meaning being able walk and move a virtual building with 2 people in 2 different locations. Like I said it is a way down the line before this is used practically, technology needs to catch up to the concept.

My second class didn't dive into the what I thought the title was about, but that being said, it was an excellent class. The information the presenter talked about leading into the meat of the presentation was excellent. In fact the presentation lead directly into the AU General session about automation. In the coming weeks or months I'm going to post an in depth review and summary of this class.

My last Class of the day was about the National BIM Standard. It was interesting, being involved with the National CAD Standard I understand the difficulty of developing these standards with a Volunteer group of people. One of the things they talked about was asking for Volunteers.

The Exhibit hall has come interesting displays this year.

The Night ended with at a Costumer appreciation party put on by ATG/CTC.

Revit Wall Naming Conventions-Survey Results

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 13:43:00 +0000

In January I posted a blog entry about Revit Wall Naming Conventions that had a survey attached to it. I ended up getting 34 people around the globe take the survey. Some of the results were surprising to me, but some were not.

My first question about if the use of short or long descriptive Revit wall names was what I expected. most people preferred to longer names over the shorter names. I did expect there to more of the longer names but still the longer names won by 74%

If you had a short name for the wall name most people still like a descriptive version of the wall name.

With the long name version of the wall names I was really looking to see what pattern of the wall names most people preferred, This was another one that really wan't that much of a surprise to me. the pattern that I currently use got 56% of the votes my only surprise here was that it didn't more of the votes

In understanding what information that needs to be in the pattern of the name this is these I had some surprises. 64% of the people felt that the total with of the wall should be in the name, personally I don't find it useful but 41% felt it is very important information.

Now Core material was not a surprise at all with 88% of the people felt that it is important information that needs to be in the name of the wall. Core thickness had 73% of the people felt that it is important information that needs to be in the name of the wall.

Partition tag and Function were both split down the middle with Function having 56% of the people feeling that it was important information that needed to be in the name of the wall. While Partition tag only having 47% of the people feeling that it was important information that needed to be in the name of the wall.

Interior and Exterior finishes both had over 70% of the votes to be in the name of the wall.

Not surprising that almost 60% of the people feeling that it was important information that needed to be in the name of the wall. While less than 25% of of the people felt that Fire Rest numbers, STC ratings and STC test numbers was important information that needed to be in the name of the wall.

What surprised me was that 33% of people felt having the discipline in the name was important. I didn't think it would have been that high, since in mind there are really only 2 disciplines associated with walls Structural and Architectural. 36% of people felt having the specification number in the name important, this one i really don't understand since many walls have multiple specifications associated with them.

Comments from the survey

I have a strong preference towards short naming with a legend in the project for team members to learn from. Also, having a naming convention helps people gain familiarity with the types and it becomes second nature.

Naming objects depends on the LOD, there can not be just one way

Mistake: Specification Category-Core Material/thickness- (09-Metal)

E 380 20!120, where: "E/I" - exterior/interior, 380 - core thickness, 20!120 - int!ext finishing thickness, all in millimeters.

Fire & STC rating in the name depends on how your walls & ratings are handled. Some people handle those as instance parameters, in which case it is irrelevant to the wall name. If the ratings are handled by type then it becomes important. There are a number of discussions on RevitForum about this if you are interested. Aaron Maller is a big proponent of instance based ratings for what that is worth.

I like the way Autodesk names them to be honest. It keeps the name short enough to be viewable/understandable in the tool palette. Your survey forced me to select a preferred name but not sure I wanted to.

We use models as an on site reference, which means that the less ambiguous and more straight to the point we can be, the better. Project managers usually are thankful to have as much data as possible at a glimpse of the element's properties.

It should be Function-(Thickness)-Wall Layer Makeup Groups them all together with sequential thickness.

I am from India, where the thinnest Masonry wall, suffcies for the required Fire rating in most scenarios. These regional differences make a big difference in my priorities. Would love to see the popularity verdict. Can you eMail the response file? Thanks :)

Revit Wall Naming Conventions

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 11:00:00 +0000

This last year I was involved in a Template creation exercise for one of my clients that involved the creation and naming of some standard Revit walls. I will readily admit that I am not 100% on board with what the final naming structure of the walls ended up being. I will also admit that I could be in the wrong. So I decided to do some research on the subject again.

I found several Forum treads and blog posts where people had put their 2 cents in on the subject: AUGI Revit Fourm Practical BIM Revitopia BIMScape US Dept of Veteran Affairs

I also looked at how USG Name the Revit walls they have on line, as well as Clark Dietrich's Revit Add-in that creates walls.

In seeing all of these differing opinions I thought I would put together a quick survey about the subject. Revit Wall Naming Survey If you have time add your 2 cents to the survey.

AU2017 Day 3

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 16:08:00 +0000

Virtual AU 2017 day 3.
Day was extremely busy for me, and that doesn't mean watching AU sessions. The only one I really got to watch was the AEC Keynote. In the AEC keynote they talked a lot about BIM 360 and Collaboration for Revit, and how it can help in this Automation process that was talked about in the Opening Keynote. They had an example of one firm that was hit hard by the hurricanes, but because of C4R they were able to get up and running and meet their deadlines despite the devastation.

One thing I noticed when I looked through the catelog of sessions was that thee were a lot of classes on Virtual Reality (VR). There were two of the Live sessions that talked about VR as well, so when I try and watch some of the AU2017 sessions over this next year I guess i'm going to look at some of these VR sessions and see how it can apply to me.
AS129811: A vision for the future of Virtual Reality in Design Viz: Advice from the Experts
AS122820: Design to Visualization: How to make Virtual Reality a Reality in a Design Firm

AU2017 Day2

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 06:59:00 +0000

The AU Live started out with a class about Autocad's Toolpallets. If I still had Autocad as my main software it would have been a great class but since Revit is my main software it didn't help me.

The technology Keynote was a good presentation. it had some of the enthusiasm and had a feeling of positivity that I don't feel yesterday's keynote was lacking.

Justin Benjamin and Josh Moore did a class on Increase the Reliability of Your Revit Model with Better Modeling Habits. This was a great class, I didn't get to hear the whole thing because I was at work and someone kept on interrupting me, but this is a class I'm going to watch again.

The last class of the day Overcoming the 7 Deadly Sins of Corporate Training Programs presented by Donnie Gladfelter, Jason Kunkel was a really good class talking about training. This that might work and things that might not work. Having a training plan for everyone is an interesting concept.

AU 2017 Day1

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 07:06:00 +0000

Andrew Anagnost

Ok I'm not really at AU this year but Autodesk is live streaming a handful of classes, and I was able to watch some of the in the comfort of my office desk. Well comfort might be overstating it a little, but I was able to watch the opening Keynote with the new Autodesk CEO. Andrew Anagnost. Maybe it was because I wasn't there and maybe it was Andrew but the Keynote was not as inspiring as past keynotes. What I felt the message of this Keynote was don't be afraid of automation, and you can do More with less. I wonder if that mean I can do More with less Autodesk products. Andrew did breifly talk about something called Generative learning which I just might do some more research on.

Another class I more listened to then watched today while I was trying to get some work done was, AS129811: A vision for the future of Virtual Reality inDesign Viz: Advice from the Experts. This was a panel discussion about Virtual Reality. One of the folks on the panel was from Gensler and I was surprised to hear that they use VR an a lot of their project, and they are not using it just to wow the client to show them what their new space will be but as a design tool, so that the designers could see the space they were designing an make adjustments to the design.(Panel members Obrien Chalmers, Alex Coulombe, Scott Dewoody, Martin Enthed, Jeff Mottle, David Scott)

The last live session of the day was by Brian Mackey. the course to taught was, AS122882: Creating Intelligent Details in Revit. Brian is always a good presenter. I think I've seen a version of this course a couple of years ago, but it always a good to see what things he has added to the subject.

Technology has really changed, a couple of years ago Autodesk was one of the first companies that tried to live stream an training session. back then I will say it really sucked. Lost connection and all that kind of stuff, but today's session was great, there was a little lag with the video from the Audio but not much. Something else that has impressed me is that the Live sessions from today are already posted on the AU on demand cloud.

Revit Bulleted Text

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 11:00:00 +0000

For a long time Revit has given us the ability to have bulleted text, but since Revit 2017 you have a little more formatting capabilities. First off you can have sub bullets. And you have the capability to change the number that the bullet starts with.

You may ask why you would want to change the number that the bullet starts with. Well lets say you are writing a list of notes to put on a sheet, but you run out of space so you start a new column of notes. If you started the new column of notes the bulleted notes would start with 1 or A again but you really wanted the number to start 20 or M. With Revit 2016 or earlier you couldn't make this change but with Revit 2017 and latter you can change what number the bullets start with by clicking on the Increment List Value button

Just be aware if you change the justification of the text from left justification the sub bullet alignment might not be what you want

Revit 2018.1 Schedule Enhancement

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 04:34:00 +0000

It's been a couple of weeks now that Autodesk has released the first update to Revit 2018. With this update there were several enhancements. The biggest enhancement that I've been waiting years for is with schedules. They didn't make some great thing to the formatting of schedules, they didn't make it so that you could schedule the ceiling height of the room in the same schedule as your room schedule(yes with some great hacking you can do this) but what they did was make it so you can organize the schedules in the Project Browser. I've been asking Autodesk to add this functionality to the Project Browser since 2012 when I used the Kiwi Codes Project Browser.

Before Revit 2018.1 all schedules are pretty much lumped together, you can make some clever

naming to the schedules so that you can organize them like putting an * before all of your management schedules, or name all of your index schedules with the word Index in front of them. But with 2018.1 you can right click over the schedules in the project Browser and you can organize the schedules almost like any other view in Revit. I saw almost because you can't organize the schedules by view type, like you can with the Kiwi Codes Project Browser, but you can organize the schedules by:

Category
Phase
Phase Filter
Schedule type
View Name
View template

Lets go through this a little bit. when you Group your schedules by category it will group all of the schedules by what category they represent. If you have a door schedule and a door key schedule they will be grouped together.
If you group the schedules by Phase or Phase Filter you will be able to group the schedules by what phase of the project they are associated with.
With Schedule type grouping the schedules will be grouped together by what Schedule type they are, meaning all Key schedules or building component schedules will be grouped together
With View Name you can group the schedules by their first letters, so all schedule that start with the letter E(for electrical) will be grouped together.
And with View template it will group the schedule by what view template is assigned to the view, and yes you can assign a View Template to a schedule. I've never really done that till 2018.1. With the View Template organization method I can create a view template with the name manage and all of my manage schedules are grouped together, as long as I assign a view template to the view.

You can also have sub groupings as well.

AU 2017-Classing Voting

noreply@blogger.com (Valkin) — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 05:39:00 +0000

Autodesk is allowing the users to vote on the classes for this year Autodesk University. you should go check out the classes that people have proposed. As Autodesk says: Your feedback is an important factor in selecting sessions for AU Las Vegas 2017. That's because AU is about you. It’s about the experiences that will help you become better in your work, the innovations that will help your company compete, and the changes brought about by emerging technologies.

Vote ends in just over a week from now, like Dancing with the stars vote for the classes that sound interesting. http://au.autodesk.com/speaker-resource-center/call-for-proposals/voting

I sent in 5 Proposals this year, Maybe one of them will make it through this year.

Awaken your Filters
I'm a Model what?
Groups.?. A time Saver?
Color Plans, Not Just Pretty Pictures
Don’t be Blue Over Field Reports