The Architect's Desktop

Revit: 2026 New Feature - Multiple Values Scale Override in Title Block

2025-04-07T19:38:00.080-04:00

An arguably a small feature, but one that I have wanted to see since I first started using Revit, is finally here. Anyone who has assembled a Sheet in Revit with Views that have different scales associated with them has seen the scale shown in the title block show as As indicated. I understood not wanting to allow the user to override that with anything that looked like it could be the name of a scale, but hard-coding the diplayed text with no option to modify it (not even to make it all capital letters, if setting it to my firm's AS NOTED standard was not possible) has been a minor irritant over the years.

For projects done in Revit 2026, that irritant has gone away. There is a new Type parameter for title blocks called Scale Override (Multiple Values) that allows you to provide your own preferred text to be used when there are Views of varying scales on the same Sheet. The entered value can only contain text; numeric values are not supported.

The end result, after setting the override to AS NOTED.

If you are like me, and want to see just what they mean by "numeric values not supported," be prepared to see the warning dialog below if you try to add so much as a single numeral to the override text.

ACA: Formula Property to Abbreviate Room Name

2025-03-06T19:23:00.166-05:00

A question came up in the Autodesk AutoCAD® Architecture forum regarding the creation of a custom Space Tag to display an abbreviated room name. I indicated that was possible, if a property was added to hold the abbreviated room name. I provided an example file and explained how I created the tag. I assumed that the user would determine the abbreviated name and type it in for each Space.

Another user jumped in and indicated an expectation that I would have provided a formula property to automatically generate the abbreviation. While the example provided by the original poster was for a two-word room name where the abbreviated version was the first letter of each word, I had not taken that to always be the case. But I found the idea interesting enough to take some time to come up with a formula that would do that, in case that was the intent of the original poster or would be of interest to others. Here is the formula I devised:

rmName = "[Name]"
rmAbbr = ""
rmName = Trim( rmName ) + " "

Do
	rmName = LTrim( rmName )
	rmAbbr = rmAbbr + Left( rmName, 1 )
	rmName = Right( rmName, Len( rmName ) - InStr( rmName, " " ))
Loop Until InStr( rmName, " ") = 0

RESULT = rmAbbr

In the first line, [Name] needs to be a properly created property reference inserted from the Insert Property Definitions area in the lower left of the Formula Property Definition dialog. In the example file I included in the forum thread, it references the SpaceObjects:Name automatic property of Spaces, but it could reference any property you are using to hold the room name.

The second line initializes the variable, rmAbbr, in which the abbreviated name will be stored as an empty string.

The third line removes any Space characters from the beginning or end of room name, and then adds a single Space character to the end, so that the last "word" in the room name is processed by the Do loop.

The Do loop processes the value in rmName until there are no Space characters left. It removes any leading Space characters with the LTrim function, in case the room name string has two or more consecutive Space characters within it. It then adds the first character in rmName to the end of the rmAbbr string. Finally, it looks for the next Space character in rmName and removes all of the characters to the left of that Space character, including the Space character.

After the last "word" is processed, rmName will contain an empty string, the Loop Until test will not find a Space character (so the InStr function will return 0), and the Lopp will be exited.

Finally, the abbreviated name value is returned as the result of the formula.

Here is a screen shot from a file in which three Spaces have been tagged twice - once with the out-of-the-box tag showing the Name automatic property for the room name and once with a custom tag showing the abbreviated name created by the AbbrName formula property.

If the formula provides the desired abbreviation a majority of the time, but there are occasions where you would like to be able to manually enter something else, you could include this formula to generate the default abbreviation, set up a text-type manual property to hold an override value, and create an additional formula property that passes through the default abbreviation unless an override value has been entered in the manual property. That last formula property would be the one to reference in a Schedule Tag. You can find a more detailed description of setting up a property override in this blog article. Please note that the link to a forum post with a sample file in that article is no longer working, as Autodesk has removed posts that are more than 10 years old.

Revit: Rooms and Computation Height

2024-09-06T14:14:00.001-04:00

I will start by saying I have no idea why what follows worked, but I am documenting it here in case I come across the same issue in the future.

We had a model in Revit 2022 where a number of Rooms were not filling the expected plan area. One edge was stopping somewhere in the vicinity of half way to the Wall to which it should have gone; this affected three adjacent rooms, all along the same invisible line. I turned on the visibility of Room Separation Lines (and made them red and fat), but there were none there. I turned on hidden items, I checked the links that were Room Bounding, and I looked at the Design Options that were in the model. None of them appeared to have any contribution to the issue.

I cut some sections to see if there was something on the floor below that could be projecting its influence to the floor above, but that came up empty as well. I knew that there was a setting for Computation Height, and I decided to look into that to see if it was set oddly. It was set to 0'-0" (as I would have expected). To see if there was something right at the Level that was causing the issue, I changed the Computation Height for that Level to 0'-6", and the Rooms expanded to the Wall that was the expected boundary. For grins, I changed the value back to 0'-0", and the Rooms stayed expanded.

That resolved the issue and allowed the project team to get on with their work, but it bothers me that I cannot say why it worked. I get that changing the height forced Revit to recalculate the extents of the Rooms, but why were they wrong at the start? I suppose that will have to remain a mystery, as I have other work to do as well.

Downloading Autodesk Installation Files

2024-08-08T18:38:00.001-04:00

Autodesk Account is your first place to find downloads of software and updates. For most releases, you should find the current release and the three most-recent previous releases there, assuming you have permission from your account administrator to do so. But sometimes you need something older than that; Autodesk Assistant, the successor to AVA, should allow you to get the current release and the five most-recent previous releases.

Here is an example of how to use the Autodesk Assistant.

Go to https://manage.autodesk.com/home and sign in with your Autodesk Account.
In the lower right corner of the browser window, there should be a "speech bubble" icon. It may take a few moments to appear. It looks like this:
Click on the bubble to open Autodesk Assistant. On Screen 1, choose Post-purchase support. On Screen 2, select Downloads.
On Screen 3, choose Download Software. On Screen 4, choose Find a product download.
On Screen 5, use the edit box to type in the name of the software you wish to download. A list of matching items will be generated. When you see the one you want, select it and continue to follow any prompts to download it. You can enter a specific release name, but if it is not available, you will be so informed (Screen 6).

As you can see on Screen 3, you can also use this process to download Service packs, hotfixes, add-ins, and more. I would recommend using Autodesk Account for the versions it supports, but if you need something a little older, Autodesk Assistant is at your service.

Revit: Clean Uninstall Instructions

2024-05-23T17:55:00.005-04:00

Autodesk currently has uninstall instructions for Revit 2020 through 2025 in separate articles, one for each version. I am posting links here for easier future reference.
Revit 2020
Revit 2021
Revit 2022
Revit 2023
Revit 2024
Revit 2025

Revit: Moving a Grid Line with Disjoin Checked (Don't Do It)

2024-04-24T17:30:00.000-04:00

Made a discovery today, related to the previous post regarding moving items with Disjoin checked. Once again, I failed to notice that was checked. This time I was experimenting with Copy/Monitor. I set up a structural model with some Grids. I cross-linked the structural and architectural models, and Copy/Monitored the structural grids in the architectural model, from the structural link. Then I moved one of the Grids 2'-0" perpendicular to its length and synchronized the change.

Back in the architectural model, I reloaded the structural link and, as expected, was told that there was a Coordination Review for a link. I ran the Coordination Review for the structural link, and, unexpectedly, was told that an element was deleted (not moved!). This was confusing, because I could see the grid line from the structural link; it was there. I did it all again, with the same results. I decided that since it was after 5:00 pm, I would save my models and try again tomorrow. I went to move the grid in the structrual model back to its original spot so I would be ready to roll tomorrow, when I finally noticed that the Disjoin toggle was checked on the Options bar. Remembering my previous problems with moving Views on a Sheet, I cancelled the command and checked the Revit ID number of the Grid. Then I moved it, with Disjoin still checked, and checked the ID number again. It was different!

So it turned out to be operator error (or, more accurately, operator ignorance), rather than a glaring bug. I am willing to own that; in fact, I am glad that is the case because I can fix operator error/ignorance. And I am glad that I figured the issue out in far less time than the previous one took. I just have to get myself to check the Disjoin toggle whenever I use the Move tool, because Move + Disjoin = Copy + Delete Orginal.

Revit: Moving A Legend on a Sheet Deletes the Legend

2024-04-17T19:30:00.001-04:00

I was trying to move a Legend on a Revit sheet a precise distance, so I was using the Move tool rather than dragging it and eyeballing the location. Instead of moving the Legend, Revit deleted it, and issued this warning:

There was no second instance of the same Legend. If there were, why delete all of them? Some on-line searching turned up a case where someone had a Section view deleted from a Sheet when they tried to move it. The offered solution was to look at the Options bar after selecting the Move tool and to uncheck the Disjoin toggle if it were checked. It turns out I did have the Disjoin toggle checked, and unchecking it allowed the Legend to be moved as desired, with no deletion and no warning message. I do not understand why having Disjoin checked caused Revit to think there were multiple instances which then needed to be eradicated, but I am glad that I was able to find a way to do what I wanted to do.

Revit: Choosing a Maximum Value in a Formula

2024-04-08T18:38:00.001-04:00

Nothing earth-shaking here, just recording this so the next time I need to do it, I do not have to put it together from scratch. The formula to get the larger value of two parameters is relatively easy:

if(A > B, A, B)

But if you need to pick the maximum value of three parameters, it gets a little trickier:

if(A > C, if(A > B, A, B), if(B > C, B, C))

Expanding that to the maximum of four values requires something like the following:

if(A > D, if(A > C, if(A > B, A, B), if(B > C, B, C)), if(D > C, if(D > B, D, B), if(B > C, B, C)))

I am hoping I will not ever need to get the maximum of five or more values.

Revit: Upgrading Family Files

2023-01-13T19:30:00.019-05:00

I found this sitting in my Drafts folder. I have no idea why I held back on publishing it, so I am doing so today (2024/4/8). My firm now has a content management system that will upgrade families to future versions, but I still think this is a handy node.

A huge shout out and many thanks to John Pierson for the Batch.UpgradeFamilies node in the Rhythm package. Have a large number of family files to upgrade to a new version of Revit? If you do not have a content management system that handles that chore for you, open the target version of Revit, fire up Dyanmo, pop in the Batch.UpgradeFamilies node, feed it a text string of the path to the root folder for your content, and select the Run button. You can then sit back and watch Revit background open, upgrade, and save every RFA family in that folder and all of the folders below it. Or, more likely, get on with some other task while that is taking place. The best part? It also deletes the backup files, leaving you with just the upgraded file.

It will tie up that version of Revit while it processes the files, but it will do it much faster than you could do it manually, and without the strain on your hands, wrists, and - most importantly - head. It does not get any better than that.

ACA: Deployment for ACA 2022 - Cannot Remove Custom Profile

2022-04-05T14:54:00.004-04:00

Finally had some time to start preparing for the creation of a deployment for AutoCAD Architecture 2022. This is the first deployment for an AutoCAD-based product that I will be creating on the new, web-based system, as we typically only deploy every other year. I worked my way through the limited options under Customizations and came to the last section, Custom Profile. We have multiple custom profiles, one for each discipline, and did not try to include those in the deployment previously. I wanted to see if more than one could be added. I exported profiles to two test ARG files, and added one of them, then tried to add the other.

I quickly found that you can only add one; attempting to add another replaces the first one with the second one. All well and fine; all of the text related to custom profile is singular. What prompted this blog post, as a note to my future self, is the fact that there does not appear to be a way to remove a custom profile once you add one. So it looks like I will be trashing what I have done so far and starting over.

Revit: BIM 360 Model Synchronization Error

2022-03-08T17:44:00.001-05:00

A user had a curious synchronization error today, on a model hosted on our BIM 360 hub. He emailed me the screen shot below.

I did not know what to make of this - of course the [insert ridiculously long GUID here].rvt file already exists! That is the file he was synchronizing, and had been synchronizing successfully all day, up to that point. And why ask the apparently rhetorical question, "Do you want to replace the existing file?", when there is no opportunity to respond to it? I was perfectly willing to trash the backup versions, as we have not had need to try to pull backups from someone's local cache on a BIM 360 project. (And thank goodness for that, as it is a royal pain just figuring out which [insert ridiculously long GUID here].rvt file is which.) A quick Google search did not generate any useful leads on how to proceed.

I walked over to the indivudual's workstation, repeated the error for myself and got lucky. After dismissing the failed Sync With Central dialog, Revit displayed the ever-popular "You have not saved your model recently" nag dialog. Before I could utter the snarky thought that immediately came to mind, I chose to click on Save. I got another dialog, with the same question about losing backup versions, but this one had Yes and No buttons. I said, yes, save it, and it did. Then I tried to synchronize again, half expecting that Revit would tell me the local was now incompatible with the central, but it synchronized just fine, resolving the crisis.

Dynamo: Pin All Revit Links

2022-03-01T12:28:00.003-05:00

I have been setting up projects that have a larger than usual number of Revit links in them, and to save myself the bother of having to remember to pin each one after placement (and the bigger bother of repeatedly checking to make sure I did not miss one), I created a graph to pin all of the Revit links in the current model. The graph is rather simple, if you have the Orchid package installed and can use the Element.Pin node contained therein. I was using Revit 2020; those using other Revit versions will likely need a different version of the Orchid package.

This runs nicely in Dynamo Player. No need to select the Edit Inputs tool, as there are no inputs to edit.

Revit: Controlling the Initial Open/Close State of Worksets When Opening A Model with the Specify Worksets Option

2022-02-02T18:12:00.001-05:00

Apologies for the wordy title on this post, but I want to be absolutely clear that I am NOT talking about how to make the Specify option the default option when opening a Revit model (that is covered in this Autodesk Knowledge Network article). I am talking about the open/close state of each Workset in the Opening Worksets dialog once the "Specify" option is used (either by default, or because you chose Specify by selecting the button with the downward pointing triangle icon to the right of the Open button in the Open dialog).

All credit for this goes to MZ1987, who posted this procedure here. I am documenting it in my blog to make it easier for me to find in the future.

Open the model with Specify.
In the Opening Worksets dialog, select all user-created Worksets and choose the Open button. The values in the Opened column should all be Yes.
After the model opens, open the Worksets dialog. Select all of the user-created worksets and select the Editable button. Set the Open/Close state of each Workset to the way you want it to default in the Opening Worksets dialog. [This is the key step.]
Synchronize the model, using the Synchronize and Modify Settings option, NOT Synchronize Now. In the Synchronize with Central dialog, make certain that the User-created Worksets toggle is checked.

Close the model. The next time you, or anyone else, opens the model, they should see each user-created Workset defaulting to the Open/Close state chosen in Step 3. I have not yet experimented with this extensively, since my current goal was to get all Worksets set to Yes. It probably does not matter what the Open/Close state is on opening, just that you make the user-created Worksets editable and then set the desired state at that time, before synchronizing and relinquishing the user-created Worksets. I expect those settings will hold until the next time someone makes an entire Workset editable and also changes the Open/Close state of that Workset, and then synchronizes. So you may have to repeat this when that happens; we typically just borrow elements, rather than make an entire workset editable, so I do not see that being a major issue for my firm.

Autodesk Docs/BIM 360 Default Hub

2021-11-10T12:37:00.001-05:00

Since I provide support to all Revit projects in our office, I am a member of all of the projects hosted on BIM 360. Most of these are on my firm's hub, but we have a number of joint-venture projects or projects where we are a consultant where the project is hosted on another firm's hub. I have long been annoyed that Autodesk has not provided a means to designate a default hub; they seem to set the one that is first alphabetically as the default most of the time, and that is not my firm's hub. It is particularly frustrating when I am in the web portal, on a project on my firm's hub, when Autodesk magically decides I need to sign in again (usually after a period of inactivity, of an apparently random amount of time, but not always) and, after doing so, it not only does not return me to the page I was on, but punts me off onto another firm's hub.

I am not alone in that frustration. I was amused to see one firm recently change the name of their hub, adding an exclamation point ("!") to the front of the name, so that their hub would be first alphabetically. I noticed because suddenly their hub was the new default hub. I suppose now there will be hub naming wars, as everyone else changes their hub's name to get it to sort at the top of the list.

I suppose I should be happy that the renaming did not break my access to that hub.

Revit: Level Name in Use - But It Is Not

2021-08-26T18:39:00.151-04:00

We create new projects from a set of "prototype project" model files, one for each discipline, that are already set up with worksharing and standard worksets and are cross-linked to each other. Models are opened detached from central and then saved to the project folders as central models and the links are reloaded from the project-specific models.

There are six levels in (most) of the prototype models, and the levels in the other models are monitoring the levels in the architectural model, since the architects usually go first. Provided they move/rename the levels in the starter file, it only requires a Coordination Review to get the other discipline models to match the architectural model. (Some projects have more levels, which then need to be added manually.)

I was setting up the other models for a project in which the architectural model was already created, and the process above worked as expected until I got to the structural model. The architects had renamed ROOF to PENTHOUSE ROOF and LEVEL 4 to ROOF. For reasons I did not understand, the Coordination Review renamed ROOF to PENTHOUS, but I was able to change the name and get the monitoring straightened out. The problem was it refused to rename LEVEL 4 to ROOF. I thought may be it was an order of operations thing at first - maybe it was trying to rename LEVEL 4 before it renamed ROOF. But even after I got the PENTHOUSE ROOF level renamed correctly, it still would not rename LEVEL 4 to ROOF, even when doing it manually.

Revit kept claiming that the name ROOF was already in use. We have a Level Schedule in our files, to make checking the names and elevations of levels in a file easy, without worrying about whether a given level's extents will make it show in a given elevation or section - there was no level named ROOF there. I opened Dynamo, and added the Level node, which allows you to select a level, and it did not offer a level named ROOF in the drop-down. I synchronized, closed and reopened the file, hoping that might shake some phantom memory of the old ROOF level out of its system, with no success.

Then it dawned on me that when I renamed the old ROOF level to PENTHOUSE ROOF, it asked me if I wanted to rename views. I clicked on No*, so there was a plan view associated with the PENTHOUSE ROOF level called ROOF. I wondered if that was the reason why Revit would not let me rename LEVEL 4 to ROOF. I was going to rename the views eventually, so I did that and then tried to rename LEVEL 4 one more time. It worked! So it was the fact that there was still a view associated with the PENTHOUSE ROOF level that still had the old level name as the view name that prevented reusing that old name for a different level. I am writing this here in the hope that the next time I run into this, I will have a vague memory of having the issue before, and will search my blog to see how I solved it.

* - I almost never let Revit rename plan views when the name of the associated level is changed. That only changes view names where the entire view name is the level name, and we have many plan views in most models that have the level name in the view name, with additional text. Those will not get changed; I find it easier to use the Dynamo graph I wrote to search for a given string in view names and replace it with a different string when none of the views have had the name changed.

ACA: Using AutoLISP to Change the Swing of all Swinging Doors

2021-03-22T19:02:00.003-04:00

There was a request to change the "swing angle" of all of the Doors in a file to 30 degrees. Building on code I previously wrote for changing the heights of Doors a given style, I put together a command function in AutoLISP that does that. One thing to know before embarking on this particular task is that while all of the 20 built-in Door Types appear to have a SwingAngle property (I did not check all 20, so do not hold me to that), only five of those types (Single, Double, Double Opposing, Uneven and Uneven Opposing) will accept a change to that property; the other 15 types will throw an error and crash the routine. There are four additional types (Single-Dhung, Double-Dhung, Uneven-Dhung and Communicating) that are in fact swinging Doors, but for some reason were not included when the SwingAngle property was introduced. (See comments at the end of the article for more on that.) The "swing" of these types can be changed using the OpenPercent property; a value of 16 approximates 30 degrees. No change is made to the other 11 types of Doors.

The following code defines a command called DRSW that will change the "swing" of Doors of one of the nine types previously mentioned to 30 degrees/16 percent. That amount is hard-coded, on the assumption that this would be part of a larger automation task meant to run unattended (or that you always wanted the same degree/percent values). Collecting user input would be easy enough to add at the beginning if you want to specify the angle/percent each time you run the program.

(defun C:DRSW (                         ; No arguments.
               /
                iCount                  ; Loop counter [integer].
                iDType                  ; Door Type [integer].
                iMax                    ; Total number of Doors in file [integer].
                iProc                   ; Number of Doors processed [integer].
                objDoor                 ; Door object being processed.
                objDStyle               ; Door Style of the object being processed.
                ss1                     ; All Doors in the file [selection set].
              ) ;_ End arguments and local variables.
  (vl-load-com)
  (setq        ss1 (ssget "_X" '((0 . "AEC_DOOR"))))
  (cond
    ((not ss1)                          ; No Doors in drawing.
     (alert "Drawing file has no Door objects.\nNothing to do!")
    ) ;_ End condition A1.
    (T                                  ; Else, continue.
     (setq iMax          (sslength ss1)
           iCount 0
           iProc  0
     ) ;_ End setq.
     (while (< iCount iMax)
       (setq objDoor    (vlax-ename->vla-object (ssname ss1 iCount))
	     objDStyle	(vlax-get-property objDoor 'Style)
	     iDType	(vlax-get-property objDStyle 'Type)
       ) ;_ End setq.
       (if (or
	     (= iDType 1)               ; Single.
	     (= iDType 2)               ; Double.
	     (= iDType 5)               ; Double Opposing.
	     (= iDType 6)               ; Uneven.
	     (= iDType 8)               ; Uneven Opposing.
	   ) ;_ End or.
	 (progn
	   (vlax-put-property objDoor 'SwingAngle 30)
	   (setq iProc (1+ iProc))
	 ) ;_ End progn.
	 (if (or
	     (= iDType 3)               ; Single-Dhung.
	     (= iDType 4)               ; Double-Dhung.
	     (= iDType 7)               ; Uneven-Dhung.
	     (= iDType 20)              ; Communicating.
	   ) ;_ End or.
	   (progn
	     (vlax-put-property objDoor 'OpenPercent 16)
	     (setq iProc (1+ iProc))
	   ) ;_ End progn.
	 ) ;_ End if.
       ) ;_ End if.
       (setq iCount (1+ iCount))
     ) ;_ End while.
    ) ;_ End condition A2.
  ) ;_ End cond A.
  (prompt
    (strcat
      "\nDRSW function completed:  "
      (itoa iProc)
      " Door(s) of "
      (itoa iCount)
      " total Door(s) processed. "
    ) ;_ End strcat.
  ) ;_ End prompt.
  (prin1)
) ;_ End C:DRSW.

Originally, all Door Types controlled how open they appeared using the Opening percent property on the Properties palette (or its prior equivalent). 100% open for a swinging door meant a 180-degree swing. So a 90-degree swing would be 50%. Some users complained that may make sense to a programmer, but they thought of door swings in terms of degrees, not percentages. So at some point (I do not recall which release), a SwingAngle property was added to Door objects, and, for the five Door types noted above, Swing angle replaced Opening percent on the Properties palette. For those five Door types, the two values are linked - change one and the other changes, too. (That is how I determined that 16% was the right value for 30 degrees - that is the value for OpenPercent that the program shows when the SwingAngle is set to 30.) I have no idea why the three Dhung and the Communicating Door Types were omitted from the change to SwingAngle. Perhaps the original complainants rarely, if ever, used those types and so they were not in the original request. Or maybe the way things were set up in the program, it was easy to make the change for the five types that were changed, but not for the other four. Whatever the reason, things are the way they are, and the code above accommodates that.

AutoCAD: No Fill on Polylines With Width

2021-03-02T23:23:00.005-05:00

Note to self on the things to check when Polylines with width are unfilled:

Check the current Visual Style. The 2D Wireframe Visual Style supports filled polylines; the Wireframe Visual Style does not. Other Visual Styles either do not support fill (such as Hidden or Sketchy), or will dim the fill (such as Shaded with Edges or Xray).
Check your view direction. You will also need to know the plane in which the Polyline with width was drawn. For fill to display, the view direction needs to be perpendicular to the Polyline's plane. Set the current UCS so that the X-Y plane is the plane in which the Polyline was drawn, and then set the view direction to Top. Many times someone inadvertantly drags the View Cube ever so slightly away from "Top". It may be hard to tell from the View Cube or the drawing contents (no obvious forshortening), but if you look at the UCS icon, you will see an indication of the Z axis and if you look at the in-canvas controls at the upper left corner of the drawing canvas, the middle control will say Custom View instead of Top. Reset the view direction to Top.
Check the setting of FILLMODE. If it is set to 0, reset it to 1. (To save keystrokes, you can also use the FILL command - turn fill On.) You will likely have to do a REGEN after changing the value to see the change on screen.

AMEP: Plumbing Line "Label" with a Leader

2021-02-28T19:56:00.000-05:00

A question came up the other day, concerning Plumbing Lines and the "Label Curves" that AutoCAD MEP provides to label those Plumbing Lines. The request was to be able to be able to label a short Plumbing Line - one shorter than the label itself - by offsetting the label and connecting the label back to the Plumbing Line with a leader.

The results of some quick research suggested that Label Curves do not have a leader option, when offset from the Plumbing Line that they are labeling. I am not sure if there is some inherent limitation here, or it just was never part of the specification for the object. They certainly have many useful features, like masking the Pluming Line, if desired, and repeating at a specified distance or a specified number of times - but no leader.

It occurred to me that, for the stated case of a short Plumbing Line, that the masking and repeating features were not necessary, and that a Schedule Tag, which can have an integral leader, could be created that looks just like the Label Curve, if the data displayed by the Label Curve was available in Property Data. It turns out that, at least for the Standard - Pipe With System Label Label Style, which shows the Object Props. and Abbr. System Name, Plumbing Lines have corresponding Automatic Property sources: Nominal Size and Abbreviation. I was able to create a Property Set Definition that applies to Plumbing Lines and includes three properties:

Abbreviation, created from the Abbreviation automatic property source. The Case - Upper Property Data Format was applied to this property.
NominalSize, created from the Nominal Size automatic property source. Since I was working in imperial units (it is one of my habits), I applied the Number - Fractional Property Data Format to this property.
LineLabel, a formula property, creates the string that is to be displayed in the Schedule Tag. It is a simple concatenation of the text equivalent of the NominalSize property, an inches symbol [via Chr(034)], a space and the Abbreviation property. The Standard Property Data Format was applied to this property.

A Schedule Tag can then be created to display the value in the LineLabel property, a Schedule Tag tool can be created for that Schedule Tag, the tool properties can be edited to include a leader and then the tool can be used to place a tag with a leader. The result can be seen in the image below, where the short Plumbing Line segment has both an offset Label Curve and a Schedule Tag with a leader, so you can compare the two.

Revit: Tip When Making the Transition from Network to Named User Licenses

2021-01-28T17:47:00.004-05:00

Here is something of which I wish I was aware prior to the change over from network to named-user licenses. If all of your users were already set up with BIM 360 Design licenses (which were always named-user) and were always signed into Revit with their Autodesk Account, then this will not be an issue for you. But if you have users that are not signed into Autodesk Account when using Revit under a network license, chances are that their default Revit user names are not the same as the Username on their Autodesk Accounts. Make certain everyone synchronizes and relinquishes all object ownership in all Revit models while still using a network license BEFORE you change them to named user.

Once on named user, your users have to be signed in, and their Revit user names will be "locked" as the Usernames associated with their Autodesk Account. If that differs from their previous user names, they will not be able to synchronize their old local files, nor will they be able to create a new local under their old user names so that they can relinquish ownership of objects.

The users may be able to copy/paste unsynchronized changes, and the central file can be opened detached and then a new central file can be created from the detached copy to get rid of ownership issues (once everyone who can synchronize/relinquish does so), but nobody really wants to do any of that.

You might think no one would ever close Revit having only saved changes locally, or without relinquishing all ownership, but you would be wrong. I have already run into this twice.

Network Licenses, Options File, Adding Users to a Group

2021-01-24T00:38:00.007-05:00

Not sure I really need to record this knowledge for the future, since we will soon be out of the Autodesk network license business completely. All but 30 of our network licenses made the jump to named-user licenses last Thursday. Perhaps I will post something about that experience, once the dust settles and my anger subsides. Returning to the subject of this post, I needed, for the first time, to set up an options file to limit access to those remaining 30 licenses for those running Revit 2016, since the 2016 (and older) releases of Autodesk software have to be uninstalled and reinstalled to change the license type. In my opinion, that is too much work for something that will no longer be "of right" licensed in two or three months. But we do have a few active projects in Revit 2016 that the project teams do not want to upgrade (or do not want to upgrade at this point in time, due to imminent deadlines). The problem is we were not able to convert everyone over to named user licenses for 2017 and later versions before the end of the grace period, and the unconverted users were taking all of the licenses.

What I discovered this evening/this morning is that when specifying the user names for the group I was creating in the options file, you do NOT include the "@" and the computer name as part of the user name. I had always seen users being reported with their Windows login name followed by "@" and then the name of the computer on which they were running the software that was asking for the license, so I foolishly assumed that was how the user name should be specified. But when I reread the license with the new options file in place, I was not able to get a license myself, and someone who had a license checked out who was on the list was also denied. I panicked, and put back the old options file. I looked at the instructions again, and noticed that the examples only had a user name, without any machine designation. I then added my user name, without a machine name in addition to my user name with a machine name, reread the license, and I was able to get a license. Then I removed my user name with the machine name, and it still worked. Adding the other user with out the machine name allowed that license to also be checked out, convincing me that was the correct approach. So now all users that I want to include have the"@" and machine name removed, and I am fairly confident that will work. I guess I will see Monday morning.

Revit: Text Parameter Value Driven by Four or More Yes/No Parameters

2020-12-04T22:50:00.004-05:00

Regarding my last post, I would be remiss if I did not point out that FAIR59 also replied, with a more elegant solution that is also easier to expand to 5, 6 or more parameters. Check out that post here.

Revit: Text Parameter Value Driven by Four Yes/No Parameters

2020-12-01T05:27:00.112-05:00

I came across an interesting request in the Autodesk Revit Architecture forum the other day. The person wanted to have four Yes/No parameters (called A, B, C and D) determine the value of a text parameter (called TEXT), based on the following conditions:

If two or more of the four Yes/No parameters are checked, the value of TEXT is to be "SELECT ANY ONE".
If none of the four Yes/No parameters are checked, the value of TEXT is to be "NO TEXT".
If only the A parameter is checked, the value of TEXT is to be "A".
If only the B parameter is checked, the value of TEXT is to be "B".
If only the C parameter is checked, the value of TEXT is to be "C".
If only the D parameter is checked, the value of TEXT is to be "D".

The solution I devised uses a series of nested if statements to work through all of the possibilities. The condition of the first if statement is an or. Each item in the or is an and of a pair of the Yes/No parameters. There is an and for each possible combination of the four Yes/No parameters. If both items in at least one of the combinations of Yes/No parameters is true, then the entire or evaluates to true. That takes care of all of the situations where two or more of the Yes/No parameters are checked, and "SELECT ANY ONE" is returned.

The else of the first condition then launches a series of if statements that tests whether a given Yes/No parameter is checked, starting with A. If A is checked, "A" is returned; if not, another if statement tests for a check in B. If B is checked, "B" is returned, and so on through to D. If D is checked, "D" is returned; if not, "NO TEXT" is returned.

Here is the formula:

if(or(and(A, B), and(A, C), and(A, D), and(B, C), and(B, D), and(C, D)), "SELECT ANY ONE", if(A, "A", if(B, "B", if(C, "C", if(D, "D", "NO TEXT")))))

And a screen capture:

Revit: Extracting Level Names in Dynamo

2020-11-25T22:07:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back, I had a request to be able to filter a Door Schedule by the Level to which the Doors in the project were associated. That is a choice if you are only scheduling Doors in the current model, but is not an option if your Schedule includes Doors in linked models. I suggested that a Dyanmo graph could be created that would read the Level of each Door and write the Level name to a separate parameter, which could then be used for filtering. The graph would need to be run in each of the models, and, if there are later changes that add more Doors, re-run. Pretty standard stuff for a Dynamo graph.

There is just one problem with that - the built-in Revit parameter Level does not return just the name of the Level, but instead returns what is shown in the image below.

I ran those results through the String from Object node to be certain the values were seen as strings. (I suppose I should try it without that node to see if it is really necessary, but I have not done so yet.) It may be possible to extract the level name for each item on the list using a series of nodes, or perhaps some code in a code block, but the amateur programmer in me wanted to work out how to do so in Python, and it turned out be be quite simple, using string slicing. The start index of the Level name is one more than the index of the equals sign ("=") and the end index of the slice is the index of the comma. A simple for loop processes each item in the list and appends it to the result list. The image below shows the code.

Autodesk Extends Previous Version Access

2020-10-27T12:19:00.002-04:00

In case you missed this announcement, starting on November 2, 2020, subscription and maintenance customers will have access to the current version and the five most-recent prior versions. Currently, access is limited to the current version and three prior versions.

Technical support will continue to only be provided for the current version and three prior versions. But for large projects, as well as for those medium to small projects that just never seem to end, this may allow you to avoid having to upgrade files to a newer version due to the original authoring version no longer being available.

Emojis in File Names

2020-07-31T19:45:00.000-04:00

File this one under, "Just because you can, does not mean you should."

A colleague had called my attention to the fact that, in Windows 10, you are allowed to use emojis in file names. (Press the Window key + . to call up a dialog that allows you to select one.) I was pretty sure AutoCAD would have a problem with that, but I was surprised to find that I was able to create a file called 🍕.dwg and AutoCAD had no problems with it.

I do not recommend doing this with project files. I will also note that I did nothing beyond creating the file. I have not fully tested this. For example, I did not see what happens if I try to externally reference this file, or even just inserting it as a block into another file.