Xrev - Trial Survey Competition Results

Results of a recently conducted survey on the Revit Add-in Xrev Transmit - designed for issuing Revit sheets to PDF, DWG, DWF etc with automatic naming and filing, including a drawing register/transmittal.

Survey Results

What people are saying:

"We have users who want to marry you they are so happy with the time savings"

"Excellent product - I couldn't Revit without it"

"The time savings are great.  Everyone loves using it."

"We absolutely love the product.  It has exceeded our expectations and is a pleasure to use"

"Xrev Transmit makes tasks that have always been tedious, fast and dare I say it enjoyable"

Easily changing building levels

I'm always amazed when people don't know about this very easy process of changing a building's Levels to reflect the actual RL's of the site.

All to often people tell me how they go through the tedious process of selecting all their levels and using the move command, then have to select all their views/details/text etc and move it all up or down to align with the new location.

Are you crazy!!  Never do this!

Revit has multiple coordinate systems.  An internal coordinate system and a shared coordinate system.  By default all coordinates, whether they be levels, spot elevations, contour tags, spot coordinates all report the internal coordinate system.  Each of these can be easily changed in their TYPE properties to use shared.  Unfortunately the Nomenclature varies, but the principle is the same:

Level Type Properties: (change "Elevation Base" to shared)

Spot Elevation Type Properties: (change "Elevation Origin" to shared)

Spot Coordinate Type Properties: (change "Coordinate Origin" to Shared)

Contour Label Type Properties: (change "Elevation Base" to Shared)

Best Practice the Internal Coordinates of "Ground Level" should always be 0.

To move the building:

1. Switch to an Elevation/Section,
2. On the Manage Tab, Project Location Panel, Position Drop down, Choose "Relocate Project"
3. The tool works just like the move command, select the base point to move relative to, then the distance and direction you want to move it in (best to only move it vertically in elevation/section).   In this example I'm going to move my levels 6000mm up.
4. Done, coordinates have been changed, all views are still intact and no cleanup required.  For those who have been doing it some other way.  Please don't do anything irrational.  Think of all the time you can now save...

This method is also better when working with multiple discipline models and the copy/monitor.  If people are using the move command to move their project around it causes everyone grief in this scenario.

Hope this helps.

But my structural slab isn't flat!

Set downs in structural slabs or falls to slabs can be tricky to achieve.  Below are some of the methods I used to make things simpler:

• The first question you need to ask is do I need a thickening where the recess is? If so, then the correct approach would be to simply model another floor with the required negative level offset and overlap the floors. Then provided the floors are of the same materials and both have the same structural property then you can simply use the Join Geometry tool to clean them up.

• However, if you don’t need a thickening Revit 2012 allows you the ability to create families with Voids that can cut multiple elements in the project: 

1. Create a new Generic Model family - I like to use face based; 
2. Add reference planes to control its length and width by instance, and its depth by type. 
3. Then add a void and constrain it to the reference planes. 
4. Now ensure you check the option “Cut when nested”. 
5. Finally create an initial type for a standard set down depth. 
6. Then just load into your project, place where needed and drag the grips to make it the appropriate size.
7. Then use the Cut geometry tool, select the floor you wish to cut and then the generic model family to have it cut the floor. You can even have it cut structural beams and multiple floors.

• For balconies with structural falls to the top face only you can use the point editing tools to drop edges/points lower to create the falls and ensure the layer of the floor is set to be “variable” in its properties. However, if the balcony isn’t rectangular, may be it is L shaped, then this approach can result in all sorts of triangulation edges – this can be worked around by turning off “interior edges” in the visibility settings. But you could also produce a similar generic model family for falls (using a void blend). This way the fall could also cut structural beams as well!

Revit 2012 - AS1428.1-2009 Door Circulation Checker

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I still haven't posted the video and datasets from RTC2011, I will do it when I get a spare few hours, need the incentive to sit down and record it all!

In the meantime I thought I'd share a little freebie, especially useful for all Australian users.  I have compiled a detail component family to graphically represent disabled circulation requirements as per AS1428.1-2009 to match Figure 31.  It has been setup to be completely fool proof, that is if you set any values that don't comply to this standard, you will get a nice large warning advising that the door doesn't comply.

It has some pretty darn long nested conditional statements (each about half a page of single line text) to match the requirements.  To help manage such long formulas I used an Excel spreadsheet to compile the formulas directly from the table.

Hope all find this useful.  Please let me know if you do as it may give me incentive to post some more...

Technically you could nest this family directly into your doors and use some formulas to to have it set to the appropriate sizes.  However, you may find that when you flip your door it will flip around the centre of the extents of the family and not about its origin.  A really annoying limitation of Revit that drives me nuts!!

Door Circulation Family.

Download it here and the Type Catalogue of standard sizes here.

RTC USA - Conference Materials

As some of you may know myself and many other Reviteers are currently attending and speaking at the Revit Technology Conference in Huntington Beach, California.

For those attending the sessions I will post links to the course materials, including presentation and datasets when I return to Australia.  These materials will also be available for download from the RTC ftp site.  Access details are typically emailed out to attendees with a couple of weeks of the conference completion...

Hope all attending are getting a lot of information out of it.  I've picked up a few little things that I've missed in the recent version - as such it is a very worthwhile trip.  Hope more people show interest next year and make this event a regular mark on your calendar!

Cheers,
Chris Price
aka Mr Spot :)

Australia and New Zealand Revit Standards Released (ANZRS)

Want to make top quality content.  The first step would be to download the extensive document pack from ANZRS!  This has been 2 years in the making after being raised at the Revit Technology Conference.

http://anzrs.wordpress.com/

Revit 2012 Viewer Mode

Did you know that in the Revit 2012 suite there is now a special "Viewer" mode.  I only discovered this the other day.

Finally a reliable, built in method (without having to rely on demo modes) to enable the Principals, Engineers, or Revit Illiterate Architects access to a Revit model that they can't destroy.

With the viewer it allows all standard functionality but:

• You can't save or save as,
• Export or publish views/models if you make any changes,
• Print if you make any changes,

Still need to test out how this behaves in a worksetted file.  Can anyone comment on whether it borrows elements and automatically relinquishes them upon closing, or something similar?

Revit 2012 & Nested Structural Columns Workarounds

If you've ever tried to nest structural columns or structural framing members and made them shared so you can tag the members independently of the host family, then there is a good chance you've come across this issue.  That is the column height or beam length defaults to its original size and ignores its constraints set by the host family.  Find out how to work around this.

Revit Technology Conference USA & Australia - June / May

For those of you that I interested I'll be running 3 classes at the above events.

1. Architectural Advanced Families (LAB)
2. Structural Advanced Families (LAB)
3. One Model (Revit Server, Worksharing API, Bluestreak, Security - Is it possible yet?)

I was really hoping to have the content of the Labs be directly based from the attendees requests.  However, so far the response has been far from overwhelming.  Especially considering that the Labs at the Australian event are sold out and wouldn't be surprised if the USA event isn't too far behind...

I'd really like the attendees to feel as though they've not only learnt something at the lab, but also to go away with something useful in terms of family content that they can use in their firms...

I plan on writing the 5 or so hours of training content over the Easter break so if you do have some suggestions please post your comments below!!  Remember, this is advanced some I'm going to touch some tricky topics including:

• Referencing Parameters
• Nesting
• Arrays
• Adaptive Components (depending on the suggestions)
• Family Type parameters
• Formulas (Conditional, Mathematical, Rounding, Trig etc.)
• Type Catalogues
• Shared Families
• Nested Detail Components
• Detail Level Control
• Best Practice
• Reference Planes / Lines / Points

I'm still contemplating whether I take the approach of setting up a bunch of half complete families and then we just tackle the tricky parts, or whether we go through the entire process of creating an advanced family from start to finish?

Otherwise I'll just pick some complicated stuff at random and hope that the bulk of people find the content useful.

BTW, I also believe that the Australian & New Zealand Revit Standards (ANZRS) for family creation are going to be released at this years event.  I've reviewed it and it is an excellent set of guidelines for creating families that will work with all disciplines and standardise online content if adopted by Autodesk Seek as well...