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Monday, March 25, 2013

Tag all with shared nested families

The other week I came across an issue on a project where we were required to tag all FF&E in the plans/elevations.

As these elements were of numerous family categories, the multi-category tag seemed like the correct choice.  We also wanted to be somewhat selective about what elements were actually tagged.  Due to the large number of repetition and relative unpredictability of groups we used some complex families for each room fit-out which actually included every family nested into it, with some parametrics to adjust for varying room sizes.

Unfortunately, if you just select the host family and choose tag all it does not tag the nested sub-families.  No one wanted to go through the process of Control selecting all the invidiual families as that would have taken forever.  So I suggested creating a schedule.

By creating a multi-category schedule sorted by Family & Type and filtered for elements that I don't want to tag,

  • I could then select the elements in the schedule, 
  • then switch back to the view I want to tag in and 
  • choose tag all (using current selection).  This way I was able to quickly select all the nested families in a matter of seconds.  Revit is smart enough to automatically filter by what is actually visible in the current view.

PS.  I had a "DOH!" moment on the tag all functionality when doing some of this, I didn't realise you could tag all using multi-category tags, I thought tag all was only for by category...!  I think Autodesk should modify this dialog so it doesn't just show tags you have loaded, but instead shows all potential categories, including multi-category and then against the ones without tags show greyed out with the option to load a tag.  This way others won't make the same mistake, or am I the only one that did this?  It's amazing how you can be using a product for 12 years and still find something new occasionally...

Autodesk also need to add the ability to "Keynote All" in this dialog.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Revit 2013 - View Reference Tags

I've have actually been meaning to post this for about 6 months now, but I'm so busy these days I rarely get around to these types of things.  I've got a weeks break and can't help myself, so here is a quick tutorial on the new View Reference Tags.

In 2013 Autodesk added the ability to allow a View Reference Tag to reference almost any view (not legends) from almost any view.  Previously View Reference Tags were exclusive to Dependent Views and Matchlines.

Some tricks I thought of immediately were placing a "smart" view reference tag in a string of text that references some standard details or alike.  Or how about showing where 3D views are taken in plan and being able to graphically print them and hyperlink to them?
In TEXT

to a 3D View


The below video shows a quick snapshot of these in action.  But to create them simply:


  1. Create a new Generic Annotation
  2. Go to Family Category & Parameters and change the category to View Reference Tag
  3. Place labels for the detail number and sheet number and draw your desired symbology (note, I always make my tags parameter so I only ever have one tag type per family category, this is typically done through visibility parameters controlled by integer values to switch between them)
  4. Save the family and load it into your project
  5. Switch to the view you want to place it in
  6. Swith to the View tab and in Sheet Composition choose View Reference
  7. Edit Type, and select the view reference tag you wish to use from the drop down
  8. OK
  9. Now you can start placing in the view your require it!  NOTE: you can place them in 3D views also but you need to ensure you lock the view orientation.
I hope someone finds this useful!

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Revit Formula Rounding

Today I came across a circumstance where I needed to round a value in a family to be to the nearest 5mm increment (+ tolerance).

The Round functions in Revit only round to the nearest whole number.  So a little maths is required to achieve this.

EG:

I have a parameter called "Param1" that I want to drive "Param2" from.

Param2 = (roundup((Param1 + 5 mm) / 5 mm)) * 5 mm

Essentially what we are doing is first adding the tolerance we want, then dividing by 5 (the rounding increment we want), rounding this off to the nearest whole number and the multiplying by 5 again to give us the desired rounded dimension.

Pretty simple, but hopefully someone will find it useful.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Wintergarden Facades - Shop Drawings in Revit

Another recent project finished by the Cadway team (Jonathan Croft and Myself) is the all new Wintergarden facade on the Queen Street Mall, Brisbane, Australia.  The Facade was applied to the revamped Wintergarden on its 3 street frontages.

This was a very complicated project, especially given the timing.  The design was completed by Studio 505 in Melbourne, and the engineering was completed by Tensys.  Urban Art Projects, whom we've teamed up with before (Beacon, Bird Cage, Swallow) was awarded the responsibility of building this amazing design.

Our first hurdle was that each facade panel would be pre-fabricated offsite and lifted into position.  As such, each of the cleats and the dead load beam that was to support the facade panels would be already in place when the facade arrived and we wouldn't necessarily have "as built" survey information for their actual positions.  So we needed to factor in tolerance into everything to allow for these variations!  This included things like slotted holes for connections and adjustable lateral restraints.  The other limitation was the size of the panels, they needed to fit into shipping containers as they were being fabricated overseas...

Our issues in Revit included, everything needed to be scheduled, bolts, nuts, washers, plates, beams, the lot!  We needed to produce shop drawings, with exploded axonometric views, be able to schedule fabricated elements as well as the "assemblies" of fabricated elements.  Unfortunately the Assembly features of Revit were unsuitable for such a task in version 2012 as we couldn't get quantities of the assemblies or have multiple instances of the same assemblies, or have nested assemblies (2 of these 3 limitations have now been lifted in 2013).  The other major flaw was the lack of functionality nesting actual beams.  When nesting a beam family you lose the ability to cut it with a reference plane, or even control its length...

The solution, an elaborate system of shared nested families - some as much as 7 levels deep.  There wasn't as much repetition as we hoped either, as each of the 3 facades had different heights and the scattering of the butterflies on the facade made the regular panels rarely regular!  Our nested families had numerous options built in, so a single family could alternate between many different connection types, which helped keep file size down by having less families loaded with more types set-up.  The other trick was stopping people from using the "mirror" command, unfortunately the fabricators don't have a mirror command... :-D  We again leaned on the Revit API, to automatically isolate fabricated and assembled elements (all tagged of course) and document them in isolation of the rest of the model.  As built surveys were used on some of the facades and dead load beams when they were available and we would modify the panels to suit the variations.

The 3 layers of laser cut panels were handled by Studio 505 directly, whilst we dealt with the 3 structural aspects of the system and the butterfiles.  Termed on the project as the "Mega Panel", "Grillage" and "Access Walkway".  For those interested the Revit model was a conservative 173MB in file size, kept down by the user of "Shared" nested families.  We were able to make the butterflies parametric so they could technically "flap their wings"!

The installation method was interesting as we didn't have access to the whole facade to fit the panels in places.  As such the pieces were lifted through specially designed and positioned lifting points (built into the Revit model for coordination of course), and then a custom designed trolley system would allow the panels to slide along the facade into position.

The fabricators were able to position a projector on the ceiling, projecting the completed panels on the ground, so they could then ensure that the pieces being connected together were correctly located.  The fabrication went very smoothly and efficiently.

As you can see on Studio 505's website the facade has a very elaborate interactive lighting system.  Able to project the silhouettes of those walking past, wave back at you, simulate rain or animals and even display the time.  The project was a success with very little to no coordination issues on site.








Monday, April 02, 2012

Xrev New Website Launched

Please let us know what you think of the new Xrev website.  Expect some exciting stuff to appear in the coming weeks including Revit 2013 support and the all new Xrev Transmit.

If you haven't used Xrev Transmit for issuing you Revit sheets to DWG, PDF, DWF, Hard Copy, DXF or DGN yet then you don't know what you are missing.

Download the Free Trial today!

http://www.xrev.com.au

Thursday, March 22, 2012

New Laptop & Nasty Revit Bug

With starting my new company I decided to splash out and get myself a decent laptop.  I decided on a new Dell XPS15 with 256GB SSD.

Its a great computer, extremely fast and great battery life.  My main issue occurs in Revit:

Every time I'm in Revit and I have a child window open in Revit, for example the family types dialog, every 20-30 seconds the window loses focus and the Revit main window has focus! I can be typing away in one of the fields and all of a sudden I've committed another command in the background parent window (like opening the visibility/graphics dialog).  Almost like the dialogs in Revit are modeless!

As you can probably imagine this can be extremely frustrating and counter productive when you have to constantly have to reselect the child window to have focus so you can keep working.  Especially when you are writing long formulas that you have to scroll across the window to get to the end of the formula.  Then by the time you've scrolled across the window loses focus and you have to do it again!!!

This issue from my experience only occurs in Revit.  I obviously checked all the obvious things like touching the trackpad, or bumping a key - but my hands can be in the air well away from the laptop and it still does it. As such I filed it with Autodesk Support.

Of course they first asked the obvious questions, are you running the latest build, do you have Autodesk Certified drivers (and the autodesk certified drivers are years old!), etc.  I ensured I had tested all their suggestions and none of which resolved the issue.  It has now been escalated to development and apparently I'm not alone in the this issue, which is slightly re-assuring as that may mean there is a fix planned...

Anyway, I thought I would share just in case others are experiencing this issue and looking online for a solution.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Revit Bird project completed

I thought those that were interested might like to see the completed project of the bird I did all the laser cut files for.

http://uapmarker.com.au/blog/james-eleanor-avery-with-uap-studio-lucky-dip-the-darling-hotel-sydney/

by TemplatesForYou-TFY
SoSuechtig, Burajiru