3D View/Perspective viewpoint changing unexpectedly on file reopen

Have you ever opened a Revit file only to find that all those 3D Views you setup yesterday are no longer orientated correctly?  This can be very frustrating!

Typically when I create a 3D View, I'll then use the Steering Wheel, Look mode, to adjust the viewpoint to exactly where I need it.  If you'd like those tweaks to be retained you must SAVE VIEW.

There are 2 places you can Save View:

• In the View Cube menu drop down

• In the Steering Wheel menu drop down

Unfortunately this is easy to forget to do, it would be great if Revit prompted you with something like "3D View:3D View 2 has unsaved changes, would you like to save view?" 

Revit 2015 - BORING...?

So for those that have seen the Revit 2015 new feature list, its pretty boring.  I'm not against a release that aims to fix up a lot of minor limitations and/or bugs, but pick some decent ones!  And at least address 1 or 2 major ticket items.  I consider major ticket items like:

• Finishing Railings/Ramps/Stair tools
• Upgrading the Text tools to match those of just about every other CAD/BIM Software
• Integrated Graphical Door/Window & Curtain Wall Schedules
• Fixing Groups
• Making Assemblies do what they need to, IE: Be easily reusable, have the concepts of a fabricated element, sub-assemblies etc.
• Library Management - detect what families have been updated and allow us to quickly reload.
• Improve Worksharing to allow more users to work simultaneously and more robust!
• And there are many more I can list out

I think Structural got the best improvements this year...

Lets take a look at them:

1. Link IFC's: Okay this is a good BIM feature, but for me it needs to be a high fidelity link.  IE: No geometric conversions of the content to Revit elements, give me the raw geometry as defined in the IFC associated to the correct family category.  I don't want to have to worry about possible conversion based issues which plague IFC conversion between platforms.  If that's what it is then awesome.
2. Trim/Extend Multiple Elements: This is a much needed feature, being able to window select the elements to be trimmed to the reference will be a large time saver for me.
3. Family Parameter Order Adjustment: This bugged me a lot when I first started creating families, but I've gotten used to the Reverse Alphabetic ordering.  I don't think this is going to save many people a lot of time...
4. Tooltips for Family Parameters: As someone who creates a lot of families, some of which can get quite conmplicated, being able to include some instruction on what parameters do will be very useful.  No longer will I have to create an extra instruction parameter.  Pretty happy about this one.
5. Reinforcement for parts: IMHO this should have been in the parts tool from day 1, so glad this has been completed.  But what about reinforcement in families!  That would save me the most amount of work, as I could set once, rather than have to place everywhere after the fact...
6. Presentation in Rebar Sets: This would be useful if we could document and display reinforcement to our standards.  Many of my clients are now building their own Rebar families, with built in symbology just because this is so inflexible.  EG: Area Reinforcement doesn't have the control we need, but has symbols.  Rebar does have the flexibility required (for the most part), but you can't easily get it to display how you want to see it in documentation...
7. Reinforcement Numbering & Multi Rebar Annotation: More ways to tag is useful, but if doesn't look right in the first place it still only part of the solution.
8. Structural Section Properties: Useful and avoids manually input data, which is always good.
9. Calculation methods for pressure drop: Not being a systems engineer, I'm not yet across the benefit of this.  So I'll reserve judgement on this until I have some feedback from engineers.
10. Great Structural Beam Join Control: This is a much needed feature.  I just hope that they've allowed us to set either family level defaults for setback and snapping, or at least project level defaults.  This would enable us to get the majority of joins correct using the defaults and then individually edit only a few.  However, based on other similar tools, I doubt this got implemented.
11. Assembly Code Settings: On a couple of occassions it would have been useful to be able to easily customise the Uniformat classifications, so some may find this useful.
12. Pinned Element Enhancements: Deleting a pinned element no longer just provides a warning and deletes the element.  This is how it should have always worked!
13. Show Hidden Lines in 3D: Good to see Autodesk are realising we use 3D Views in documentation.
14. Revision improvements: Finally they have done away with the horrible click fest that is clouding!  It also means the clouds have some consistency in spacing, so look a lot neater.  Deleting a revision isn't something I've had to do a lot in the past.  But why didn't they add a new parameter for Revision Classification/Stage and allow us to have prefix/suffix!  This would finally give us the ability to use the revision numbering we need...
15. Enhanced Schedules/material takeoffs: It's great that we have a few extra boxes to filter with, but what about an OR condition!  Also, we can customise the Grand total text, but what about footer sub-total text?  And then being able to use the totals, in other places in Revit...
16. Images in Schedules: I have a lot of clients that have needed this feature.  The issue then becomes though, how are these images managed.  We don't want to bloat our file sizes, simply because someone didn't optimise the size of the image before associating it to the family type.  I realy hope these images can be linked as opposed to embedded.
17. Keynote Settings: Woopdidoo...
18. View References: Repathing a section/elevation using Reference other view to an alternate view without having to delete and recreate, is welcome.  But its not going to save me hours in my day.
19. Duplicate View Default Names: Certainly an improvement over the old behaviour, but I would prefer they dropped the word Copy...  I've never wanted a view to have the word copy in it ever...
20. Tapped duct and pipe tags: Very useful to be able to get correct values along the length of a duct.
21. Anti-aliasing by view: A much better approach to manage performance...
22. Sketchy Lines: They're here, they work, people will use it.
23. Ray Trace improvements: Another bug fix to get rid of noise displaying in the result image
24. Shared Parameters in View Titles: I've certainly needed this in the past.  Just wish we could have graphical scales that were automatic as well...
25. Manage Links Dialog: Can't say that I'll use the ability to add link in this dialog...
26. Tag improvements: Finally some consistency in leaders between tags and text...
27. Double click to Deactivate view: Useful
28. Structural Element Graphical Display tweaks: Okay...
29. Performance Improvements: Many tasks seem to have been streamlined and now take less processing time.  This is great, we need to get to a point where we can successfully have up to 20 people working in single file without spending 50% of your day saving/synching!

All in all, there are certainly features in here that I welcome.  I guess along with all this I was expected a couple of other major items.  Who knows, perhaps Autodesk and realising that its better to withhold these new features sometimes until they are finished, before implementing them into the software and frustrating all the users who nag them every year about finishing them off...

Xrev Transmit - Version 2 - Quick rundown!

New Features:

• Matrix Transmittals
• Report Designer
• Bulk Selection (Shift & Control Click)
• Bulk Editing
• New Naming Rules
• Better Validation of Settings
• Autodetect paper size option for PDF

See how much time you can save issuing drawings from Autodesk Revit in PDF, DWG, DGN, RVT, DXF, DWF, DWFx, and as many physical printers as you like, all at the same time!  Then have it produce a transmittal for you automatically, or publish the files directly to Aconex to instantly share them with your team!!

New Instructional videos coming soon...

Are you getting the most from Revit in your office?

Optimizing your Revit implementation can be the difference in a success or failure for your business.

• Do you find yourself having to change things every time, for each project, to have your drawings look reasonable? (object styles, by element overrides, line weights, etc.)
• Do you have to always search through old projects to copy/paste work you've done before?
• Do you find each project looks a little different in terms of graphical consistency?
• Is your family symbology inconsistent across your library? (EG: All your windows have the same coarse/medium/fine display and the same symbology for sliding panes etc)
• Are you recreating legends and schedules from scratch for each new project?
• Do your projects quickly become slow, performance wize?

If you answered YES to most of these then there is a good chance your implementation is not optimized.  Having to change all these things with each new project can greatly effect your design and documentation efficiency, and be the difference to making a profit or a loss!

Over the past 12 years I've completed Revit implementations that are customized for each individual office or projects needs.  I've completed templates for Architectural, MEP, Structural, Interior Design, Landscape, Multi-Discipline & Hospitals.  They all have commonalities, but they must all be tailored and optimized each time.

Your template should have:

• View Templates for every standard view that you typically create, resolved to the point that you don't have to change it graphically ever...  Just apply your tags, symbols, dimensions and text notes.
• Extensive use of Filters.  By category or even sub-category is not a sufficient way to achieve the graphics requirements of most offices.  Filters can be used to pick up commonalities of elements to control them graphically.  Try to never use by element overrides!
• All your standard views setup.  This includes the typical number of levels for the bulk of your projects.  Remember you can always delete things you don't need.
• Levels & Grids pre-placed.  I typically have 3 levels in my templates
• All your standard sheets setup, with views laid out on them.
• All your standard schedules laid out.  Have schedules for documentation already laid out on your sheets, but also have schedules created purely for editing data in bulk (working schedules)!
• All your standard notes & legends setup and placed on the appropriate sheets
• Views for BIM, EG: Navisworks or IFC export views
• Guide Grids for your various paper sizes
• Options to switch between paper sizes and have all your symbology update accordingly.  (EG: At A3 you may reduce the size of your section/elevation markers)
• The most common families you use (2D & 3D).  Don't load too much or all you'll forever be updating it.  Only include families that are in 90% of your projects.
• Version Tracking.  This will help you identify what varies between your current template and your project.  Remember your template should be always evolving!
• Standard materials correctly setup
• All your Fill Patterns
• All your Line Styles
• All your commonly used tags loaded
• Colour Fill's setup - Too often do I see people using colour fills to only colour fill some rooms for example.  As a result they are forever changing the colour fill scheme to exclude certain things.  DON'T do this.  Use a filter instead!  Then you won't have to change it every again.
• All your systems setup (Pipe, Duct., etc)
• All your commonly used system family types (Walls, Pipes/Ducts/Conduits with correct routing, Floors, Roofs, Curtain Walls, Sweeps/Reveals, Ceilings, Stairs, Railings, Ramps etc.).  Don't include all of them, store all of them in a special project so you can copy/paste them in.  Only include types that you use in 80% of your projects in your template.
• Text Styles, Dimension Styles, Spot Elevation Styles, Spot Coordinate Styles with names that are descriptive of their use, rather than their appearance...
• All your Phases/Phase Filters/Graphic Overrides setup and mastered
• Mark Number start values setup correctly, chain options in sketches set appropriately, the default open view set appropriately
• Your users adequately trained in the use of the template so they take advantage of all of its features!!

Your library should have:

• Some sort of vetting of content, so it can be identified what is "company standard"
• A naming convention and structure that makes content easy to find, both in the library and once loaded into your project.
• Consistency of representation and functionality for elements of similar type.  (EG: all your pipe fittings have the same parameters and functionality, or all your sliding windows etc.)
• As much meta data/parameter information populated as possible to reduce the need to fill this out every time in every project
• Type Catalogs wherever there is more than 2 types, to limit the loading of unneeded types

If you'd like some help optimizing your Revit Systems please don't hesitate to contact me at support@xrev.com.au 

Using Temperature Parameters in Formulas

Yesterday I was working on some MEP families and thought I'd do some tricks to generate some formulas to match a manufacturers capacity tables for Total Cooling Capacity & Sensible Cooling Capacity.

Being metric, the Dry Bulb & Wet Bulb Inside temperature parameters I had setup were in degrees Celsius.  The Capacity parameters are in kW's so in order to use the temperature parameters in the formula I would need to remove the units.

Easy, I thought.  I'll just divide by 1°C and that will give me a unitless value.

Unfortunately Revit decided to throw a curve ball at me.  Internally all its calculations are done in Kelvin.  For example, if I use my DB in a formula and its value is set to 20, Revit actually uses 293.15.  So then I thought I'd divide by 1 K... No luck!

After trying for 3 hours I eventually gave up and went to bed.

With a fresh head I did some playing around in Excel to try and figure out how Revit was getting the results it was and eventually I came to this:

Unitless Temperature Parameter

So essentially what Revit is doing here is:

(293.15-272.15) / (546.3/546.3) or 20/1 = 20

Now hopefully someone else doesn't have to go insane trying to figure this out!

A guide to employing a BIM Manager or Revit Manager

If you are looking to really accelerate in the changing world of Building Information Modelling (BIM), you are going to need a dedicated BIM Manager (aka VDC Manager, Revit Manager, BIM Strategist etc).  There is certainly no shortage of people sporting this still relatively new job title.

So if someone has been a BIM Manager in the past, does that mean they are qualified?  

Unfortunately, not necessarily.  In many firms the title of BIM Manager is often given to the existing BIM technician who knows the most about BIM at the time.  That's certainly not a bad thing.  But depending on their environment and their strive to learn new things and expore it may not necessarily qualify them to be 'your' BIM Manager.  Many users with this title still only perform their same technician roles.

As such I strongly recommend evaluating their experience and skills practically.  How do you do that?  

There are online test systems available for BIM such as Knowledge Smart.  With these systems you can customize the test to suit the types of BIM tasks you'll require and then see how they fair.  There are also the general aptitude tests that evaluate how well a user picks up new information, performs under pressure etc.  However, if you are relatively new to BIM as well, you may not know what you need.

It is very easy for someone to throw around buzz acronyms like BEP (BIM Execution Plans), IFC (Industry Foundation Classes), COBie (Construction Operations Building Information Exchange) and appear to know their stuff!  But talking the talk and walking the walk are very different.

A BIM Manager needs to know a lot of different technologies, not just theoretically but practically.  Specifically the methodology and best practices of information exchange, file formats, optimization, collaboration and the required information.  Also depending on your company your BIM Manager may have different roles (lists may not be exhaustive of roles):

Contractor BIM Manager:

• Developing BEP
• Performing Clash Detection & Coordination Meetings
• Performing 4D Sequences/videos to win Bids as well as for construction and working with the programmers (typically in Primavera)
• May involve modelling temporary works, scaffolding, formwork, traffic, cranes - or you may simply just coordinate someone else to do it for you
• Ensuring Design Consultant, and sub-contractor models are supplied at regular intervals and dictating the formats to be supplied in.
• Extracting quantities/take offs from the models

Design Consultant BIM Manager:

• Briefing the client as to the BIM options & establishing to what the BIM deliverables are
• Developing BEP
• Ensuring adherence to BEP and maintaining BEP as amendments are required
• Performing Clash Detection & Coordination Meetings
• Developing & Managing Content Creation to the required standard
• Setting up Project Models
• Producing IFC or Navisworks/VEO files for coordination

On larger projects you may have different hierarchies of BIM Managers.  EG: Someone who oversees everything to maintain consistency and perform the collaboration tasks.  Then people that are more hands on concentrating on the authoring of the models to the appropriate standards.

Manufacturer/Supplier BIM Manager:

• Development or delegation of BIM Content for customers
• Managing feedback from customers and revising content as required
• Ensuring the embedded information is correct and the content accurate represents the products

So to know if someone is right for these roles, I like to ask more specific questions to try and establish whether they have real knowledge or are just going on some things they've read online:

• How would you go about setting up a BEP?
• What would it include?
• If you've been involved with BEP's in the past, what issues have you faced?

If you are a design consultancy, whether it be architectural, structural or MEP, I'd want my BIM Manager to also know the practicalities of the design software.  Which in many cases these days is Autodesk Revit.  One of the best skills to have in Autodesk Revit is great content creation/family creation skills.  I find that if a user knows how to make a good quality family and has worked on a decent variety of projects at different stages, they are going to make a good Revit Manager at least!  As such, testing their content creation skills is a must!  In my book if they know that they are half way there...

I hope some find this a useful reference for either finding the right person for their company.

If you need any help evaluating candidates feel free to drop me a line.

Why consider me for your next Revit/BIM project?

I had someone tell me the other day that I was not being considered for a role as they thought I wan't qualified enough as a BIM expert... 

As such I thought I'd write a quick post outlining a brief summary of my BIM experience to avoid this occurring again.

1. I'm a Graduate Architect - I haven't registered as I've personally had no need for the additional qualification in the roles I've been completing
2. I've been using Revit since 2001 (12 years) - one of the first in Australia
3. I've developed Revit for Asset Management and Facilities Management for major Petroleum Retail Giants
4. I've completed hundreds of full Revit projects!
5. I've completed 7 projects where I've gone from Revit direct to fabrication (laser cutting from the model) as well as producing shop drawings directly saving money in bringing in extra trades and avoiding any remodelling steps.
6. I assisted in developing the BIM-MEPaus Standards for MEP Engineers & Contractors throughout Australia, creating a lot of the generic content.
7. I consult frequently to multiple Architectural, Structural & MEP firms to develop their Revit and BIM Standards and generally assist them win more work by allowing them to offer more than their competitors by utilising BIM.
8. I assisted in developing the Australia & New Zealand Revit Standards (ANZRS)
9. I wrote BIM Implementation Plans, BIM Execution Plan Templates and facilitated meetings to deploy BIM at a Tier 1 Contractor's, back in 2007 when others were just starting to hear about BIM.
10. I completed clash detection modelling and clash reports, 4D Sequencing in Navisworks for numerous projects for many Tier 1 Contractors.    This included connecting into MS Project & Primavera schedules.
11. I assisted a Tier 1 Contractor on mining projects and their technician was so impressed they asked me in to train their team and push BIM in their offices
12. I've worked on major health care projects.  I was originally contracted for 3 weeks to perform a task that had previously been completed by a major reseller and Autodesk, the team was so happy with my results they contracted my services for a further 12 months!
13. I've worked on projects with 1:1 modelling requirements through to projects worth $7B in the UAE which many thought were impossible to build/document.
14. I worked with the Landscape Architect on another very large health care project to develop Revit Standards and assist with modelling for Revit Landscaping.
15. I've modelled fuel systems for Diesel Generator Systems for a very large health care project.
16. I've now provided services for Interior Design, Architecture, Landscape, Structural, Mechanical, Electrical, Seismic, Fuel, Hydraulic, Fire, Traffic, Civil modelling & coordination
17. As part of my role at Cadway (6 years) I was responsible for exploring new technologies, filtering through the marketing fluff, testing and identifying what was worth implementing and what wasn't.  Then finally implementing the technologies.
18. I performed a IT System Administrator role, so I'm across many IT systems such as Citrix, Anti-virus, Exchange Servers, Backup systems, Private Clouds etc.
19. I have experience and resources to customise Revit and develop tools to expedite and improve quality/efficiency of Projects in Revit.
20. I've spoken at many international Revit/BIM Conferences & Events with excellent feedback
21. My Revit Family Creation skills are second to none - I've spent 4 years creating highly efficient and smart content for Manufacturers
22. I've worked on just about every typology of project you can think of.  Including: Multi-Res, Masterplanning, Health Care, Mining, Defence, Retail, Mixed Use, Institutional, Education, Transport, Art, Interior, Landscape, High Rise, Commercial.

Of course my CV goes into this in a lot more detail.  But hopefully this gives you the confidence that I know what I'm doing...

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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/

Chris Price & Xrev - Consulting

Hello All,

I thought I'd let my readers know that I am now consulting my services in the Revit Architecture, Structure, Navisworks, BIM space. (commencing 13th February 2012)

If you require Revit Implementation, in-house Revit Training, Revit Training Classes, Revit Management, On Project Revit Support, Revit Start-up Assistance, upskilling intermediate & advanced Revit users, Revit Collaboration, IPD and everything Building Information Modelling.

Please don't hesitate to email me at Support at Xrev dot com dot au. I can supply you with my costing and schedule availability!

I have experience with:

• Multi-discipline collaboration
• Revit Asset Management
• Revit Facilities Management
• Revit Digital Fabrication (laser cutting, CNC, etc)
• 4D Sequencing
• Extracting Quantities & Weights from the model
• Various Energy Analysis
• Cost Estimation from the model
• Clash Detection
• BIM Specifications
• Integrated Project Delivery
• Training large groups/presenting

Laser Cut files & Fabrication from Revit

Now that it is no longer under NDA, I'd show off a quick project that I recently completed for a client where we were asked to produce laser cut files for all the steelwork.

Thankfully I had a copy of Revit 2012 pre-release to play around with which just happened to add a new feature that allows me to create face based void families or nest voids in families and have them cut other families in the project beyond just system families such as walls/floors/roofs etc.  (love it when Autodesk release a feature that I can use straight away)

Using Structural framing, and structural columns I was able to quickly generate all the members to their accurate sizes.  The difficulty was that each of the 3 layers of 40x16mm RHS channels that make up the infill actually need to penetrate the external channels.  Of course the laser cut machine can only cut penetrations perpendicular, so this complicated things.  As such I generated a face based void family with instance parameters to control its lengths and radius corners.  I placed all 1340 instances of these and flexed their lengths to suit the required opening for each of the intersecting members based upon their angle of incidence and ensured no members intersected each other.

I then had our developer create a macro command using VSTA to isolate each member, create a 3D view of only that member and then export out a .SAT file and .DXF file for the laser cutting service.

I was also asked to advise the weight of this structure. Easily done through some schedules to pull out the volume of steel and a calculated parameter based upon the mass of steel being 7850kg/m³ this was all able to be automated.

Lessons learnt: I found a few bugs in this tool where the face based voids families would cut certain structural columns, which have now been addressed in the released version.  I managed to source the issue and devise a workaround. I had planned to make this much more complicated to facilitate change, but I opted for the manpower approach as I thought it was resolved.  Unfortunately for me, there were a couple of design iterations which we somewhat painful to redo.  Had I have known these were coming I would have made the mesh members and penetrations parametric.

NEXT PROJECT for the same client:

A 4.5 metre Bird made from aluminium sheet with a polystyrene core to be suspended in the foyer.

Requirements:

• An IGS file for the CNC router to cut the polystyrene blocking to shape.
• Fully nested cut files for all the aluminium sheet
• Structural Steel Cut files for the support frame
• An overall weight of the bird

Challenge accepted!

We were supplied with a model created in 3DS Max. My first thought was great, I'll use the unfolding tools of Autodesk Inventor to make light work of this.  This way I could build in K factors etc.  But of course Inventor doesn't handle geometry created by other applications well at all.  I didn't feel in the mood to remodel the complicated form from scratch in Inventor so instead I looked to Revit. Unfortunately there was some issues in the nurbs translation and the import into Revit - which I didn't discover straight away.  As you may know a nurbs face can only have 3 or 4 sides.  When importing into Revit the surface was being triangulated.  Some of the planar faces on this bird had as much as 12 sides.  Working with the designer in 3DS Max we managed to sort out a workflow that gave me the best possible base to work from.  We even explored tidying up the bird directly in Revit, so we create a tool using the API that was able to automatically convert the import into native Revit Reference Lines, Points and forms.  We didn't end up using it, but I'm sure it will come in handy in the future.  We may even make it publicly available if we get the time to make it robust to everyone elses different scenarios.

I imported this form into the Revit Conceptual Massing environment and created a family for it.  I then loaded it into a new project and used the curtain panel by face tool (using a special Aluminium system panel type that I made), selected all the faces and generated the curtain system.

Great, I now had a panelised system for all the pieces.  I then manually merged some of the complicated pieces so we didn't end up with tiny little slithers to be assembled.  Next step, systematically number all the panels (434) with unique marks, we didn't automate this so it was somewhat tedious.

Again we looked to the API to create a macro that automatically created an isolated 3D view for each curtain panel orientated to look perpendicular to the surface.  Easy enough, but how do we no which side of the surface we are looking at.  The edges of each panel needed to be bevelled at 45° so this was important.  Unfortunately there seemed to be no real logic between what side revit determined the interior or exterior of the panel even though they were all part of the same system, they weren't necessarily orientated the same way.  We were able to get around this through Raytracing in the API, which aided us in determining the interior and exterior face.  We re-ran the macro and now we had an exterior view of every panel isolated in the model.

Next step, exporting the views:
As you may or may not know, if you export from a 3D view you get a 3D file.  In this instance we needed 2D Cut files.  How do you get a 3D view to export as 2D?  You place it on a sheet.  We configured the macro to then place all 434 views on a single sheet, then exported (DXF) the sheet and left the "Xref views on sheet" option checked so we would get separate files for each of the files.  Of course we had no control over the naming of these Xref's so we then had to use a small utility to systematically rename all the files so they corresponded to their Mark.

Finally to create the nested cut files, we used another commercially available utility where you can simply enter the sheet sizes, specify the individual cut files and it automatically nests the pieces and optimises them as well as tagging them.

The last task was to generate the 3D cut files for all the structural steelwork.

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.