Well shuck my mouth! (Midwest talk for "I'm surprised") I can't believe it but here it is, a way to go back to tool bars in Revit 2010 products. I can hear some folks already "Hasta La vista ribbon!".
What's next backward compatibility!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Architectural Tabs in an Engineering World
It's going to sound like I'm complaining, but let's just call this an observation.
Revit MEP has a tab in the ribbon called Architect, so does Revit Structure.
It weird to me that there is no Electrical tab, no HVAC tab, or no Plumbing tab. A Fire Protection and Technology tab would be welcome too. Just so you Revit developers know, people in the MEP world almost never do all disciplines and never all at once. It would be nice to have more options per discipline rather than everything option in one.
On a very basic level the Architect tab can be reminder that Revit MEP is an architectural program trying to be a MEP program. Subtle changes like adding discipline specific tabs can go a long toward making us believe you understand our needs.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
How many versions of Revit MEP does it take...
As long as I am throwing things out for discussion, here is another one for the fire.
How many versions of Revit does it take to work as a consultant? Well, it takes as many versions as your clients choose to use. As a consultant, you work for a variety of clients, that may be on any given version of any given software.
In the DWG world, we have simply become experts at converting formats and versions up and down as needed. If I'm on 2010 but you use R14, no biggie, I can even convert MicroStation files as needed.
In the RVT world, I have projects in Revit 2009 that will not be migrated for what ever reason by my clients. Two of these projects will be in my office for the next 3-4 years. That means I will keep Revit MEP 2009 on my users PCs until 2012. I will be using Revit MEP 2013 by that time. Does this mean I may have 5 versions of Revit running to satisfy the needs of all my clients? Unless something changes... Yes. (Will my PC be able to handle that?)
Where before, my users opened the current version of AutoCAD (MEP) and worked in it all day converting when needed, now they will jump from one version of Revit to another depending on the job they are working on.
I understand the benefits behind restricting compatibility with Revit products, at the same time I really wish I could dumb something down when I need to.
There is a really good chance that I have missed something simple here, so if you know something I don't, please comment. In fact no matter where you stand, I would like to hear about it.
Take My Families, please!
As a consulting engineers and a Revit MEP users, there are some things we have to live with. I am interested in what others think about this situation.
I work for a firm that performs MEP engineering. That's mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. It should be common knowledge that any MEP firm that has been using Revit has created a great deal of content. What may not be common knowledge is that sometimes a MEP firm bids on a project, but is only awarded part. I may win the electrical and loose the mechanical. This means that a different MEP firm is doing that work. In the past I was sad because I didn't get all the work, but I went on and worked with the competition as best I could.
Now things could be a little more awkward. In a situation where the project is being completed in Revit, my families are now subject to be shared with a direct competitor. Especially now, I may feel my families give me an advantage. I most likely have quite a bit more information in a Revit family than I would ever have in an AutoCAD block. How and what I schedule, work flow and simple intellectual property is now in the position of being compromised. The whole idea of BIM is to share. That didn't sound bad until I thought of it this way.
I brought this up while speaking at the Revit User group of Nebraska a couple weeks ago. Some people suggested only sharing a 3D DWF. There is no real way to lock down a family like a lisp. It seems like you are in or your are out.
For me, take my families... please. It doesn't matter how awesome they are, they won't make me any more creative in my design. They don't listen to the client, I do. They don't establish relationships and build trust, the team does. Families are wonderful, for those of us who have created them, we hold them very dear. But just like children, at some point you are going to have to let them go. If you haven't thought about it yet, you might want to, they are growing up fast.
Like I said, I am very curious to hear from you. Please post a comment.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Custom Command Images
When upgrading to 2010 you may notice that some of your custom toolbars or ribbon components have lost the images that used to be attached to them. A long time ago, we used to get a smiley face on toolbars if the image could not be found, and a while back we got clouds with a question mark. Personally, I would like to see an animated emotioncon instead. The user could customize what emotion to show.
Anyway, I was talking about the olden days wasn't I? Oh yeah, back in my day the CUI referenced a BMP image that you could customize outside of the CUI interface. With 2010 the image is magically brought into the CUIx file. This is to make it easier to share CUIs without all the questioning clouds. There is a function to export your images as BMPs to what ever location you like, and you can also import images that should be part of the CUI.
You may have used the MEP snaps toolbar and some others in the past that are not going forward into 2010. The fix is to open your new CUI select the question-cloud, choose edit, then pick Import and get the old BMP image you used in a previous version and apply it. Tedious? yes. Time consuming? Yes. But, if you get it all set once, you can now share that CUI file at will and no one will wonder why the clouds have so many questions.
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