Breaking up the Group

Revit groups are cool and really effective for lots of things. I have noticed that when I get architectural models with excessive grouping that they bog down my MEP models. I try to keep the my linked architectural model as clean as possible and one thing that seem to help is breaking up groups. This could be a pain, but we have found a relatively easy way to do it.

Open the architectural model and expand groups in the project browser. Select a group and right click, then pick Select All Instances.

Notice in the Status bar how many groups are selected.

In the Options bar select Ungroup.

If you have selected a nested group, you will get a warning that the subgroups will also be ungrouped. Bonus.

That's it. Even with a ton of groups this process goes pretty darn quick. Finish up by Purging Unused. This will remove the groups from the project browser.

Track Revit MEP Versions

As a consulting engineering firm, we do business with many architects using different software in differing versions. What ever the reasons, we have Revit projects in 3 different versions going on right now. This causes quite a bit of confusion. One thing we have done to help is to subdivide our local file folder into version years and change the default path in each version of Revit MEP to put local files under the correct year. See the screen shot below showing the 2010 pathing in use.

Mistake can still be made, but every little bit helps.

Revit MEP Elements Deleted after Linked Arch is Updated

No one wants to see the message below telling them that in order to open their file they must delete an unknown element. It's nice that the message includes the element ID numbers, but they don't seem to be a lot of use for figuring out what you are now missing.

If you note those ID numbers and have a backup file, you can find the elements in that file by going to the Modify tab and picking the Element ID tool.
The Select by ID tool will allow you to enter an ID number, then click the Show button to find out where the darn thing actually is.

If you only have a few elements to find, this can bring you a lot of peace of mind that an important element was not left out. If there are a ton of deletions, it might not be as cool.

Revit MEP Pinning Pipe

I recently had an incident where during a sync to central an error would come back saying elements could not be moved. The only solution was to copy down a new local, which meant anything done between saves was lost.

After some detective work we found that some pipe had been pinned by one user which caused the error. Even if recent work was not near the pinned pipe, eventually the connectivity of the pipe would lead back to the pinned element and cause the error. The solution was to go to a 3D view, select all the pipe and pipe fitting, then type UP for unpin elements. After that the save went through.

Just guessing here but pinning any element with connectors seems like a bad idea when work-sharing is enabled.

New AugiWorld

I have an article in the new AugiWorld magazine on creating a Revit MEP fire alarm device. If you are new to Revit MEP families this can help get you started and it applies to all kinds of electrical and mechanical Revit families. Flip to page 34 to see the article.

Before any rumors get started, it seems and old bio was used at the end of the article from my time at Avatech Solutions. I hope it brings them good press, but I will be at Alvine and Associates for the duration.