Thanks AUGI!

Thanks for the shout out AUGI.

You made me want to post again :)

 

The Future is Now

Mark Mendez from EvolveLAB has a great article in AUGIWorld this month on MEP Systems: Autodocumentation to Fabrication.

When people ask me where BIM is going, articles like this is what I point to. Back in 2004, Lonnie Compton told me if I wanted to get ahead in the business, I should start learning Revit immediately. He was right, and I am right in telling you to read this article from Mark right now.

The time to lead is today. If you want to follow, you can wait until tomorrow.

How to Stay in Phase when Revit Phases Disappear

Recently we ran into an issue where every phase in a project disappeared. The impossible situation of no phases happened. What's more the ability to add phases seemed to be blocked by the graying out of the Insert phases buttons in the empty dialog.

In the absence of phases in the project, elements that were existing or demo no longer had visibility overrides. We also discovered that we could no longer create new spaces, new sections showed nothing, and valves no longer broke into pipes properly.

After a lot of back and forth, our own Mitch Voss came up with a suitable fix.

1. Use Transfer project Standards to add at least one phase from a template into the current project. (If you bring all the required phases from an earlier incarnation of the project or a template, you will find they still won't work. Revit does really want an imported phase and will not function properly with them.) All elements will be assigned to the newly transferred phase. I prefer to name the imported phase "DO NOT USE".
2. The good news is that the functionality of the Phasing dialog is returned. Meaning you can now create the required phases. Since these phases were made in the project (as Revit expects), they will function correctly.
3. Now open up a 3D view and select everything. Filter out as many unphased categories as you can and change the phase of these elements to the newly created "New Construction" phase.
4. Now you can cherry pick existing or demo elements to move to appropriate phases. Views and schedules can be changed to an appropriate phase all at once by selecting them in the Project Browser and changing the phase in Properties.

It's a good idea to verify that your Phase mapping is still in sync, but it seems to recover nicely on its own. It is a little bit of effort, but seems to be working quite well. It also won't take much to automate this process with a macro, if you are into that kind of thing.

Good luck and Stay in Phase!

Revit Road Map

I did not expect to see the first ever public road map of where Revit is going to be published on the Autodesk Community porthole. They say it better than I can summarize so go check it out and see if they plan to give want you want.

Find the road map here....

Revit Road Map

Blunt Force Revit Formulas

I got asked by a friend to create a formula that will pass a value from 1-4 to a parameter called IP. The 1,2,3, or 4 will come from one of 4 Yes/No parameters (LB, LC,LF, and LO). As a given check-box is checked "on", the other check-boxes should turn off and the value set into the IP parameter.

Here is what I came up with...

Users can check as many boxes as they like under Constraints, but if they check more than one the formula that IP is set to  will return a zero, letting them know multiple are checked.

The formula for IP first checks for every bad situation of multiple checking that is possible. If any are true it sets IP to BADpick or zero. Once multiple picking is eliminated, it checks for the four appropriate single checks, and will return a 1,2,3, or 4 respectfully. If neither a good or bad pick is true it defaults to zero. The formula checks for bad outcomes first because as soon as it finds a true response, it stops checking.

The hard part might have been quantifying all the bad responses. I start by trying to come up with each combination of two checks.

LB and LC

LB and LF

LB and LO

LC and LF

LC and LO

LF and LO

With four possible choices, you know you have all the combinations when each shows up 3X in your list. I did the same for combinations of threes, again ensuring each parameter showed up 3X.

LB and LC and LF

LB and LC and LO

LB and Lf and LO

LC and LF and LO

Lastly, I check for all four parameters checked at once.

LB and LC and LF and LO.

This is the entire formula. I used if/and statements

if(and(LBTrue, LCTrue), BADpick, if(and(LBTrue, LFTrue), BADpick, if(and(LBTrue, LOTrue), BADpick, if(and(LCTrue, LFTrue), BADpick, if(and(LCTrue, LOTrue), BADpick, if(and(LFTrue, LOTrue), BADpick, if(and(LBTrue, LCTrue, LFTrue), BADpick, if(and(LBTrue, LCTrue, LOTrue), BADpick, if(and(LBTrue, LFTrue, LOTrue), BADpick, if(and(LBTrue, LCTrue, LOTrue, LFTrue), BADpick, if(LBTrue, LB, if(LCTrue, LC, if(LFTrue, LF, if(LOTrue, LO, 0))))))))))))))

It's definitely blunt force programming, but it does the trick to make sure only one in four is picked.

Excellent Blog Post by Doug Bowers

Electrical Panels in Revit are at the very least... fussy. 

Doug Bowers just posted an excellent article on why electrical load calculations can go bad on his Blog Applying Technology to Architecture.

Open to Favorites

Little things sure can make a big difference. 

If I have a job I will be returning to. I add a shortcut to it in my Windows Favorites. Then I rename the shortcut to include the project name and number. This is nice because when I use the Open command in Revit can navigate to Favorites then find my project.

Taking that one step farther, go to Options in the File Locations tab, change the Default path for user files: to your favorites folder. Now every time to click Open in Revit, it will take you directly to where your project shortcuts are.

Hide Unused Sections, Callouts, and Elevations

When annotating sheets I often have to deal with more than enough callouts, sections, and elevations that have not been placed on sheets. They clutter the drawing and distract me.

To clear things up, a not so intuitive filter can be made. It employs quite a bit of double negative mentality, but does the job.

First create a new filter. In Visibility Graphics, go to the Filters tab and choose Edit/New....

In the lower left corner of the dialog select the icon that looks like a sheet of paper with a tiny Sun at the upper right. Name your filter something like "Hide Unused Sections and Callouts".

Under Categories select Callouts, Elevations, and Sections. Then Filter by Sheet Number. Make the rule "does not contain" then leave the next box blank.

This filter will find every callout, elevation and section that does not have a sheet number assigned to it. The ones that have not been placed on sheets.

Back on the Filters tab add the newly created filter and uncheck the visibility box.

Now no unused callouts, elevations or sections will be visible in your view. That's better. Get back to work.

Aligned Duct Tags

Want your duct tags to align to duct at all sorts of angles?

Duplicate your duct tag family, go to the family categories button and set the tag to "rotate with component". Save with the suffix "-Aligned" and use it when needed. That was easy.