Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Revit 2009 Subscription Utilities made available

I have just had notification from Autodesk that the Worksharing Monitor, Batch Print Utility and Globe Link Plug-in for the Revit 2009 products are now available on the Subscription Website. My understanding is these are simply updated versions of the 2008 utilities. I can't confirm whether they have fixed the memory problem which has caused issues with some users.


To get to the utilities, log on to the subscription website and navigate down the front page until you find:-
Click the "Click here" link and this will take you to the "Autodesk Building Solutions Products, Add-ons, and Enhancements". You will the find the new 2009 batch print, worksharing monitor and globe liink for Revit Architecture, Structure and MEP 2009. Hopefully every one will see these and you will not suffer from the same visbility issues which blighted the 2008 release.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Revit and Max, Designreform.net

This is one cool site....

http://designreform.net/

If you are into parametrics forms you will find some great articles and tutorials on this site for 3dsmax and Revit.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Impression 2 is available to Revit subscription users


It’s worth noting that Autodesk Impression 2 is now available to Revit subscription users. It’s a hefty download at around 623mb’s. However, it’s well worth the download time in my view, particularly if you are an architect or designer and you are looking to give your Revit projects that hand drawn feel. Transferring to something like Google Sketchup is an option, but Sketchup can be a bit clumsy to use with Revit large datasets. Impression on the other hand is quick and easy and retains the integrity of the BIM process; keeping Revit central to the whole workflow.


Impression 2 sits some where between Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and AutoCAD. I played with the early versions which where available from the Autodesk futures website and I wasn’t that impressed (excuse the pun), but Impression 2 has come along way since the first preview version appeared.
You can easily DWF a 3d view from Revit and then open that in Impression and with a bit of artistic flair you can apply fills and styles to the imported linework to give your designs a far more graphically appearance. The resulting “artwork” can then be saved out from Impression in various image file formats including BMP, DWF, EPS, JPG, PDF, PNG and PSD. These can then be imported into your Revit project and placed on sheets when composing your presentations.
Revit view, then exported as a DWF


DWF imported into Impression, then styles added

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Revit Architecture 2009 ships today, along with Structure and MEP!!!

As highlighted on a number of different blogs, Autodesk shipped Revit Architecture 2009, Revit Structure and Revit MEP today. The latest Revit Architecture web download can be obtained from here...

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=11017599

Enjoy! :-) this is a cracking release. I've updated the web links to the current builds of all the products to reflect th2 2009 release.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

bimboom.blogspot.com/

Check this blog out.

http://bimboom.blogspot.com/

It has some good 2009 stuff... :-) along with all the whats new pdfs; which detail all the new features for Architecture, Structure and MEP.

Monday, April 07, 2008

A Room with a View – Room enhancements in Revit Architecture 2009

The Room functionality has undergone numerous enhancements within Autodesk Revit Architecture 2009. Here are just a few highlights.....

We can finally use the colour scheme tool in section and elevation views. It works the same as in plan views allowing you to assign a colour scheme to the view. The colour fill will extend to the boundary shown when the room is selected. One point to watch is when you place your colour scheme legend, if the rooms do not fill with colour, the chances are that you will need to check you have Areas and Volumes enabled in the Area and Volumes Computations settings.



You can finally select rooms in a section view!!! Hooray!!! Anybody who has had to go through the pains of fault finding why rooms are not closing correctly in a project or even modelling your building for analysis purposes are going to just love this improvement!!! Just select the room in section and you will see drag control arrows at the top and bottom extents of the room, which allow you to drag the room property extents.

The Tag all not Tagged tools now allows you to automatically tag rooms and areas in 2d views, exactly the same way you can with doors or windows.



Another potential gotcha is that if you delete a room from a view, unlike the previous version of Revit Architecture, the room still remains in the database! If you create a room schedule it will highlight rooms which haven't been placed. If you want to completely remove the room from the project you will need to delete the room from a room schedule.


Finally ,another little gem is the ability for Revit Architecture to “Move Room Tags in All Views after a Room Is Moved”. Sometimes when you are placing rooms and tags you may decide that a room needs to be moved. If you did this in previous versions of Revit Architecture the room tags may be left outside their rooms. In Revit Architecture 2009, the system will offer to move room tags for that room in all views which is very gentlemanly like.

A new dimension in Revit 2009

The Autodesk Revit 2009 platform products have had a number of improvements made to there dimensioning capabilities. For instance you can now dimension to intersections of lines, references and walls.



Linear dimensions can now be created referencing a circle, arc or ellipse.

Dimension text formatting is now the same as formatting annotation text; you can control the width factor, underline, italicize or make the dimension text bold.


A requirement which has been on many users wish lists is the ability to override the value within a dimension with text. In Revit Architecture, Structure and MEP 2009 this is achieved by double clicking the dimension value in a dimension. Once you do this a dialogue box will appear which allows you to replace the numeric value with text.

The smart thing is that this is text only, so you can’t fudge the dimension by replacing it with a numeric value, else Revit kicks back at you informing you that you can only replace the original numeric value with text. This dialogue box also allows you to place a text value above or below the original dimension value, you can also add a prefix or suffix to your original dimension.

The Autodesk Revit platform also introduces two new dimension types, the baseline dimension and the ordinate dimension. A baseline dimension provides a way to automatically stack dimensions in a string; these provide the total value for a single point.

An ordinate dimension allows for a string of dimensions to report the distance from the same start point or origin.




You set up a baseline or ordinate dimension by going into the type properties of a dimension and setting the parameter called “Dimension String Type”.