Get your views in order – Project Browser

This is going to be obvious to existing Reviteers & Revit implementers, but getting your views organised & configured within your project browser as part of your implementation is an essential. Just accepting the out of the box View setup holds little value. Whilst there are no exact answers to how you should organise your views, typically this should be based on your modelling / documentation process. You should spend time discussing with your teams how you/they want the browser configured. Avoid long debates, as this is not productive, but engaging the teams as part of the process is certainly worth doing.

You may end up with a number of different configurations, which is what I had when when I worked at HOK. What I would say, is once you have it setup, train your teams in its use. Recently where I have been helping firms to implement Revit, we like to use their template as part of the training. This way they know no difference, for them its just the way they have to work.

The process of configurations is actually very straight to do. I like to follow a BS.1192 methodology, whilst not exactly matching this standard, it does at least start to help you structure the browser in a fashion. So my advice to firms is to work on the principle that you start at the top of the browser with WIP or work in progress, then you have PUBLISHED, these are the views that go on sheets. Then finally you have the actually sheets with the views placed on them. So progressing down the browser. Now you can also add in other groups as well such as EXPORT or COORDINATION, but in this example tutorial we will just limit the browser structure to WIP & PUBLISHED. I hope you find it useful.

Auditing Walls

After my recent blog post about Location Line consistency, Luke Johnson asked…..

“Dave, when auditing a project (and trying to fix inconsistent location lines), do you have any tips on the most reliable way to do this?
If a wall is oriented incorrectly and needs to be flipped, do you recommend switching to 'Wall Centreline' and then using the flip control?”

When you audit a file you can’t schedule the wall Location line which is an annoyance. The only obvious way is to select the wall & observe the constraint set in the properties palette then change it. Like you are going to go through each wall in your project one by one???!!! It’s just not going to happen.

However, this parameter is exposed via the API. So once again CASE Exceler8 comes to the rescue!

If you export all your walls from your project via Exceler8 you will see the Location Line parameter listed in the resulting Excel workbook for every wall. However, it does not provide you with the actually location name, instead it’s defined as a number from 0 to 5. The values equate to the following:-

• Wall Centerline = 0
• Core Centerline = 1
• Finish Face: Exterior = 2
• Finish Face: Interior = 3
• Core Face: Exterior = 4
• Core Face: Interior = 5

Therefore, even though this is not visible in the project, you can start to review the data in Excel & with some filtering of headings, you can isolate which walls have which location lines. With an appropriate strategy & the fact you now have the element ID of the walls you can tweak the walls in Revit. Or if you are feeling adventurous, change the parameter value in the Excel workbook for any walls which you think “might” cause problems & then drive the updated data back into the model using Exceler8. In this simple video example, I have 10 walls, with differing Location Lines set. For each wall, as a double check I have included a comment of the location in the comment parameter. I export using Exceler8, review the changes, tweak the Location Line, back to Finish Face: Exterior, value 2. Then update the walls, by sync’in the data back into Revit. Job done.

 

Be Consistent – Wall Location Line:

This is going to seem an obvious, but being consistent with the management of the wall Location Line constraint is essential when laying out walls in your project. When I dig around users projects, I often find inconsistent strategies, which “can” lead to issues with wall joins. You can set the wall location line parameter when you first place a wall, this is available from options bar.

 

New users often don’t know what all these different parameters are or what they even do. They merrily go away & place walls with different Location Lines set, only to find that walls are not cleaning up as expected. Let me show what each of these parameters are referring when you place a wall. The diagram below shows what each parameter alignment does.

The Core boundary is set in the wall type itself. All wall system families have a core Boundary, internal & external. Observe that its the “green” lines in the screen grab above.

Now whilst this might be a slight sweeping statement, but I advice users to be as consistent as they can. If you are placing your external facade walls, typically ensure they are all set to the same location line. Also, watch the location you choose. If you choose Wall Centreline & you have to flip the direction of the wall, there are no differences, as you are mirroring the wall around its centre line, on which you placed it. If on the other hand you choose Finish Face: Exterior, when you flip the wall, you are flipping the whole wall width, this can impact areas, so be mindful of this.But if you have to change the wall makeup, then Finish Face: Interior may be preferable as you might not want to impact areas within the building.

“Ok!'” What do you recommend then? To play safe, I either make all my external walls be Finish Face: Exterior or Finish Face Interior. What I choose very much depends on the project stage & whether I know the wall build up. As for internal walls, I try very hard to always make internal partition be wall centreline. This strategy has worked for me, I hope you have similar success. But do remember you can change the wall Location Line at any time if you need to, by selecting the wall & changing the Location Line parameter from the properties dialogue box.

Cross referencing parameters

I’m not convinced this is good practise but it might be useful. A request came to me the other day, “I would like to show the keynote parameter & the window mark parameter in the same tag?” On further investigation you soon discover you can either have a dedicated keynote tag which will pull out the keynote reference, but you can’t pick up the window mark type. Or you have a window tag, which can pull out the mark type, but not the keynote reference. This client wanted to show both parameters in one tag. So a quick hack around with some shared parameters & we resolved the request very simply. This is how…..

I started by creating a  “text” shared parameter called fake_keynote.

Next I ensure this parameter is used in the project. I assign the parameter to the window category, I also ensure the parameter is setup as an instance parameter.

I opened up the window tag, added a new label & assign the fake keynote shared parameter to the label in the tag & loaded the family back into the project.

This is what my new window tag now looks like.

You will observe that the tag is still not filling in any keynote data. Now the cool thing here is you can cross reference parameters, but you need to edit the window family to achieve this. I select the window & choose to edit the family.Then I add the fake_keynote shared instance parameter to the family.

I then make the shared instance parameter “reference” the real keynote parameter. This is achieved by adding =keynote to the the fake keynote parameter under the Formula field.

Save the family & then load the family back into the project updating any existing versions in the project. Now  when the window is loaded into the project, the keynote data is cross referenced into the fake_keynote parameter & the tag in turn displays the actual keynote data in the window tag.

Exceler8 – QA your template

One neat techniques when using Exceler8, is the ability to export out all the content included in a Revit project or template to an Excel spread sheet. How many times have you questioned the naming of or wanted to know all the loaded families within a project or template? Well its easy with Exceler8, just start open a project or a template file. Choose the Export Category icon…..

This will open up the Exceler8 dialogue.

Next Check all the categories from the Category list, ensure one Category Per tab in Excel, radio button is selected, finally ensure Only Types (Include ALL Types) radio button is selected. Then choose Export.

 

Exceler8 will do its thing & produce a nicely formatted Excel spreadsheet for you. Open up the resulting Excel & you will see tabs for all the families loaded listed for each category.

Simple…..

Rebuilding forms in Vasari or Revit 2012

This issue came up yesterday, a reasonable straight request…”I have built this surface in “PRODUCT”…….. (insert Rhino or AutoCAD). Can I rebuild it in Vasari or Revit as a water tight closed object, so I can do that I do that create floors by mass thingy?”

So here goes; this is what I was able to achieve. It should be noted that this may not work for all surfaces, but it certainly worked for this form. I started by creating a new mass family in Vasari / Revit. Next I imported the Rhino surface.

I then choose divide surface & picked the imported Rhino surface, you may need to tab select until you get to the surface, but you will be able to subdivide the surface.

I then altered the UV grid parameters to something sensible, in this case 4 x 10.

The UV grid would act as a template to trace. Then, under Surface Representation I enabled Nodes.

Using model lines > spline through points, I was able snap to the nodes to generate a profile following the surface.

I repeated this a couple of times to build a series of closed profiles.

Next I deleted the imported surface. I half expected everything to disappear, but fortunately I the model lines remained! I then converted these lines to reference lines & closed the gap at the base with another reference line.

Then selected all the model lines & chose create form to build the form.

As I suggested, it should work for simple forms & is a relatively quick way to rebuild in Revit or Vasari….but don’t assume it will work for all. 

More colour stairs ;-)

Like a lamb to the slaughter, I knew my stair post would get my ass kicked! So I would like to extend my thanks to all those that took the time to respond; as they say “there is more than one way to skin a cat”. So lets go through all the options….

tchuffart & unknown suggested……

You could turn the ghost surface on for the stairs, and it will match all the underlying colour you need.

Steve, Andy H , AFriend, Carlos Vav suggested similar approaches….

If you tick the transparent box in the views visibility / graphic override you will get the same effect but have the benefit that if the colour fill changes you don't have to amend each element. In 2012 this will not appear correct in the view but will print out correct (the ghosted one appears correct but doesn’t appear correct).

jojo1579 suggested….

There is a simple way to do this. In your Floor Plan properties change Colour Scheme Location from 'background' to 'foreground' on. (note the issue this is that the colour extends into the wall).

So there you are, take your pick!

Colour a stair

This query has come up twice recently. “Is there any way you can stop a stair from masking out in a room colour fill, so that the stair itself is the same colour as the room fill?” In essence, what is not required is this……

Instead this is actually what is required…..

There is no automatic way to do this unless you setup some smart filters, but if you assign a colour override to the stair the same as the colour fill of the room, it works fine, not ideal, but it solves the problem quickly & promptly. 

Remember the stair is not included within the room calculation & you can’t do much about the railing!

Creating custom fill patterns the easy way

So out of the box Revit comes with a useful set of hatch patterns which can be used in your projects to create drafting & model fill patterns. The hatch pattern file uses the same format as AutoCAD & ends with an file extension of .PAT. These hatch pattern file can be found in the following location……

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit Architecture 2012\Data

You can also create your own fill patterns directly in Revit, however you are limited to creating patterns which are either parallel lines or cross hatch.

What if you want to create custom fill patterns based on a material requirements or a specific design you have created? Well you are into writing the .PAT file, which is actually a simple plain text file. There is some great guidance on how to do this in Mastering Revit Architecture bible as well as the Revit help file.

Nether the less, architects are generally visual people, we draw & design; very few of us can write scripts & code! So this is where Hatch Kit Pro steps in. Its a $125 utility for creating hatch patterns & is well worth the money and it will save you hours of pain! Patterns can be created directly in the Hatch Kit Pro or imported as a DXF from say Revit or AutoCAD & then exported to generate the .PAT file. The following video steps through what I think is the quickest process for creating that pattern you have always wanted!

Revit 2012 – massing & voids

This may seem rather obvious to the seasoned Revit user; but for the new kids on the block, when using voids to cut massing geometry in Revit, sometimes you need to think a little differently. The process of using voids to cut geometry can be a bit confusing. This is especially so, since the way voids cut in the conceptual massing tools is a little different compared with voids in say the in-place editor or family editor.. For instance, take a look at the image below. This was created by generating a freeform surface using the massing tools….then roof by face to generate the actual geometry for the roof.…it looks reasonably straight forward to achieve, but you need more then two voids to cut the initial massing surface.

Let me explain in more detail…..

So the surface was created using the massing tool, which consisted of a series of spline reference lines, then a surface generated between the reference lines. As indicated below.

Next up, a inner boundary & a outer boundary of reference lines where sketched. These will be used to form the voids which will cut the surface.

Now the natural logic here is to also create a large rectangle to go beyond the surface, like this…..

However, this is not going to work for us, because if you try & build the void, from the rectangle & trimming reference lines you are going to get the dreaded “Unable to create form element error”.

Instead, you need to create two voids from reference lines to cut away the excess surface. With a reference lines configuration like this.

The image below, hopefully explains it a little better.

All we then need is to create a void from the inner reference lines to cut the opening & we are good to go.

You may need to use the Cut Geometry tool to force the cutting.

I hope the above makes sense, I guess I should really do a youtube video to explain it in more detail, but this should at least give you some useful guidance.