Panic in the streets of London!

Any Smiths fan will recognise this line ;-)…..so one of our BIM coordinators contacted me today. Panic! “Something weird is happen with all our filled regions! They were correct, now they are masking everything! They are set to transparent, but they still don’t display correctly”….so they wanted them to display like this…

“They are displaying like this on all our sheet views! What the hell? We just can’t afford to have this sort of thing happen, we have a major deadline.”

Not sure why this is happening, as the filled region is indeed set transparent. It seems like it got confused between the 2 settings of transparent & opaque in the filled region type properties. I am positive I have seen this issue before. Anyway, some further investigation & I noted the view was set to wireframe. Change back to hidden line & the problem was “Panic” over, now its time to hang the DJ.

Googles total failure to know who you are

So I got an email from Google today via gmail relating to my name which appears in Google+ account. Seems their crappy system doesn't like the name "David Light", doesn't comply with their naming policy! Go figure!?! So this is the threat I got.

After reviewing your profile, it appears that the name you entered does not comply with the Google+ Names Policy. Please log in to Google+ and visit your profile to learn more and take action.

The Names Policy requires that you use the name you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile. Nicknames, previous names, and so on should be entered in the Other Names section of the profile. Profiles are limited to individuals; use Google+ Pages for businesses and other entities.

If you do not edit your name to comply with our Names policy or appeal with additional information within four days of receiving this message, your profile will be suspended. While suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.
The Google+ team.


What am I supposed to do? Lie about who I am? Jim Balding suggested I change my name to David Dark or David Heavy! He has a good point, maybe I should. To top that, Google has no formal way to allow you to contact them, although I have challenged their request, which is all you can do.  I hope to get a response in the next 4 days. If they still don’t like me, I will be shut out…..


Your profile is being reviewed

Thank you for submitting your profile for review. Your profile will be reviewed again to see if it complies with our Names Policy. Reviews are usually completed within a few days. In the meantime, you have full access to Google+ and all other Google services.

If the review is successful, this message will disappear and you can continue using Google+. Otherwise, you'll be informed that the review was unsuccessful and provided with further instructions.

We're sorry for the inconvenience.

If I'm honest I am totally confused by this email and to some extent find it rather offensive. I am certainly not going to replace my blogger profile with my Google+ profile only to have the account shut out! 

So Google, you don’t believe who I am? Maybe do a quick search under David Light + Revit & see what you get. Check my stats for my blog. Its not like I want any hero status, but on average I am getting  approx 38,000 page views a month & this week I got around 5400 visitors. Whether this is good hell knows, but who’s making the money? For sure it’s not me! Rant over.....

Tools4Revit–New Sort Mark Tool

The guys at Tool4Revit let me know that they have released a new application called Sort Mark that allows new possibilities in sorting and renumbering Revit elements.

“We made it as “easy-to-use” as possible. Sort Mark will help you to get rid of some daily pains and save your time. Trust me, it has never been so simple!”

Sort Mark Features:

• Detect grid geometry and renumber it;
• Renumber grids automatically after they have been changed in the project;
• Powerful and flexible functions allow to renumber any Revit element in different ways;
• Write swing direction for the doors;
• Write flip/mirror orientation for the selected elements;
• Recalculate shared X, Y, Z coordinates;
• Create new shared parameters etc.

Checkout the link to these videos, which explains the various features.

http://www.tools4revit.com/SortMark/E-Help-001/

More Project Vasari 2.5 info

What’s new in project Vasari……..

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Vasari/enu/TP25/Help/0000-New_in_P0

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Vasari/enu/TP25

Project Vasari 2.5

Those chaps over at Project Vasari have been working hard to produce an update to their now famed conceptual modelling & analysis tool.

Vasari 2.5 is set to be released on Autodesk labs very soon. Release 2.5 includes a number of exciting enhancements, these include:-

• Perspective View
• Extrude Face
• Improvements to auto-zoning
• Ecotect Solar Radiation – automatically update on export

The major focus for Vasari 2.5 is around modelling & general usability enhancements.

Perspective View

The new Perspective view type allows you to edit in Perspective.This is different to a camera view, where you place a camera to generate the view. When enabled, a new view type is placed in the project browser. To create a Perspective working view, go to the manage tab & select the Perspective icon. Alternatively, go to the QAT & select Perspective.

Working in Perspective can also be enabled in the rfa environment by once again creating a view via the manage>view and QAT access points.The ability to work in perspective is something I have been crying out for ages & its brilliant in my humble opinion.

Extrude Face

The new extrude face tool is very similar to push/pull tools of other 3d modelling packages. To access the tool just select a face inside the Mass editor and hit the space bar to toggle to the extrude face control.  Use the rectangular handle to extrude without edges and the circular handle to extrude while keeping edges. You can also control the extrude face between the local & global coordinate system. There are some limitations on this functionality, these are listed below, but don’t be put off, just be aware.

• Only faces of Form Elements with planar and parallel top and bottom faces can be extruded
• Only faces that lie between profiles can be extruded If the extrude direction is not in the plane of the top/bottom face, the face cannot be extruded
• If the face is moved so that it intersects other faces of the form, the operation will fail gracefully
• If the face is highly curved in the profile plane (normal cone is larger than 90 degrees), it can't be extruded

The code base is still based around Revit 2012, so Vasari 2.5 files are still compatible with the current release of Revit. So keep an eye on twitter as well as Autodesk Labs for the Vasari 2.5 release date.

Baku Images

I got these images from the HOK project manager today; these are the latest images from Baku Flame Towers!