Quick Tip: Pasting Styles

If you've ever attempted to paste anything in Revit, you have probably noticed different options to paste.  ctrl-V, Paste Aligned, Paste in same place, Aligned to Current View... Which one do you choose?

Have a Railing File

Every Revit user has probably experienced this at some point. you need to make a custom railing, but have no idea how the tools actually work.  You can draw it no problem in 2D, in ACAD, with your hand, but putting it in Revit seems like a daunting task for anything besides a simple railing.  Lets be honest, the railing tools in revit are rudimentary and don't lend themselves well to other designs that don't involve vertical pickets or horizontal bars. 

Another reason to copy/monitor

Just in case last week's post didn't convince you why you should copy/monitor grids from linked models instead of just creating your own, here is another reason.

Wrap text in view titles

Have a view title that is really long?  Is it longer than the view is wide?  Does it go out of the view's 'assigned' area on the sheet?  There is a way to wrap text in Revit!

Why Copy/Monitor Grids/Levels

A little tip for a commonly and sometimes overlooked step, and the repercussions it can have down the road.  This was something I always did when starting a new project, but as my experience working with different teams has developed, I have learned that not everyone does it.

At the beginning of your project, one of the first steps I always recommend and make my teams do (that is when I am in charge of a model) is to copy/monitor my grids and levels. (along with acquire coordinates from the linked model, but that is another post all together which I believe I have commented on in the past)

Strangeness

Strangeness... explain this to me if you can.  The grid on a curtain wall is of the 'wall' category, but the actual wall (mullions, panels, etc) are part of the curtainwall categories.

Void Sweep Productivity Tip

I can't claim any credit for this tip as it was passed on to me by a colleague, but I thought it was very good so I thought I would pass it on. 

When creating void sweeps most all of us have probably done it via some sort of rectalinear shape (the profile we wanted subtracted out of a rectangle, meaning the other sides have straight lines joined 90 degrees)  This means one line for the arc defining the void and four lines creating the “box.”  I know I have personally never seen it done any other way, and know that I never do it any other way.

ipad app: Magic Plan

This app was actually suggested by a colleague who was familiar with it.  This simple but free app will use the onboard tilt sensors and camera to produce an accurate floor plan of a room or series of rooms.  I have only tested the app a little, but so far in my testing it is proving to be quite accurate.

ipad app: Sketchbook Pro

Another fun app from Autodesk, Sketchbook (which comes in both a free and paid version) is exactly what the app implies, a sketching application in which you use your fingers to draw on the screen.  It is a relatively simple app, intuitive and easy to use, but I also think it is very powerful and comes with great potential.

ipad app: Sunseeker

Sunseeker is a fun little program to play with, and is worth the small price tag.  It also has some real world applications.  This program falls in the augmented reality category.  It uses the onboard camera from the ipad and overlays data on the screen.  In this case, it is a sun path diagram for your current location.

ipad app: Bluestreak

The ipad app for this simply connects to the database and gives you the update stream of who has done what.  This can be useful for managers or others who are out of the office.  Used in conjunction with comments in the save to central operation, and connect with the update stream and show you.  You can see when important updates were completed, or at what point certain tasks are (assuming your end users leave comments to that effect). 

ipad app: One Note

One Note is a small, but overlooked piece of software that is now part of Microsoft Office.  You most likely have it installed on your local machine and probably don't even know it.  The program originally started out being marketed to students as an alternative to note taking by hand, but has since evolved to be something that's being marketed to everyone.

ipad app: Theodolite

I ran across this app as I was doing some initial research on the ipad in architecture and what it could do.  IT got great reviews and the description in the store left me wanting to get my hands on it to try it (but that is what it is supposed to do right?)  After getting my ipad, this was one of the first apps that I actually bought (besides monopoly :) )

This app does quite a bit.  I don't think that I can say yet that I understand all of its abilities, but I do know that its neat, functional and could come in handy out on a site.

ipad app: Autodesk Force Effect

This app may not help you in the traditional sense of practicing architecture, but I would be remiss if I said it was completely useless.  There are a lot of things that you have no idea what they are for or how they could possibly help you, that is until you run across that one situation where it is the perfect app for the job.  (I've inserted the tool analogy here before, but I'll spare you from it this time)

ipad app: My Measures & Dimensions

Many firms use Bluebeam, a piece of software that is a cross between Acrobat, Photoshop, Indesign and Design Review.  It allows you to markup drawings, color in areas and do a variety of other tasks and is used for everything from creating drawings for presentations to markups.

ipad App: 360

This is one of my newest discoveries for the ipad and I have been absolutely impressed ever since. Ever been the one drafting, just get assigned to a project and told that pictures reside in a photos folder somewhere on the server?  You then go to look at the pictures and find that you are starting to get an idea of the project or site, but don't really know what you are looking at because you only see one picture?  Ever stand in the middle of a big open lobby or other space and try to capture the whole room with a regular camera.  You probably take a series of flat images, and when you get back to the office, maybe you stitch them together, maybe you don't.  This app can help you out with that.

ipad app: Design Review Mobile

This program has been out for a little over 6 months, and has gotten a lot of attention.  You may recognize it because it shares a common name with a program that installs on your machine when you install Revit or ACAD, but there are some differences.

ipad app: Punchlist

This program does exactly what the title implies, it streamlines the process of doing punchlists.  Take your ipad to the site and do all the markups and notes on it instead of  fumbling around with large sheets of paper where you have to fold them, turn them twist them and have something firm to write on when you take notes, only to turn around and while back at the office try to make sense of all your chicken scratch and have to spend time to translate it into a report to distribute back to the contractor.

ipad apps for Architecture

This next series of posts won't cover Revit, but instead focus on some broader issues related to the profession of Architecture.

  Having acquired an ipad over the holidays I have been busy experimenting and seeing all that it can do.  I must say that I am very impressed.  What I have been more interested in however is its application to our profession.  I did a lot of research before getting one to know what I was getting myself into and some other people's opinions on it and worthwhile apps.  I wanted to make sure before I dropped some serious cash onto one that I could benefit from it and it had some worthwhile uses.  I must say that I have been impressed since getting it.  I take every opportunity I can to try to find a new app that can do something that will benefit Architecture.

New Twitter Account

Follow me on my new twitter account... @RevitKnowz.  See Retweets of my posts here and other observations on Revit.

Apply Default View Template to all Views

Everyone can probably agree, view templates are a wonderful thing to quickly get a view to look like another view.  One major downside however is their lack of ability to instantly update when you make a change to the template, you must re-apply the view template to the view.  If you have a large project, or a large number of particular view (say interior elevations), this can be a long and teadious process.

Propegate Extents

You probably only encounter this issue at the beginning of a project when you are setting up your views and your sheets.  Ever run into the situation where you are configuring a sheet, moving the grids so everything fits then realize that you now have to do this for every other floor plan in the project?  If you said no then you are a liar.

Re-align origin for rotate command

A great feature when I have used a lot in the past.  When you select an object that you want to rotate and click on the rotate button in the Modify ribbon, you get a line that rotates around the center point.  Depending on the object or the family, that origin point that shows up by default could  be anywhere.  Sometimes it is near the object sometimes it is not.  Sometimes you have to search for it to find it.

Hide at Scales Coarser Than

I love this feature for what it can do about all the annoying annotations which can appear.  Some people consider the fact that annotations are smart objects in revit as a blessing and a curse. 

The curse side being that after you place it, they appear everywhere after you place them and most the time you need to go to all your views and actually turn them off and hide them, which can be a little annoying and teadious. 

Features I love

I know 2013 software just came out, but unless you are the office CAD/BIM/IT guy, it will probably be a couple months before you get to use it.  Having recently started using 2012 (due to a change in jobs) I thought I would take the moment and point out some features that I really enjoy about the software that improves my productivity and workability.  Some are new, some aren't but are still convenient.

VA BIM Guidelines

If you aren't already aware, the VA publishes their own guidelines to be used on all BIM projects (which is mandatory for anything over a certain size.)  It is a very good set of guidelines, of which I have copied concepts for some of the documents that I have written.

Check it out when you get a chance: http://www.cfm.va.gov/til/bim/BIMGuide/downloads/VA-BIM-Guide.pdf

They have some great procedures (like the firewalls).  And even some things I can't figure out how they do!

Share tasks with other users

Do you use exchange server in your office?  Are you part of a team attempting to get a project done?  Use tasks in Outlook to keep track of who is doing what, what is done, and what needs to be done.

New AUGI newsletter released!

Check out the newest AUGI Newsletter: http://www.augi.com/augiworld/current-issue.  Not too much on Revit in this issue, but a good talk about how to find answers to questions you don't know.

Set Default View Template

Included in the properties for each view is a field called 'Default View Template'.  You may (should) be using view templates in your project to control views, but did you know this parameter can be completely independent upon what is actually set in that particular view?

Limits of Construction

Need to show a limits of construction line on your drawings?  Need to show it on multiple plans, sheets and views?  Here is a little tip to help automate this process.

Horizontal Sections

Need to draw a horizontal section?  No, I'm not talking about a floor plan.  How about on your door details, or an interior elevation needing to cut a section through a jamb condition.

Tracking Revised Sheets

Issuing a revision or CB?  Making a change that affects many sheets in your document set? 

Ever want to know exactly which sheets were revised by your most recent revision?  Here is a little trick I use to let Revit tell me what has been changed. 

Re-arranging Tabs

Did you know you could re-arrange the tabs in Revit?  I didn't either until today!  Sometimes with new releases or updates of Revit, Autodesk will re-arrange the tabs to try to make your workflow more 'efficient'.  (Althought I would suggest working with the new arrangement for a little while to see if it does if fact make you more efficient, that is after you learn the new position of your favorite commands).

Placement of Rooms

Placing rooms is one of those things you do, hardly think about, and take for granted that they are there.  It is one of the first things that you do in a project (presumably).  What happens though when you need a room.  If you don't have a system, you could be wasting time…

Have a view in another project you want to import?

Working on a new project? Create a  drafting view for another project with the exact or almost exact conditions?  It is easy to re-use that existing detail.

Elevation tags everywhere!

Place an elevation tag in an enlarged floor plan only to discover that it also shows up in the regular floor plan?  Sick of hiding each one individually in all views?

More uses of copy/paste

The previous post touched on how to do fireproofing, and the ability to copy linework from the editing command (in that case it was a revision cloud) and paste it back into your drawing as linework.  Here is another example of how you can use this ability.

Fireproofing on beams in sections

One major lacking feature of Revit is the inability to easily place fireproofing in sections.  Typically to increase the level of detail in a view, detail components are placed on top of model components.  The detail components then give a higher level of detail to the view, one with we are accustomed to seeing.

What do you do to place fireproofing around beams in the section views?

Use other view's settings...

I can't claim full credit for this post, because I ran across the idea on another blog hosted by The Revit Kid.  He talks about using a feature in the view templates dialogue box which allows you to use the settings of another view.   The added text below however is mine.

http://therevitkid.blogspot.com/search/label/revit%20view%20tempaltes

Quickly re-assign view templates to all views on a sheet

One of the drawbacks to view templates is that they do not automatically updates views when you change the settings.  It is common once you define a template and start working through a project to modify and tweek settings, but views you have already assigned the view template to are not changed. 

Applied ViewTemplate and Default View Template

A strong feature of Revit is the ability to add view templates to views, to unilaterally change the settings on a view to make it look like another.  Throughout the course of your project, you have probably set up several view templates for everything.  Plans, Elevations, Enlarged plans, sections, etc all have a template associated with them.  You can apply a view template as the default for the view, or separately from the view.

Saving to Central, it's a love/hate relationship

Save to central, that dreaded pop up that shows up at the most inconvenient times, and only when you click a button to do something else really important.  This is usually preceeded by a 'save locally' prompt which you choose to ignore (because whatever task you are trying to do is much more important than saving your work).  How important is it? Why does it pop up like that?

Favorite Customized Shortcuts

Everyone likes their software set up a certain way.  In Autocad everyone had their favorite tool bars, settings, colors, shortcuts that were tranferred from release to release and Revit is no exception.  While the introduction of the ribbon a couple years ago initially frustrated many people, in the end it turned out to save time because similar tasks were consolidated.  I have come up with a couple features that I always implement in my seat of Revit that increase my efficiency and workflow and thought I would share them.  Today is part one.

Bluestreak Review

Available from Autodesk Lab's is a program called Bluestreak.  It links with your Autodesk account and programs such as Revit and Buzzsaw as well as has it's own mobile app.

Visibility of Revit Families from 3D ACAD

Revit families are becoming more common and easier to stumble across.  Website such as Autodesk Seek and Revit City have a great collection of families, and many manufacturers are starting to create their own families for their products.  So what happens after you exhaust all these options, but still the only thing you can find is a 3D ACAD family?

The power of Sub-Categories

Sometimes overlooked are the subcategories within each category.  Categories give you control over the visibility of objects in your views, but subcategories can take this even further.

Breaking and Squishing a Section

Ever have a giant section? Ever want to squish it  and only show the top and bottom, but don't care what is in between?  Well it is possible with Revit.  Usually by just breaking a section, you see the top, and you see the bottom, and a big space of white in between, not too practical if you want to put it on a sheet.

AUGI World December is out

AUGI World December is now out.  Check it out here:
http://www.augi.com/augiworld/current-issue/

Visibility Settings in Families

One of my favorite ways to explain visibility settings:  "You can model a chair, have it show up in plan as a chair, front elevation as a smiley face, and side elevation as a frowny face".

How do you accomplish this? With visibility settings for lines as well as solid objects.  A simple yet powerful tool that can let you control exactly how something looks in every view that it will show up in, as well as with every detail level.  Here is a recent example, a fin tube grill in the top of a solid surface under a curtain wall.

View Templates

Use view templates to control your views? No? Well, you should, especailly if you have more than two elevations and three floor plans.  Here is a great tip origionally posted by a peer (the Revit Kid)that I felt important enough to pass on.

Mayan Calendar

BIMandments

Spreading like wildfire, the BIMandments thread on twitter is a user submitted list of best practices and rules related working in and creating Revit models.

Side effects of using out of the box door families

Many of the families that come with Revit by default out of the box are very nice, basic and do what you need them to do in your project.  Unfortunately, the doors are not one of those, at least not for the kind of projects that most of us usually do (non-residential).

When and How to Upgrade

With my firm having recently installed and provided us with Revit 2012 (finally, only 7 months after it was released) much excitment has followed with everyone wishing to get their hand on the new software and rushing into upgrading their projects.