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.

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.

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. 

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!

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?

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?

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?

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.

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.

Creating Door Legends

One of the strongest features of BIM is the 'I', the 'Information' that is contained in the model. The information is only as good as what you put in, so statements such as "Revit is wrong" really have no merit because the only reason it is wrong is because you put the wrong information in.

Elevator Doors

I'm sure we have covered this before, but another example of it and its importance has been uncovered. Using a correct family for model elements.

Saving to Central? Leave a Note!

Ever get this annoying pop up box while trying to save to central? You probably just click OK and let Revit do it's saving and move on.

Annoying Blue Dots?

See a bunch of annoying blue dots on your plans? RCP's? These are (most likely) side effects of the linked structural model. They may be from elements in your model if you have drawn structural columns yourself, but most likely the structural elements (including columns) are in your linked model. You will see them in all your floor plans and RCP's, and they do print. Don't sweat, they are easy to turn off.

Tips for manipulating text in Revit

Some interesting tips for how to manipulate text in Revit, a task which sometimes can be tedious and difficult.

http://www.augi.com/library/tips-for-manipulating-text-in-revit

Families:Revit::Lines:ACAD pt. 2

Something happened recently that brought the opportunity to follow up to a previous post.

Draw ceilings as you would build them

The intent behind BIM is to model your building in 3 Dimensions the same way as you would build it. The wall assemblies should match how they will be constructed (layers of materials), ceiling compositions should match what they will be in the field, total thicknesses should also be consistent.


Staying on the theme of model it how you would build it, here is another example of not following that philosophy:

As you can see, the ceiling is drawn in a rectangle which intersects with a large round structural column. Besides not following the philosophy outlined above, this method can also pose several other issues including giving false clashes if you run the model through the clash detection process. If you do any renderings or printing of line drawings of that space, the connection between the column and the ceiling will not read correctly, since technically there is not an edge there.

The correct way this ceiling should have been drawn is with a curved edge following the column. Confused? Think about how the drywall would meet the column.

Grid Lines

This should be a no-brainer, but apparently some people need some reminders.


One of the first things you do in a new project is set up the grid lines. These grid lines are then copy/monitored by the structural engineer and assist him in laying out of his structural members. The Architect 'owns' them (in the sense that he/she created them and the other trades copy from the architectural model into theirs) but often times the structural grid is laid out after consulting the structural engineer.

The vast majority of the time, the grid lines are square to each other. In fact, in Revit it's actually difficult to not make it square. Depending on your zoom level, the grid will be square or off a couple of degrees (3-5). If the grid lines aren't square at the beginning of a project, then the problems will compound from there. Walls won't be square that should be and you'll have problems dimensioning.

Moral of the story: Make sure your grid lines are square at the beginning of a project. Unlike the example below. They are close enough to think they are square, but just enough off to make life difficult.

Model Lines vs. Detail Lines

What is a model line? What is a detail line? When do you use one, when do you use the other?
Model lines and detail lines may seem very similar to the lay person. They both contain the same tools, line types and look the same in the view you drew. They are available in both projects and families. So what is the difference?


The fundamental difference is that Model Lines show up in every view, and Detail Lines show up only in views perpendicular to the plane they were drawn. So if you want to draw some linework to show up in an elevation view, but don't want to see it in plan or in 3D, then use drafting lines.

Here is an example recently run across: Lines were drawn on a mezzanine floor plan to indicate the position of permanent casework in the open area below. The lines were drawn with model lines which meant when elevations were taken of the wall, a single line showed up at the elevation which obviously wasn't ok. All the lines that were previously model lines had to be converted to detail lines, which luckily was easy enough as clicking a button.

On the other hand, in a door family, the 'elevation swing' lines are usually drawn as detail lines, so they show up in front and back elevation views only. We had a situation where the wall being elevated was at 3 degrees from the cut plane of the elevation, so naturally the elevation swing lines didn't show up because it wasn't perpendicular. To fix this issue a set of 'elevation swing' lines were drawn as model lines in the door family, then when it was re-imported into the project they showed up as they should on the elevation.