IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

Sniffing the New Glue

... also known as, "New Clashes Overview Feature, Part of the latest BIM 360 Glue Update – Plus new Field iPad app V4.3" Not nearly as exciting. :)

If this second post doesn't make it apparent, Carl has his eye on anything and everything Glue and Field. Here's a follow up post that he put together for us about the next update Autodesk has released. Thanks Carl!!

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On January 27th, 2014 Autodesk released a small update for BIM 360 Glue with 3 new features. Now for those of you that read my (Carl's) last post and didn’t do your homework, (see here) have no fear, you have an extension. Autodesk must have realized what all good teachers already know, that no one does their homework the first time they are told. Instead there is a reminded at the bottom of the list of updates, reminding everyone that Microsoft .NET framework 4.5. must be installed before the next desktop update.

Enough about homework, let’s talk about the update. There are 3 features that have been updated or added in this release:

1. Insight Across Projects - this is a new report feature for Host Administrators that’s only available to Enterprise clients, and only on the web access site (not from the desktop icon at this time)
2. Easily Track Project Members - this is another new report feature for Host Administrators, but this one is available to all client types (not just Enterprise). This is also only on the web access site (not from the desktop icon at this time)
3. Readily Review Clash Overview - this is the new feature I like the best, it provides an easy to use and quick breakdown of all the clashes in your clash set in a model vs. model layout

You can see the full list of the updates here.

There should be a BIM 360 Field update not far behind this one. Sounds like it’s just in Apple's App approval process, so it should be out any day now.

UPDATE

The updated BIM 360 Field iPad app V4.3 was released today (January 28th) and brings with it a BIG improvement of PDF function on the iPad. You can see all the updates here.

Some of the highlights are:

• No more waiting for the while the PDF is “Optimizing”
• Multi-page PDF navigation by thumbnail as well as by Table of Contents
• PDF text is now searchable

You will need to do a onetime upgrade to any project libraries on your iPad currently so this may take a little longer than normal to sync the first time. But don’t worry they give you a nice pop up reminder about this until you actually do it.

Enjoy the Glue & Field Updates!

Carl

The First Glue Update of 2014 comes with Homework!

Here's a guest post from Carl Storms out of our Calgary office:

On January 14^th, 2014 Autodesk released their first BIM 360 Glue update of the year. Well this in of itself is not a surprise as Autodesk tries to push out an update for this cloud based software every 2 – 3 weeks (or at least monthly). The bulk of this particular update is the standard bug fixes and usability improvements. You can see the full list of the updates here.

However the part of the update that caught my eye was the “Homework” required before the next update can be installed. Autodesk is updating the software to require the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 before it will run.

 

They do provide a direct link to the download location for the latest version of the .NET 4.5. so as far as homework goes this is pretty easy.

Enjoy your homework!

Carl

Autodesk Flow Design - a new graduate from the lab

Autodesk Labs just graduated "Project Falcon" from Autodesl Labs, and it's now Autodesk Flow Design:

http://labs.blogs.com/its_alive_in_the_lab/2014/01/project-falcon-graduates-from-autodesk-labs-to-autodesk-flow-design.html

If you haven't looked at it before, take a look, while it's got specific interaction with Revit and Inventor, the AutoCAD plugin might come back later... the only real down side, of course, is now that it's no longer an Autodesk Labs product, it's also no longer free for use/evaluation. Anyone with the software already running as a Technology Preview will be able to continue using it until the end of the month (Jan 31, 2014).

 

Lost in the land of Revit Journal reading...

Lately I've found myself reviewing a lot of Revit journal files to help figure out what is happening when various errors occur in Revit. While they can be incredibly boring and confusing, they can also shed some light when you know what to look for.

More often than not, I don't know what I'm looking for.

I'm not looking for specific error codes or some particular jumbled mess of text that really doesn't mean anything to me, like:

getPrioritizedActiveEditMgr()

I might be able to guess what that string of text means in a journal file, but I really don't know for sure. Instead I'll open up the journal and look for instances of the word "exception" and see what is around it. Hopefully there will be something that makes sense in the context of the error that we're experiencing. Sometimes there might be something specific in the message that shines out at you and is readily apparent. Other times it might not, like this one:

EndpointNotFoundException: There was no endpoint listening at http://<revitserverhostname>/CentralServerWebServices/Security.asmx that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more details.

OK, I know that not every Revit model is clean, but do I really need to get some soap for it??? I don't personally know the details of the technical meaning of this message, but there is enough here to make it evident that the Revit Server Host that I am trying to reach is not actively communicating with my workstation. It helps enough to let me know that probably don't need to worry about my workstation settings, but I need to focus on the Revit Server Host.

Probably.

I could have also potentially typed in the wrong host name which would certainly be able to leave an error message like that one.

This one is a bit more evident:

DBG_WARN: No printer is installed, can not print!

Yeah, I think I might know what the problem is there...

But sometimes, you run across something in a journal file that makes you feel like you just uncovered part of the inner soul of one of the software developers, and if you're a geek like me, it can help brighten an otherwise headache-inducing day of journal reading:

DBG_INFO: ImportSymbol with no instances. This is just sad.:

If you got this far and the line above made you smile, my day is fulfilled and complete.

joe