IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

Secret Units Dialog Box in Revit

By Heather Alley, IMAGINiT Building Solutions

Secret Units Dialog Box in Revit
In a recent Project in Revit we wanted to do (what we thought would be) a simple task. When we do our Elevation Datum Lines, we wanted to show a “+” in front of the elevation for Positive Elevation Numbers, like shown:

Allow me to save you hours of frustration by revealing an (almost) impossible to find dialog box inside of Revit!!!!!
The secret is to edit the Datum Line
…that contains the Level Head Family
…that contains a Label
…that contains the Elevation Units

Got all that? Then let’s begin!

Step 1. The Datum: Your datum line uses an Annotation Family for the Level Head. You can determine what family you are using by selecting the Datum Line, looking at your Properties Palette & Clicking Edit Type.

In this dialog box, it will tell you the name of the Family you are using for your Datum Level Heads.

Step 2. The Level Head: We need to find this Level Head Family in our Project Browser. Right click on any word in your Project Browser to do a Search… for the name of your Level Head Family.

Once you have found it, right click on the Family, and Select “Edit”. This will open up the Family Editor and allows you to edit the Annotation Family.

Step 3. The Label: in the Annotation Family, select the Elevation text, (which is a Label) and choose Edit Label from your ribbon.

Step 4. The Units: In this dialog box, place your cursor on RIGHT SIDE, where it say Label Parameters, and at the bottom of the dialog box is THE SECRET!!!!!!! Click on this little hand/hashtag icon.

This is where we can adjust the Units for the Elevation, and we can check the dialog box for “Show + for Positive Values”.

Load the Level Head back into the project & you’re finished!

Very Shallow Closets in Revit

By Heather Alley, IMAGINiT Building Solutions

*Revised*

We ran into a gotcha moment recently. When designing a residential storage closet that was 1’-3” deep, the Door Schedule would not read properly.

The Problem:

The door would not read ‘From Room: Name’ or ‘From Room: Number’ Parameters. No matter what we tried, the door refused to register its parameters!

The Solution:

It turns out doors need a minimum depth in the closet to “register” that the Closet exists. The Door Family needs 1’-6” from the centerline of its hosted wall (regardless of the wall’s type or location line) to the back depth of the room.

However, this was still a problem as we did not want to revise our closet depths to be 1’-3 9/16” as shown above. We decided as a team to divide the front wall of our closets into two separate individual walls, layered on top of each other, and joined together. The interior wall (composed of a stud layer and a layer of one sided gypsum board) was then set to be Non-Room Bounding. The exterior wall layer (composed of a single layer of gypsum board) remains as the Room Bounding Layer.

The closet then reads only the outside Gypsum Board Layer as the room bounding layer. Our schedule now works!

Please note: This solution also added Square Footage to the size of our closets, as the Room Area is now including the 4 1/4” depth of the front wall. In our case, it only added 1.27 SF, which we deemed to be acceptable.

 

1/26/2016 Revision:

In these kinds of situations, there are normally several ways to solve the problem. Via the comment section, what will also work is editing the family and moving the room calculation point closer to the door.

[Infographic] IMAGINiT Clarity, by the Numbers

Wondering what Clarity can do for you? Check out this handy infographic. 

Collaboration for Revit - Lessons Learned

By Heather Alley, IMAGINiT Building Solutions

1. The Publish button is REALLY important.

Originally I thought every time I Synchronized with Central, my latest model would be updated in the cloud, but it turns out this is only partially true. Yes, everyone who has an A360 C4R license sees your changes instantly, or as soon as they synchronize. However, for those people who are not Revit users, and are only part of the A360 Team, they do not see the “live” model. They will only see the changes when you Publish! We went the entire first month of the project not understanding this, and this caused frustration amongst the team.

Lesson: On the Collaborate tab, click on Manage A360 Models, then next to each model there is a Publish button.  It is best to Publish the model 1 day before you really need it, as it can take hours for all of the updated sheets to appear in the cloud.

    

2. Controlling your Views for A360 is important: Including at least one dedicated 3D view for viewing.

When we first started the project, we published specific sheets to the cloud for viewing, but we were surprised when we lost the ability to see the 3D model in the cloud. The reason was: we never selected a 3D view to publish to the cloud, only 2D sheet views.

Lesson: Set up a specific 3D view for continual publishing to the cloud, along with your sheets.

    

3. When you download 1 model, you get all the linked models.

This is a puzzling part of the way A360 works. If your models are linked together, and you need to download 1 model, you will actually download ALL the linked models. We found ourselves explaining to the Construction Manager and Kitchen Designer that although they only wanted 1 Revit model from the cloud at 250MB, they were actually going to receive 1.2 GB as they had to download 12 models at the same time.

Lesson: Prepare your team with the knowledge that downloading one Revit model will actually give them the most recent PUBLISHED versions of all of the models.

4. Retrieving data from old backup models works differently. 

We had a situation where we needed to go back in time to recover just a small part of our model. Our first instinct was to go through Revit and the Manage A360 Models button. By clicking on each model, there is the option to View Versioning. However, if you use this feature, it actually restores the old model and deletes your current work!

Lesson: If you ever need to retrieve a previous version of your model, do so by logging into your A360 Team site online. Click on the specific Revit model Here you can download previous versions locally to your computer, without the risk of deleting your work. Each version listed here is every time you have PUBLISHED, not every time you synchronized from Revit. Another reason to PUBLISH OFTEN!

 

5. It works better than you would expect.

I must admit my expectations were low. I thought my Synchronize times would increase dramatically. I was dead wrong. Yes, the first time you download the model to your local machine, it took a few minutes. That is because you are downloading the entire model for the first time. However, after that, you are only syncing your changes, and this took no longer syncing with the cloud than syncing to my local server.

Lesson: Go for it! Try out Collaboration for Revit on a single project and grow from there. I know you will have a great experience with it.

    

 

Vegas, Baby! Vegas! - AU 2015

By Carl Storms, IMAGINiT Building Solutions

It’s that time of year again, everything is pumpkin spiced, all the stores are talking about Black Friday, and all you can think about is what Santa is going to bring you this year………you know because you have been soooo good.

Well I would like to remind you of an event that happens after you have had your fill of turkey and shopping, but before the big man in the red suit comes, Autodesk University – AU for short.

AU is that magical time of year when you and 10,000 of your closest Autodesk-loving friends come together in Las Vegas for 3 days and nights of non-stop fun. Okay so it’s not all fun, there is some serious learning that goes on too, with a ton of great sessions to learn about all things Autodesk from some of the brightest minds in their fields. Of course before you can partake in all the learning and fun you need to get yourself to AU first. Don’t worry, Autodesk has you covered with all the info you will need to show your boss all of the value of going to Autodesk University. Head over to the AU website and look for the “Convince Your Boss” section, everything you need is there, including a conference benefits worksheet, talking points, and even a sample letter you can download and personalize for your manger. Heck they even have an email your boss template that is all filled out for you with costs and everything!

Now that you have the okay from your boss to attend AU 2015 on December 1st – 3rd at the Venetian in Las Vegas, you will need to select classes. There are always so many choices, of course the longer you wait the less choices you will have (but even then still tons of great options). All of the disciplines and fields are represented at AU from education to media and entertainment, manufacturing and product design as well as architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC). If you are interested in AEC, and in particular Revit and early conceptual design might I suggested a class for you? Why don’t you check out my class: Session “AS9579 – Revit + FormIt = Bye Bye SketchUp”. The session is offered on Thursday December 3rd from 3:00 – 4:00 pm.

Here is some more info on what the class is about:

• Topic: Revit + FormIt = Bye Bye SketchUp!

• Class Summary: For years there has been a conceptual massing part of Revit that would allow designers to do many of the things they can do in SketchUp inside of Revit directly, but this has never really caught on and designers keep returning to SketchUp for ease of use. Now with the help of FormIt you can take your project from conceptual design all the way to construction documents with these two connected products without having to leave the .RVT file format. You can begin the conceptual design in FormIt and once the design is settled, continue with working drawings in Revit. There is also the added benefit of being able to work on FormIt on your iPad or on any computer in a web based version, this allows for anytime anywhere design to happen. FormIt also has a feature that allows real time team collaboration on a design. This means the multiple members of a team can be simultaneously working on the same file from different locations, and different FormIt platforms.

• Class Length: 60 Minutes

• Class Type: Instructional Demo

• Instructor: Carl Storms – Senior Applications Expert, IMAGINiT Technologies (yup its me!)

Hope to see you all there!

P.S. If you haven't seen "Swingers" yet it is a MUST SEE before you head to Vegas, Baby! Vegas!

 

Update: This class is in such high demand - there is now a second session!

It will take place on Tuesday, December 1st at 1:30pm and is a 60 minute session. Only 8 seats left as of November 17th!

 

What Revit 2016 Means for MEP Designers, Engineers, and Owners

By Nicholas Bowley, IMAGINiT Building Solutions

Old as-built fabrication models just got a lot more valuable to the design engineer and owner. This also means that the life cycle of an MEP BIM model is now infinite.

If you are beginning a renovation project in Revit, it is likely that there is an existing as-built fabrication CAD file. This fabrication model can be imported into Revit as “Fabrication Parts”. The fabrication model will need to be exported from Fab CADmep using the CREATECAM command to create a .maj file type. The model can also be modified and added to in Revit when the field conditions are confirmed. These parts can also be demolished in the area of work.

Using the as-built fabrication model reduces survey cost by allowing the designer to verify the conditions. This allows the design engineer to bid a project more competitively and pass that cost savings on to the owner. The as-built model will also increase the quality of the Revit design model by improving coordination with the existing field conditions in a program familiar to the design engineer. This will also reduce cost during construction. An owner should make the as-built model available to the design engineer and continue to maintain the BIM database for their campus.

Figure 1 is a screen shot of an old fabrication as-built model in Fab CADmep. Figure 2 is the same as-built model after imported into Revit 2016 in the area of the new renovation.

 

                                    Figure 1                                                              Figure 2

To get the Revit 2016 plugin to bring in a fabrication model, follow this link. 

The button will appear under the Add-Ins ribbon in Revit 2016 and look like this.