Revit 2014 Essentials

I was recently contacted by one of the authors of Autodesk Revit Architecture Essentials 2014 and offered a few copies to review and mention here on this blog. So there you have it: disclaimer – check!

The copies have been put to good use around some HOK offices, so thanks to Tobias for that. As we ramp up on the use of Revit 2014, our users will surely consult this resource and find it of great value when brushing up on their knowledge and exploring new features.

There are also datasets available on the companion web page, which are very useful in supplementing the text (by the way, why is the price on the publisher’s site close to double that on Amazon’s?!). You can also get in touch with the Essentials series authors on the Mastering Revit Facebook page, where you’ll find other very well known authors of the Mastering series as well.

So who is this book for? To quote the authors:

“…for architects, designers, students, and anyone else who needs their first exposure to Revit Architecture or has had a an initial introduction and wants a refresher on the program’s core features and functionality…This book is designed to help you grasp the basics of Revit Architecture using real-world examples and techniques you’ll use in everyday design and documentation…”

Aaron Maller contributed some wise words in his Foreword. In general I like the approach to how chapters are laid out by discussing basic system family usage first and then moving on to more complex concepts, such as component families. I personally would have put the Rooms chapter before having that discussion. Don’t get me wrong, editing and creating component families is an essential skill to move from mere Revit “User” to “Ninja” status, but even prior to mastering it, one should be able to crank out useful floor and color plans, reflected ceiling plans and other types of views.

The desire to discuss component families early on is appreciated, but after dealing with Revit for a few years now, I find it useful to have an overall conceptual discussion about all types of families first so users build an awareness that everything in the model is in fact a family, but have the component family discussion later when they have mastered the essential skills to become productive in the office, capable of setting up views and composing sheets, annotating, and so on. It is not an easy task to agree on a sequence of chapters and to this day, I cannot get my brain to agree with itself on how it laid out the key chapters of my concise Revit beginners course, with moments of “what was I thinking?” still occurring from time to time.

On page 332 there is a good discussion on staffing a BIM project, followed by outlining the roles of the team members on subsequent pages. This is valuable in helping those that have yet to take the leap understand how their current process will be affected.

Anyway, if you are in charge of training users or have never touched Revit before, this book will be a good way to get you going. A digital edition is also available if you prefer. Good luck!

Revit 2014 Essentials

Positioning of Linked Models – Part 1

NOTE: This is a re-post from the HOK BIM Solutions blog

Much has been said about this topic and it continues to be a source of confusion for users of all levels.

When linking models, unless Shared Coordinates have been properly set up between them all, you cannot position them using this method. It seems to be a common myth that linking models by shared coordinates will “just work” and they will land where expected. Think about it: if you never told Revit how various models relate to each other (distance and rotation), how is the software supposed to just know?

First off, let’s get the terminology straight and lay out some facts.

Fact #1

Every CAD software uses Cartesian Coordinates to locate objects in digital space. You start with a fixed Origin (0,0,0) and three Axes (X,Y & Z). In traditional 2D CAD packages, the Origin and Axes are exposed to the user through visual means, whilst in Revit they are not as “in your face”, but make no mistake: they are still there! This fixed system is essential to position elements in space such as points, lines, planes, surfaces and solids.

To find the fixed Origin in a Revit project, you can either use the older, harder way (link a CAD file that contains some linework drawn at 0,0,0 with Auto – Origin to Origin) or the easier, newer way: Use an unclipped Project Base Point and pick Move to Startup Location in the right-click context menu.

Just in case you forgot how to turn this on, see the image on the left (V/G dialog; make sure at least Architecture is selected in the filter list).

NOTE: In AutoCad, the fixed Origin and Axes are called the World Coordinate System. In Revit we refer to them as the Project Internal Coordinate System.

Fact #2

When you link with the Auto – Origin to Origin option, the Project Internal Coordinate System of the linked models will be aligned to that of the host model. So if at project startup reference models were linked haphazardly (ex: with Auto – Center to Center or arbitrarily shifted around after linking), you are guaranteed to end up with incorrectly positioned models. To circumvent this problem, we can set up Shared Coordinates in each model, share them through “acquiring” or “publishing” tools, and then link with this option. Note that a successful outcome doesn’t happen auto-magically on its own!

Fact #3

In most CAD software, you will find the concept of a User Coordinate System (UCS), which is another Cartesian Coordinate System similar to the World Coordinate System (WCS). A user can define any number of named UCSs and these are positioned in space relative to the WCS. Now you can probably understand why the WCS is fixed since you must have an anchor point in 3D space for relative positioning to work.

When we talk about Shared Coordinates in Revit, we are talking about their equivalent counterpart in 2D CAD: User Coordinate systems. We can define multiple named systems in the Site tab of the Location Weather and Site dialog. Named Shared Coordinate systems (Sites) are located relative to the Project Internal Coordinate System. In Plan views, Project North is defined by the Y-axis of the Project Internal Coordinate System, while True North is defined by the Y-axis of the Shared Coordinate System (the named “Site” per the dialog below):

When you link with the Auto – By Shared Coordinates option, the Shared Coordinate system of the linked models (for the current named “Site”) will be aligned to the Shared Coordinate system of the current named “Site” in the host model, given that Shared Coordinates have been properly set up between models. If you try to link models that have yet to be synchronized (by publishing or acquiring Shared Coordinates), Revit will not allow you to use this option:

Revit has always strived to describe functionality using terms that are familiar to the building industry, but I think that the ones used while manipulating coordinate systems do not work well for most common model linking scenarios. Since terminology is so different from that used in generic CAD programs, it makes things harder to visualize and understand sometimes, especially for users that started in 2D CAD. The main problem with named UCSs in Revit being called “Sites” is that if a consultant is linking parts of a building to parts of the same or another building, they probably do not think of “Sites” for this exercise!

The primary reason for the current implementation is to give us the ability to place multiple instances of the same building around a site (ex: the same home floor plan peppered around a housing development). For most typical project workflows, we just need one “site” definition for the purpose of locating links in 3D space and usually don’t even bother changing the stock site name “Internal” to something else.

In Part 2 of this post, we will look in more detail at some of the most common linking scenarios and discuss strategies to set up Shared Coordinates and linking Best Practices.

Positioning of Linked Models – Part 1

What You See is NOT What You Get

You’re probably familiar with the acronym WYSIWYG. It’s one of the beauties of Revit, where what you see on screen is what you get in your prints. For the most part, that has been true prior to Revit 2013.

I’m surely late to the game in writing about this and it probably makes this post totally useless, but I suppose if I struggled so much to figure out how to fix the following problem in Revit 2013 and Autodesk Support themselves were unable to point me to the correct Hotfix (being told the usual canned response that the development team is aware of the problem but we cannot tell you when it’ll be fixed yada yada yada, even after pushing back to try get more detail), then I assume some soul out there might benefit from these ramblings too. This has been known for a while as you can see here.

Revit 2013 was no longer acting WYSIWYG when specific conditions were present. If certain elements were behind others that were set to 100% transparent and were totally “blocked” by said elements, then you see them on screen but you don’t get them in print. Bad, very bad, especially for Healthcare documentation and Interiors in general.

As you can see above, I said “on some machines”, but this problem actually affected all machines which were just updated to Update 2 but not with the hotfix.

It turns out in my random testing that my machine and another user’s worked fine and you guessed it…I had updated these manually a looong time ago in an effort to cure other problems with 2013, but forgot all about it (you know, the drawing area jumping into the ribbon? Yeah that one, but this hotfix isn’t so hot for that problem). I finally put 1 + 0.5 + 0.1 + 0.35 + 0.05 = 2 together and figured this hotfix actually worked to resolve the above symptom.

Anyway, I also checked that the recent Update 3 (for OneBox)incorporates this hotfix as well, so just skip it altogether and install Update 3 as fast as you can. There are separate downloads for the stand-alone packages.

I sincerely do appreciate the effort that most give at Autodesk Support when you file a Support Request, but sometimes I just cannot figure out how something like this wasn’t documented properly in their internal system and a conclusive resolution offered right away instead of having to deduce it myself. Oh well, that’s enough from grumpy Dave!

What You See is NOT What You Get

Opening Linked Models for Editing

NOTE: This is a re-post from the HOK BIM Solutions blog

One of Revit’s annoyances is the inability to open a linked model for editing and keeping it loaded in the host project, all at the same time. This leads users to believe they need additional sessions of Revit in order to refer to the fully aggregated model and edit the link/s at the same. Doing so causes various problems, such as reducing available RAM consumed by the additional sessions (0.35 to 0.4GB/session observed) and the potential to run out of network licenses for other users.

Revit’s UI gives us the option to open a link but at the same time, forces us to unload it. Somehow Revit seems incapable of having the same file in memory (based on filename) both as a link and opened independently in the same session. To make matters worse, most of our linked models are workshared, so opening a link in the way shown above is highly discouraged as you would be directly opening the central file. Revit does have safeguards for situations like this and does not let you directly do a Sync with Central if another user has synced since you opened the central file. Regardless, the current workflow of dealing with linked models is highly problematic and not sufficiently well-developed by the Factory.

Luckily we can work around the current limitations when the linked files needed for editing are workshared. We can in fact achieve this in the same session without unloading or requiring the user to open a separate Revit session by following these simple steps:

1. Make sure to not use the right-click option shown above (obviously!)

2. Navigate to the original linked central file and open through Revit’s Open dialog in the same session. If it is a valid Central File, Revit will automatically create a Local File by appending your username to it and happily open it for editing.

3. Alternatively, use the Revit Launcher (an HOK custom tool) to create a Local File for the linked model in question and open as usual.

NOTE: If the link to be edited is not workshared, you are out of luck and need to open it in a separate session if it is important to you to keep it loaded in the aggregated model.

Commentary

There is no doubt that this functionality needs to be polished further. The current implementation might be a reflection of various technical reasons/limitations, but should not be a reason to leave things in their current state. Here are some thoughts:

• Revit should be capable of opening non-workshared links directly and leave them loaded in the aggregated (host) model.
• If the link is workshared, Revit should recognize this and serve a UI that offers the same options when selecting a workshared file in the Open dialog so we can 1) open a detached copy, 2) create and open a local file so we can make changes and sync them with central (default), and 3) offer the option to open the central file directly.
• Give users the ability to edit a link in-context (in-place), whether it is workshared or not. This is not necessary functionality, but would be very nice to have.

Opening Linked Models for Editing