Family Browser

Finally, a Revit add-on truly worth buying! Not only is the price unbeatable, but the improved user experience is something that puts Autodesk to shame (because similar functionality should have been standard in Revit for a loooong time).

I’ve toyed around with the previous version in the past and was on the fence about how it worked, but the new version is ready for prime-time. Their latest patch even includes a screen-capture utility called “Icon Maker” that enables you to customize the thumbnails in case the automatically generated ones are not adequate. Aaron Maller has written an extensive blog post about v2, and just a few days ago, he highlighted some of the new features in version 3.7.

Below are a couple of instructional videos on how to use it and about setting things up.

 

 

These are some of the features I absolutely love about this app:

• Instant Family search with each letter typed in the search box;
• Type Catalog functionality (Create/Edit/Recreate Catalogue);
• Add families by drag & drop from Windows Explorer;
• Add families from within the project environment;
• Create a tab with wall families (more functionality to be added in upcoming releases);

Now, it is highly unlikely for me to not have my own list of wants for a future release, so here they are:

• When adding single families to a palette through drag & drop from Windows Explorer, a link should be established to that family instead of creating a copy of the file. This is a biggie for me and I’m sure it is too for other BIM Managers out there. Linking would open up tremendous possibilities, such as creating custom palettes for each project team or project type and still retain content library centralization;
• When closing the Family Browser and re-opening, it should refresh the list in case something was added/deleted in the referenced family library;
• I’d rather not have to enable borders every time I need to resize the palette (I believe this is an API limitation);
• When using the Locate tools in the BIM Management fly-out, Windows Explorer should open directly to that folder instead of launching a message box. Alternatively, copy the path to the clipboard to make it easy to find said location;

You must be itching to get your hands on it by now, so click here to try it out for free for 7 days and click here for pricing. Your productivity and user experience is about to receive a promotion.

Family Browser

Where's my drafting view referenced?

A workflow I see all the time is for users to create a series of drafting views for "standard" details and reference them in sections, elevations or callouts on various views. Some get referenced once, but some are referenced multiple times (one-to-many relationship). Think foundation details for example. You can have multiple cuts that reference the same view, whether it's a drafting view or a live detail section that was annotated and embellished.

Revit tells us where a view is referenced in the View Properties.

But this only tells us the first view that referenced our other view. There is no way of finding out which other sections, elevations or callouts reference a particular view. We know that Revit is aware of this information, but it gives us no way to tap into it. Perhaps a good use of the API to create such a tool?

When right clicking a view name, you can also use the Find Referring Views option and you'll get some more information, but this isn't exactly what I'm after as it just reports what level it's referenced on (and other information if available).

So here's what I would like to have Revit do:

• Select a view and have an option to have all the referencing annotation highlight, similar to when you click on a live section (one to one relationship) and it highlights on the view.
• Have additional parameters in a View List that would report the referencing view names/detail numbers.

What prompted this is that we had a drafting view detail that potentially applied to other conditions around the building. The area that referenced this drafting view changed, so we needed to make some dimensional adjustments, yet we were not sure if this was being referenced elsewhere. We need to check if that's the case before making adjustments and causing problems in other areas. Obviously if you cut and detail live sections, you would not have this issue, but we all know that it's not feasible to do so for repeated conditions.

Where's my drafting view referenced?