Tag Archives: Revit

Revit 2023 Performance Improvement

With the Revit 2023 just coming out one of the features they talk about are performance improvements. This is always welcomed, who doesn’t want their software to go faster or have less hesitation. While the program itself will be faster the help file only lists the areas they have improved upon. It doesn’t go into detail on if there is a setting or is it just automatic behind the scenes.

From the Revit 2023 What’s New Help

I haven’t had a chance to really look into all these new improvements but I will say I have looked at the first one, “Rewind tool view cache”. For this one to work it will either need to be changed in the .ini file for the company or via the Options on each users machine.

To do this via the option go to File >> Options (which is located on the lower left of the file dialog). Once in the Options dialog go to the steering wheel options, in there there is an area for Rewind History, this value will need to be unticked (unchecked) in order for the performance improvement to take affect.

How does this affect the end user and/or the software. In previous version when the Rewind tool was used it would show a pretty image of the views previous states, which meant Revit was storing images of every view behind the scenes incase a user used the tool. With this value off the command still works it just eliminates the preview images

If you are planning on making this change before deploying Revit to your company then this setting is as follows in the Revit.ini
[AutoCam]
SaveRewindThumbnails=0
Where 0 is the same as un-ticked above and 1 is ticked

This is one setting I am going to change day one as not many users use the Rewind tool and if they do I don’t really think the images are worth the performance decrease.

Revit Conditional Formatting from Count

As many Revit users have found out when trying to use Count in formulas for schedules this isn’t possible. However there is a workaround for this. It involves 3 Calculated Values one of which is the not so often used option of Percentage.

In a Twitter conversation there was a question of how do I show a highlighted row for Revit Links where there is more than one instance? The following example will work not only for Revit links but for basically any schedule where the sum of Count is needed.

First a Calculated Parameter will need to be created, in this example I named it “Single”. The formula will equal one so the name seemed appropriate

The Next step is to Sort/Group the schedule based off a value such that a Calculated Parameter can be set up as a Percentage of the Sorting. In this example I sorted by the Type value and toggled off the “Itemize every instance” value

Once the Sorting is set another Calculated Parameter can be created, this example labels it as Percentage. The value is set to be a Percentage parameter which is set to use Single for the “Of:” value and Type is set for the “By:” value.

Once that is set you may notice that the values for all of these are 100%. This is only true if the “Itemize every instance” value in toggled off in the Sorting/Grouping tab. This will be true if the Single value is set to be calculate or not. Therefore another Calculate Parameter is needed. In this example I named this Calculated Parameter “Number” and set the formula Percentage/Single.

This will now give us a percentage value, if there is a single instance it will be reported as 100%, if there are more than one this value will be based on the quantity of elements.

Once this is done now conditional formatting can be set based upon the number value. In this example I want the Type column to change color based on the Number value not equal to 1.

This step could be repeated for each of the columns if desired. Once completed hide any of the columns that don’t need to be visible.

Hopefully you will be able to take this idea and use it for other schedules where the Count value is a hindrance.

Non Rectangular Curtain Panels

As most Revit users have found a custom curtain panel family can only be rectangular in shape. Anything that becomes non-rectangular will be replaced with a system panel, either empty or solid, as seen in the image below.

I have used several workarounds in the past depending on the panel being used. This week I recently decided to use a common family type that I use to solve alot of Revit limitations and that is the use of an adaptive component family. What I realized is that even when a panel is changed to the Empty System Panel type there are still 6 faces to this invisible element. Which means we can snap to any of those surfaces or corners. Plus a System Panel Solid is then changed to an Empty panel they both have 6 surfaces. I used the default System Panel Solid to snap my adaptive panel to, then I changed it out to and Empty panel the adaptive point stayed. If the grid lines move in the curtain wall design the adaptive panels will adjust with the changes. The only disadvantage is each panel will have to be replace manually by placing all the points.

In order to make the tedious process of placing the points on the panels and selecting the correct points I created a system panel that had a ridiculous offset (mine was 150mm, 6″) and another with a different offset. I then changed the panel types to alternate offsets.

Not saying this would be an ideal situation for hundreds of panels but if there are only a few dozen then it is a decent alternative.

Copy Parameters from one family to another

Over the years I have tried several ways to copy parameters from one family to another. I have created solids or reference planes added dimensions and then copied all of that to the clipboard, then pasted to another family, and deleted what was pasted. I have used Dynamo and other add in tools as well. This week I realized you can simply copy the dimension, then paste into the other family. No need to go back and delete everything as nothing will actually paste but the parameter names.

Revit Building Pad cut pattern

I had a client as this week how to change the fill pattern line weight for the building pads in his project. I explained to him that Line Weight 1 is reserved for for fill patterns, simply adjust that value and it should adjust all fill patterns. Turns out I was wrong and should not have used the words “all fill patterns”. Building pads in Revit do not follow this rule, the fill patterns line weights are tied to the Object Style Projection line weight (as seen in the image below).

In this clients case he had changed the Projection line weight to be 6, the Out Of The Box template has it set to 1, so during testing I was baffled on why it adjusted with the Line Weight 1 value.

If you know of any other cut fill patterns that don’t abide by the Line weight 1 rule I would love to know about them.