Author Archives: Brian Mackey (The Revit Geek)

Autodesk Building Design Suit 2013

Leave a reply

Autodesk said that the Design suites would be available today and they didn’t lie.  However for us die hard geeks we come to expect that to be first thing in the morning when we wake up.  Well it took until the afternoon but they are available for download.  I went to get mine via my subscription site I didn’t look on the Autodesk site directly.

 

I also found it interesting that there are links for 2009 since the suite started in 2011.  I clicked on the link and it allowed me to download the individual programs that are part of the Building Design Suite.  I had to find something to do while I wait 1 hour for it to download.

Revit 2014?

3 Replies

If a search brought you to this old post here are blog links to new features of 2014

http://bdmackeyconsulting.com/revit-2014-new-features/

http://bdmackeyconsulting.com/revit-2014-new-features-help/

http://bdmackeyconsulting.com/autodesk-2014-uninstaller/

 

In a recent post from AEC Magazine covering a speech from Autodesk CEO Carl Bass, they mention all sorts of things including Autodesk 360 (formerly cloud services), Autodesk 123D capturing service, and the new suites.  But what I found interesting is the fact that Autodesk might get away from the yearly release model and replace it with updates through out the year.

“Death of releases?

It seems that Autodesk’s yearly product dump may also be up for review. Mr Bass sees decreasing reasons for a major ‘R’ release when updates can be easily streamed throughout the year.

So there may not be a 2014 release, which raises all sorts of questions about the traditional ‘obit’ and staying on the upgrade cycle — the moving target that is a yearly release becomes a wave of in-year updates.

The company’s decision to concentrate more on its breadth of applications and increased reach with mobile products also puts an end to the traditional list of new features and enhancements. The push is now on omnipresence of data, workflow and the computational and optimisation benefits of cloud. I hope Autodesk’s new found popularity on mobile devices is not going to make it take its eyes off the core professional business; mobile revenue pales into insignificance to that of any one of Autodesk’s design products alone.”

Does this mean I don’t get to look forward to geeking out on a given day and I get to do it all year long.  This makes me think of how they are working with Vasari and update it as there are significant changes.  I personally like this workflow, as I think that since they are set on a fixed deadline and there are new features they are trying to fit into that schedule, that if they had a bit longer would have more of a chance to be developed and would be worked out with fewer glitches.  This also got me wondering in the Revit world how this would work since we aren’t backwards compatible.  If the program is just being updated as needed how do the releases then work, am I now on a different release than my consulatants?  I guess we will just have to wait and see what news Autodesk releases in the future.

Show Room-Space Tag from previous Phase

Leave a reply

When working with phases in Revit one complaint is that you can’t show rooms from a previous phase.  This is where composite views on sheets works like a charm.  Composite view means more than one view placed on top of each other on a sheet.  Set up a plan view with the phasing set to New Construction and set the Visibility Graphics as desired.  Set up another view with the phasing set to Existing, only display Rooms and Room tags in this view, only tag the existing rooms to be displayed (Note: in Visibility Graphics the Room Tags can be set to Halftone to display similarly to existing phase). Once both of these views are created drag the views onto the desired sheet.  Revit will align the files nicely on the sheets.  The last step is select one of the views, usually the existing room tag view, and change the viewport to one with out a view title.  The room name only view can also be duplicated with dependancies if you need to show the room names on more than one sheet.

 

Workplane Grid Rotation

Leave a reply

While working with a client today they had asked if there was an easy way to get Revit to snap to a given angle.  They are working on a building that has a wing coming off at a 13degree angle.  They were afraid that sometimes they might snap to a 15 degree angle or something else that isn’t correct for the building.  This is where the “Show Work Plane” really comes in handy, this and rotating the work plane grid.  When you rotate a work plane grid, the new orientation affects placement of components and affects the rectangle draw option for walls and lines. For example, if you rotate the work plane grid and then place a component, the component is oriented on the same angle as the work plane grid. If you create a chain of walls with the rectangle option, you can create them in the orientation of the work plane grid only.

Then if you just turn off the work plane then you can go back to the normal horizontal snapping.  Keep this in mind next time you have a building with angles to it.

The alternate is also to go in and set the snap angles under your snap settings, although I prefer the above mentioned method as it is more definite and helps with rectangles and the like.

Beams Tied to height of Columns

1 Reply

When Revit 2012 was released there was this new feature on structural beams that didn’t get addressed in any of the “NEW” documentation.  I stumbled across it during a training session and have been using it so much that it has become second nature to me.  This week while using this tool one of my clients saw it and had no clue it was even there.  So I told them that I would blog it so they can have documentation on it.

If you have a a beam connected to a column, similar to what is shown (element types can vary), there is a value in the instance properties of the beam called “Start/End Attachment Type”.   This property can be changed to End Elevation or Distance, by default the value is End Elevation.  End Elevation maintains the value of the beam to the placement level and Distance orients the value to the join location on a column.  So if you are wanting the beams to move up and down with the top (or bottom) of a column then you simply change this value to Distance.

.

.

.

.

Once the value is changed to Distance then you will see two new properties show up for the beam, “Attachment Distance” and “End of Referenced Column”.  Attachment Distance option allows a user to put in a value for an offset of the beam to the top of the column, so that the beam will still move up and down with the column just be that given value away.  End of… allows the beam to be either associated to the Top or Bottom of the column.