Author Archives: Brian Mackey (The Revit Geek)

Wall Vertical Structure Grayed Out

Leave a reply

While assisting a client I was showing them how to create a vertically compound wall the only tools available to me where Sweeps and Reveals.  Modify, Merge Regions, Assign Layers and Split Region were grayed out.  I had the section preview active in the dialog so this wasn’t the issue.

Camera View Limitation 1

I usually modify families by selecting them in the Project Browser and not selecting them on the screen.  In this case this was my downfall, I hadn’t noticed that amongst all the tiled views on the screen the active one was a camera (perspective) view.  A well known fact is that there are many limitations while having a camera view active.  For instance having a camera view active will limit the capability to activate a Revit Addin or Extension.  Having access to only a couple of the vertical structure modification tools was a new one to me.

Align Eaves

1 Reply

During a recent session of Revit Radio I was asked a few questions about roofs and their properties.  A post I did a while ago on Roof Overhang Values which covered one of the questions.  However it didn’t answer the question of why are the roof eaves not aligning? In the image below both sides of the roof have a 3′ (914mm) overhang with the same roof pitch on the entire roof.

Align Eve Plan

The reason this may happen is the fact that one of the sketch lines used the pick wall tool whilst the other was simply drawn as a line (or possibly the pick lines tool with an offset).

What the help file doesn’t explain is that when the pick walls tool is used along with defining that edge as a slope then the slope starts from an edge of the wall picked (the edge of the wall depends on if Extend into Core is used or the roof is set as a Truss or Rafter).  If a line is sketched then the slope will start from sketch line itself.  Using both of these tools will cause the issue as seen in the above image.  Revit however does have a simple tool to assist in adjusting the roof eaves if this situation does arrive.  The tool to accomplish this task is Align Eaves and can only be accessed while in sketch mode.

Align Eaves

If the eaves are aligned Revit will flag a warning of “All eaves are already aligned”, if the eaves do not align then Revit will display the elevation of the eaves relative to the closest level.  There are also two overlooked option on the contextual ribbon “Adjust Overhang” & “Adjust Height”.  Before attempting to adjust the eaves make sure to select the correct option, most of the time this will be Adjust Height, yet the default is Adjust Overhang.  Once the correction option is selected choose the value that is correct and select the sketch lines that need to adjust, similar to the align tool.

Revit 2016 R2 Background Process Calculation Failed

Leave a reply

Yesterday I did a post on the new feature for calculation processes, ironically later in the day I had a failure with this same feature, nice timing for a follow up post.  One of my clients was working away in a view and the Background Process dialog box opened up with the warning “Color Fills calculation failed”.  Which is odd because the work we were doing in the view shouldn’t have made the color fills be regenerated.

2016 R2 Background Processes Calculation Fail

I then opened the file on an additional computer and the same dialog came up whenever the view was opened.  I also find it odd that when it does error out it will give a Calculation Failed  group in the legend, however I didn’t see any areas that displayed that way, nor is there a category that matches in the Scheme.  I would love to have a report or error dialog that would tell me why it failed but this was not the case.

Revit 2016 R2 Background Processes

Leave a reply

There has been many blogs about the new features of 2106 R2 including Background Process and how multithreading is being utilized.  I haven’t seen any of them that shows the new icon that has appeared.

2016 R2 Background Processes

Once this icon is selected it will open a dialog that will display anything such as color schemes that are being processed while a user continues on with their work.  Or sit their idle taking up screen real estate.

2016 R2 Background Processes Dialog

Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to move this dialog from the lower right corner.

Foundation Walls – Wall Function

Leave a reply

During a session of Revit Radio this month the question came up  “Why can I only model Foundation walls with the depth value?”  Of course I couldn’t answer this question with a simple answer, I went in-depth into the parameter “Function”.

When the type properties of a wall is selected there is a property of “Function”, according to the help file this:

Categorizes the wall as Exterior, Interior, Retaining, Foundation, Soffit, or Core-shaft. Function is used in scheduling and to create filters that simplify a model for visibility or when exporting.

Wall Function

Yes these values can be used to generate filters to turn off wall of a given function, however what the help file fails to inform us is that these values also have other built in information associated to them.  The most obvious, or not so obvious due to the above question, is that if Foundation is selected as a property then this will disable the capability to model the wall with “Height” or “Depth” option and will be forced to “Depth”.  Hence only allow walls with this property to be modeled going down.  However the little known rule is that Revit will also remember settings that were used for the previous wall of the same function.  For instance if a wall who’s function is set to “Soffit” and it was modeled with a base offset of 8′ (2440mm) and then a wall who’s function is set to “Interior” will not be modeled with the same base offset but will use the previous “Interior” walls settings.  Usually when I am setting up templates for clients I pay close attention to these setting and keep things consistent within wall types.  The last template any wall with gypsum board on a single side was set to “Soffit”.

On a side note Doors, Floors, Stairs amongst other families also have the same “Function” parameter, however these only have the options for “Interior” and “Exterior” and really are there for generating filters.  I have submitted to Autodesk that more categories have these features such as Windows and Railings.  If the help file is true and I want to create a filter for “Interior” or “Exterior” then it would be nice to have it associated to all objects that could be in either location.