In previous releases of Revit we have been able to automatically place ceilings in rooms in most instances. In 2017 the reasons for not being able to place rooms automatically have changed. In my opinion this should be considered a bug.
The situation I am referring to is when we have a room that has a wall protruding into it, (see image below). Prior to Revit 2017 a ceiling would go into this room with out any problem. Now in 2017 you will have to manually place the ceiling using sketch lines.
When a new release of Revit comes out there are a few things I check into. One of those things are keyboard shortcuts to see if their are any new tools that may have not been documented. While in Revit 2017 I noticed there is a new set of Rotate shortcuts (they were there in 2016, I must have missed them): Rotate 45, Rotate 90, Rotate 180
Of course upon seeing this I wanted to test it in the project environment, I did however notice that it was a “Contextual Tab” tool, which means this is a command that is only used when a given object is selected and not part of the Rotate Command. I decided to see if I could find it in the Help upon which I was reminded about a link in the Help files that I forgot was there. Autodesk has been nice enough to supply a download of all the keyboard shortcuts, both in an Excel form as well as PDF form.
When looking at either of the files you will notice a column displaying the Command ID, which will show us what the command is associated too.
After looking at this it was obvious that the was released as part of the MEP Fabrication assembly features. Hopefully the fact that I re-found the Keyboard Shortcut Excel file will help others.
I think most users out there will agree with Steve and most of his post about the Autodesk Desktop App (formerly Autodesk Application Manager), I know I do, on how hard it is to find the updates when they are released. Yes most of us rely on Luke to post a direct download link to find this information. However I will show you the place where you can go to download the files as well.
If you have an account with subscription, (really can we even buy software not on subscription) then you will have a http://manage.autodesk.com account. If you are not the contract admin person on your companies Autodesk account then you may not have many options here, I am assuming most users reading this post are in charge of the updates for their company or individuals who own software. The contract admin can allow users to obtain downloads, if they have not then you may not see all the options. Once you log in then you will see a list of all software associated to your account. If you expand the desired software you will see Updates & Add-Ons.
Once Updates & Add-Ons is selected you will see a list of all the updates for that software (in the case of a Design Suite you will see updates for all software as part of the Suite). Make a note of the “Add Filters” button as this will allow you to dive down specifically to the year or product needed (Note: Collaboration for Revit is not part of the Revit products when a filter is applied)
Steve has posted about the capability to add calculated values in tags. While I have disparaging feelings about this feature and using for things like Occupant loads (since there is a possibility to have them not match the calculated value in the schedule). I did find a use that I can get behind. When tagging a value that is a length or number we can set the units to be 0 decimal places or round to the nearest inch, when doing this with a label using “Edit Parameter’s Units Format” button it will use true rounding so a 0.4 value would come in at 0.0.
I had a client asking about when their analytical software imports the load values they are often set to 3 decimal places, however on plan they always want to show these values rounded to the higher value. In 2017 we now can add formulas to tags to accomplish this task, “roundup(Value)” where Value is a parameter associated to the family and roundup (or rounddown) is the formula.
Today while generating some new fill patterns I noticed a small new enhancement to Revit 2017, which I didn’t ever see in the documentation of what’s new.
We now have the capability to stretch the “Modify Pattern Properties” dialog box when generating fill patterns. This means we can now actually see the patter if is a bit larger is spacing. It really is the little things that make me smile when I discover them.
