Tag Archives: Frustration

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.

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.

Revit 2016 R2 Background Process Calculation Failed

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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.

Foundation Walls – Wall Function

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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.

Revit 2016 r2 reference planes follow up

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In one of the forums a user had suggested that Autodesk set the default value to newly placed reference planes “Is Reference” value be set to “Not a Reference” instead of weak reference.  This has been possible to set up for a while now.  If you create your own family templates then make sure to start to draw a reference plane, but before clicking on screen set the “Is Reference” value to “Not a Reference” then draw a reference plane, and delete it.  Now save the family and rename in windows explorer to .rft.  This feature doesn’t however work on everything, it will still be a “Weak Reference” when copied or mirrored.

So yes I agree it would be nice if Autodesk would make the default setting to be “Not a Reference” when reference planes are created no matter if drawn, copied, mirrored or whatever.