Tag Archives: Tips

Schedules and Phases

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The question comes up a lot how does the phase of a schedule get changed to the correct phase or to display no phases as all.  The first time I attempted to do this I searched high and low in all the different tabs in the schedule properties dialog, only to find it is just like any other view and this can be changed via the standard properties dialog within Phasing via the Phase Filter and Phase, crazy enough it is right above where I picked Edit to get to the Schedule Properties dialog box.

The Phase value should be set for the phase that is going to be scheduled, and if all that is to be scheduled is stuff to that phase than the Phase Filter should be set to “Show New”, this setting will only schedule items to that phase.  However if everything is to be scheduled the set the Phase to the last phase on the project and set the Phase Filter to “Show All” this will schedule all non-demoed elements in the file.  Of course these are just some of the different options on how phasing can work in schedules.

Instance based Family System Parameters

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A question came up on how to change a family system parameter from Type based to Instance based.  It made me think of the good old days when we had to start a family, say structural foundation or door family, change it to a generic model family, go into the family types and modify the values from Type to Instance then change the family type back to the original category.  Good news is this changed way back, now all you have to do is select a dimension with this value and toggle the check box in the options bar to Instance.

Stacked Walls and Design Options

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A client was having an issue working with design options and stacked walls the other day.  When the stacked wall was selected it wouldn’t allow it to become part of a design option.  I started an new file and had the same issue as he was having, however when I went to do it again for this post the issue didn’t happen again, then I realized it had been changed in Revit 2013.  I thought I should post it anyway in case this issue does happen for others still using 2012.

As with any element if the host is going to be apart of the design option then anything hosted to it must be part of that same option.  For instance all doors and windows hosted in a wall must be part of the same design option the wall is in.  Stacked walls are the same, each wall type that make up the stacked wall are hosted to the stacked wall (at least we will say that for this situation), so the stacked wall and all of the individual wall types that make up the stack must be selected in order to become part of a design option.  For this to happen the “Tab” key will need to be used to select the individual wall types.

In Revit 2013 they improved on the entire selection process for adding elements to design options.  Most notably if you select a host element now everything associated with that element will become part of the design option.  No longer do we have to select all the doors, windows, etc they just go.  HUGE improvement for working with design options in my opinion.

Brace Framing

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A question came to me this week asking how brace framing can be modeled so that the braces are going in the correct location while having the correct analytical relationship to the columns.  In this case the client wanted the “L” angles to be back to back but still be associated with the center-line of the columns.  The L angle OOTB family has parameters built in so that the centroid of the size can be set, these are “X” and “Y” parameters.  The values in these parameters coincide with the values for the centroid, if the type is duplicated and then these values are set to 0′-0″ then they will be modeled from the back side of the L.

Tags not tagging

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A question came up on why material tags weren’t working on this upgraded file from Revit 2012 to Revit 2013, the problem wasn’t in an upgrade it was in the Visual Style assigned to the view.  Certain commands inside of Revit don’t like the view to be in wireframe.  In this case the we were dealing with material tags, other tags such as spot elevations also don’t like wireframe.  Once a view is changed to wireframe the surface of all elements cease to exist and only the bounding edges are there.  If there isn’t a surface to tag there can’t be any materials on that surface, so tools like material tags don’t have anything to tag.  This is similar to spot elevations, however a spot elevation can see the edge of an element and tag that.