Tag Archives: Undocumented Feature

Revit 2017 Text Editor quirks

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By now I am sure most of you have heard about the all new text editor in Revit 2017.  If notSteve has covered the new features and Paul has posted a Lynda video on the features.  I have yet to hear anyone talk about the issues with it when a file is upgraded.  Last year at several conferences Autodesk said that when there was a new text editor they may be an issue when a file is upgraded.  The help file even lists this as a warning under the What’s New:

“Important: After upgrade, review all views and sheets to verify the changes to your text instances. See Upgrade Information for Revit for more information. ”  When looking at the Upgrade Information for Revit page it is the first thing listed and an additional warning to verify all upgraded projects.

I can say with assurance that yes I am seeing issues when upgrading projects.  The real issue that I have been noticing is the text boxes are getting larger in height when a project is upgraded.

 

2017 Text Quirk

I had a suspicion that something like this would happen which is why I have been suggesting to all my clients that is a project is in an early phase consider upgrading prior to adding a lot of text.  I always hope that most users are using less text and more tags so there may be less things to fix.

Room Awareness

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Paul Aubin and I were having a discussion the other night about signage.  It made me think of an age old process (age old for me at least) that I have been using since the early days of Revit and I thought I should share it.  When placing signage on a corridor wall it would be nice to have the sign be able to pick up a room id from a given distance on the other side of the wall.  As you may know that when scheduling an object it does know what space or room it is located in.  In this example the sign would know it was in the corridor and not represent the room or space it is intended for.  Families know their location in Revit by their insertion point, with hosted families the insertion point doesn’t have to be the face of the host.  I know this sounds odd but the family will host to the face, but the reference plane that defines it’s insertion may be in front of or behind the host and that is the value Revit will see to report the Room it is located in.  Yes Revit did introduce the “Room Calculation Point” tool in the family editor, but since it only goes a single direction and the distances aren’t adjustable it, in my opinion, is completely useless to me.

My solution was to add a reference plane behind the host surface (in this example the Host Back Face) and give that reference plane an instanced based parameter and set the “Is Reference” to weak and make sure the “Defines Origin” is selected.  This way I can now drag the reference plane such that it is inside the room that I need the sign to schedule.

Signage Insertion Point

In the project example below I have also added a side offset such that I can place the signage in the corridor and get it to read any of the room data behind the wall.

This example has all the insertion points set to 0″ and it will read the Corridor.

Signage Insertion 0

 

This example I was able to drag the insertion point (Room Insertion Back Value) to get it to register the Closet

Signage Insertion Back

Then adjusting the Room Insertion Side value I can get it to schedule as Room 100

Signage Insertion Side

If you didn’t know about this trick hopefully it will inspire you to use it in other ways

Autodesk 360 Drive

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During my last Revit Radio session I found out that many users didn’t know that with every seat of software they get can set up an account using the Autodesk 360 Drive.  It is somewhat confusing since everything that Autodesk had as an online service falls under their A360 heading and for online storage there is A360 Drive, Team and Hub. All of the different versions get confusing but for this post I am going to focus on the A360 Drive accounts.  Actually there is a free version as well as a the subscription user version, the only difference that I know of is storage space, the subscription based version allows up to 25gb of storage space (I am not sure how much the free version allows).  If you are a Formit user or an Autodesk Revit Beta tester than you have already been using the A360 Drive for file storage.  Along with file storage there is also a very nice viewer that is associated with most file types.  So if you post a Revit model any user who the file has been shared with can view not only the 3D model but any sheets in that model as well.  To make this easier there is a nice panel on the left that will break the 3D model down to all the Revit categories and display all the sheets in the file as well.  Along with viewing they can also select elements and see the properties of those elements on the right side of the screen.  The navigation tools are simple and easy to use, probably because they are similar to Revit.

A360 Viewer

During Revit Radio someone had asked “Can this be used instead of Dropbox?”, my answer was absolutely yes.  Not only does it have a nice viewing feature (for most file types) it also has a larger storage capacity.

Part of the reason for this post is also to get the Revit users out there to Vote for Revit Families to get a viewing feature inside of A360.  As of now a .rfa is not a supported file type for the viewer.  Autodesk does have a website dedicated to feature requests for A360, there is a specific post specifically for Revit Families.  If you do browse the website and find any posts that you think should be part of A360 make sure to hit the Thumbs Up icon in the upper left corner to Vote this as a feature that need working on.  The more votes the higher it moves up the development list.

 

 

Revit 2016 R2 Structural Beams to Columns

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With the R2 version of 2016 Revit we were introduced to Global Parameters.  As Dezi and myself have been looking into how to utilize them she noticed a nice quirk related to them.  Previously I have posted about beams and associating them to columns and then clarified that post with a follow up.  When entering a value for the attachment distance Revit will only allow this to be a positive value, which will move the beam towards the center of the column.  Dezi had noticed that if a global parameter is associated you can enter a negative value

2016 R2 start attachment Global Parameter

Now I want users to try and use Global Parameters and see if they can use them were we can’t have a negative value.  If you find them please comment to this blog.

Wall Vertical Structure Grayed Out

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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.