University and College Classroom Curriculum

We all know the Autodesk web site is very big, and it’s difficult to know everything that is on there. Here is a page I found great of some of the 2007 AU Curriculum. There are some amazing notes on it including some training files.

Attached Detail Groups

Attached Detail Groups had deluded me for a while. I didn’t quite understand how they worked. So now that I know, let me fill you in:

If you select model objects and any 2D elements (eg lines, text, tags, symbols or detail components) and click the group button you will be asked for the following information.

Revit has split out the model elements from the detail elements. Name the model group in accordance with your office standards. The Attached Detail Group similarly. Have a look in your project browser. Notice how the Attached Detail Group is stored under the model group and not under detail groups.

Now place the model group you have created and following that, select it. Look in the options bar. You will see the button “Place Detail”. Press it and you will be asked which attached detail group you want to place. Tick the appropriate group and click ok. The detail group will now be inserted.

While you experiment with groups have a look at the link options for model groups (select the group and look at the options bar) and also when in model group edit mode how you can attach an existing detail group to a model group.

Video Tutorials on DesignRefrom

There are some really great video tutorials on DesignRefrom (http://designreform.net/) on creating some quite interesting families. Make sure you sign up the the email subscription list to find out about the new videos as they come out. Look at the videos here.
Well done guys. There are some great tips on there.

Revit on a 64Bit O.S.

It is really difficult to believe how much we are holding Revit back by having it on a 32 Bit O.S. Today I was doing some testing on of Revit 2009 (32 Bit) running a Windows Vista 64 Bit. The computer spec was a HP xw4400 with Core 2 -2.66 GHz CPU and 4 GB of RAM (not a very big computer).

I was able to have a Revit project file open of 130 MB with other files liked into it (82 MB and 62MB files). I was using Working Sharing monitor to review my CPU and RAM usage. On opening this file with links there was still nearly 1.5 GBs of RAM available. I also had, MS Outlook, MS Word and MS Excel open at the same time. I set the file up to do a batch pdf print and batch DWG export of 40 drawings. It handled it without any problems and I had no problems multitasking while Revit was working away in the background.

In a second test, I opened up a 130 MB file. Start a render of the entire building. Then open up another session of Revit and open a 40MB file and started to do you standard day to day editing. The computer handled it without a problem.

Considering the size of the computer, this is very good performance. From this, there should not be any worry about having a file size of up to 220MB on a 4GB, 64 bit computer. This can equal a building up to about 60,000 m² and documenting it right up through Construction Administration.

It is so good to think you and get so much more out of your computer by changing to a 64Bit O.S.. Revit 64 Bit just adds to this, but there isn’t going to be any jobs on Revit 2009 that will need more than 4 GBs of RAM, especially in the current financial environment. Revit now also is a lot better at shedding RAM after closing worksets. What I would say is; make sure you still manage your worksets well. When you are giving your model to your MEP or Structural Consultants, they should only need to load in the worksets of the relevant items. Obviously the more worksets a user can have turned off the faster they will work.

Can't copy text between views

In ever copying and pasting text from one view to another have you ever got the following error message:

It kind of stumped me for a little while. Maybe it as not just reading the message properly.

The answer to solve the problem seems to be to turn off the “Annotation Crop Box”. When turned off the copying and pastings of text works fine.

This is an issue obviously came up in Revit 2008 with the addition of annotation crop boxes. I can’t say if the problem exists in Revit 2009 or not.

Review Warnings. - Part 2

There are two very good new tools Autodesk have added to assist users in removing their errors and warnings from the project.

The first is the ability to export your review warnings to an html file. This allows you view the list of warnings in any text based software, from Microsoft Word, Excel to any web browser. One of the problems when we couldn’t do before this export; was to copy and paste the element I.D.s to atext base software. This resulted in it being very time consuming when going down through a long list of review warnings. You just had to manually hand write down everything.
This new export tool allows someone like me, a BIM manager to review a project file very easly.

The second new feature is a warning button in the options bar. When an element which contains warnings is selected it appears. Click the warning icon and it displays all the warnings just associated with that element. This again can be exported to an html format. One of the great things about this new feature is you can see easily if you actually have resolved an element of not. It also gives users the ability to more easily see and fix problems that are in the file as they do their day to day editing of elements.

These two new features should really assist up in getting trough error reviews that bit quicker.

However I my opinion it is not enough. Unless errors are easy to fix, many users will not be bothered. Also you want all users to be able to fix problems, and not just the very proficient uers. So what do I recommend Autodesk add the following expansions to the existing tools:

• Improving the “Element I.D.s” tool.
  This tool should be able to be dialog box to the side that can be open all the time if the user wishes. In this dialog box, as you select elements, you can visibly see the I.D. number of the elements. It should contain a history of the past few elements you have selected and I.D. numbers you have entered.

• The ability to select two element number I.D.s at a time.

• The ability to graphically isolate selected elements by I.D. in the current view. If you can isolate the two problematic elements, especially in a 3D view, you can revolve it more easily.

• A help function in the review warnings, for each of the problems and how to resolve them. This should include images to assist new users to better understand the problem. Much of these items are in the help section already. Why not make it more accusable at a point where it will help users.

• A direct link for the selected element in the review warnings to their element properties box. About 30% of the warnings can be fixed or partly fixed from their properties dialog box.

• In the review warnings section the ability to graphically isolate the element of the selected warnings. (same as above).

• The ability to have the review warnings dialog box permanently open to the side of the screen. I don’t understand why I need close this dialog box in order to fix the error.

• Upgrading of the yellow warnings box that pops up for some errors in the bottom right screen corner is lost by click happy users. These warnings should be a proper warning box. To dismiss them you need to click “OK” and not just click anywhere randomly.

• The user name of the user that created the error needs to be recorded with the error.
  This is not about giving blame but it gives BIM managers better information to assist users in understanding the errors they are creating. It also promotes users to fix errors so their user names don’t fill the warnings list.

• The element warning icon needs to be made more obvious. When a problematic element is selected, this icon should have a red border. The easier users can see the problematic elements the better understanding they will have.

• Better view creation of problematic elements. If any of you have ever used Navisworks, it does a great job of giving you a very good view in the clash detection tool. If Revit needs to create a new view to display the object is should do that.

• There are some errors that we have to live within the project. An “accepted” section of the review warnings for these warnings would make sense. The user name could be stored with it, and an additional comment section. An example of this might me a duplicate “type mark” parameter. Due to Documentation QA procedures, sometimes it makes sense to have two duplicates.

All of the above should not be all that difficult to do. If you create a warnings system, please give us the right and best tools to resolve them.

When is a bounded room, not an enclosed room?

Sometimes we have the problem of trying to get a room to be properly enclosed and bounded. Here is an example of a simple four walled enclosure? The walls have been profiled at the base, so the physical wall does not enclose the entire room. Yet the Revit Room element is able to find an enclosed boundary.

I don't know if this is good or bad!

Review Warnings. - Part 1

It seems it can never be underestimated the importants of clearing out as many of the Warnings in Revit as possible. It will accomplish several things and avoid the following problems:

• A low number of warnings will keep your file size small relative to the building size.

• Less errors means reduced computer processing and quicker completion of tasks (i.e. your model is less clunky).

• Elements with warnings associated to them; don’t always behave correctly, be that graphically or how they interact with other elements. Removing the warnings removes this.

• Accuracy of Schedules. No warnings ensure you have no duplicate objects or doubling of Mark numbering.

• Some errors can cause elements not to join to other elements or inability to dimension then.

Going down though the Review Warnings is not an easy task. It takes a lot of in-depth knowledge of how categories, families and elements act. In Revit 2008 there was only two ways of resolving them.

First is fixing it when the error first happens and the warning box comes up. With the amount of clicking users do they have often passed it, before they have even seen it. Out of sight is out of mind. Right! If they did see it flash past, how do they go back to see what it is?

Second is to go to the Review warnings section under Tools. Here you end up with sometimes a very large list. Where do you start to resolve them? How do you resolve them? If you try to view the elements in question, often you can’t see them. Most of the time the only options it gives you it to delete the object. That doesn’t seem to be a solution.

With Revit 2009 there were some improvements in regard to assisting users sort through their warnings. I’ll come to that next post, but let’s address some of the above first.

The first item is the warnings in the first place.
So you are to click happy and you missed the warning message. Don’t ignore it. Go to the undo dropdown icon. If you have just finished a sketch you can undo the finish sketch. If you then click finish sketch you will get the ability to view the warning. In the event you were moving or dragging an element, undo what you just did and redo it. Anticipate the message and heed the warning.

Some other warning errors;
“Highlighted walls are attached to, but miss, the highlighted targets.” You can select Detach Targets or OK. Clicking OK does not resolve the problem. Detaching the target resolves it.
“A structural framing element is attached to a wall whose Structural Usage is set to Non-bearing.” You can Make the wall load baring or click OK. Again OK won’t resolve the problem. Either make the wall load baring or drag the structural framing off the wall.
“Multiple Rooms are in the same enclosed region. The correct area and perimeter will be assigned to one Room and the others will display "Redundant Room." You should separate the regions, delete the extra Rooms, or move them into different regions.” You can click Delete or OK. Again OK won’t resolve the problem. Either you delete the room or subdivide the bigger room into two.

We could go on, but you get the picture.

Going down through the Review warning.
When you are using the show tool in review warnings, if you don’t see any highlighted elements in the view, change the view to wire frame. It’s likely you will see the item.
The highlighted items themselves.
In the review warning if you click on the “Warning” it will highlight it in the dialog box. This also highlights both elements that are causing the problem. Expanding out the warning and clicking on one of the elements will highlight that specific element in the view. Clicking on the other element in the review warnings will obviously highlight the other element. This can greatly assist you in understanding the elements in question. Only tick the box beside the element if you want to delete or unjoin the element.

More on this topic in the next post.

Room-Bounding Elements

Another interesting extract out of Revit help:

The following elements are bounding elements for room area and volume computations:

• Walls (curtain, standard, in-place, face-based)
• Roofs (standard, in-place, face-based)
• Floors (standard, in-place, face-based)
• Ceilings (standard, in-place, face-based)
• Columns (architectural, structural with material set to concrete)
• Curtain systems
• Room separation lines
• Building pads

NoteFloors and ceilings are always room-bounding. These elements do not have a room-bounding property that you can turn off.

You can indicate whether many elements are room-bounding by changing element properties. For example, you may want to define toilet partitions as non-bounding because they are not usually included in room computations. When you specify that an element is non-bounding, the element is not used when Revit Architecture computes the area or volume of the room or any adjacent rooms that share the non-bounding element.

What is interesting here is that ceiling and floors will allows be room bounding (you can’t make them non-room-bounding). Ceilings are the items that could problematic especially if you are exporting to gbXML. I order to ensure you have a proper gbXML model your rooms will need to go from floor to floor. There is other workarounds (putting rooms in the ceiling space), but they are time consuming.

Maybe this is something that Autodesk can look at, or come up with better gbXML export methods.

Vertex Connections

The blend tool can actually be a very powerful modelling tool. Unfortunately its biggest ability “Vertex Connections” is missed by most people. Using Vertex Connections you can ensure there is no twisting in your surfaces, which can be a big construction goal in order to increase buildability.

When you are using the blend tool (this also works with swept blends) create the base and top. After you complete the top and base sketches, the Vertex connect command becomes enabled on the sketch Design Bar. By editing vertex connections, you control the amount of twist in the blend. You can edit vertex connections in plan or 3D views. By clicking on the blue dots you add or remove the vertex lines.

What’s more these vertex lines are generated from the nodes of the base or top sketch. So if you have a line and split it in the middle, that middle point becomes vertex point. This enables you to create some quite complicated triangulated shapes, using simple base and top shapes.

Revit 2009 - Room Computated height.

Following on from some more investigation into rooms I have seen that the Computated Height setting can be changed. Following from an earlier post, I didn’t think it could be. The Revit help is great at telling you new functions, but not so great at telling you changes to existing functions.

Here are the details out of the Revit help.

Revit Architecture measures the perimeter of a room at a defined distance above the base level of the room. This distance is the computation height. It is used to compute the room perimeter, area, and volume. By default, the computation height is 4’ or 1200 mm above the base level of the room (the height of the default cut plane).

For buildings with vertical walls, the default computation height usually gives accurate results. However, if a building includes sloped walls or other atypical features, you may need to adjust the computation height to achieve more accurate room areas and volumes.

For example, the following drawing shows a section of a room with a sloped wall. The dotted line across the lower part of the room indicates the current computation height. (This line displays when you select the room.) Revit Architecture uses the perimeter of the room at the computation height when computing the room area and volume.

Changing the computation height affects the room perimeter, and thus the room area and volume. For example, the following drawing shows the same room, but the computation height has been moved lower (indicated by the dashed line). The room tag shows the changed room area and volume.

The computation height is defined as a parameter of a level family. If needed, you can change this parameter. You can also create multiple level families that use different computation heights. For example, you may want to define one level family for stories and another level family for plenums.

Changing the Computation Height

1. Open a section view (or any view in which you can see defined levels).

(Optional) Make rooms visible in the section view.

2. Right-click a level datum in the view, and click Element Properties.
3. In the Element Properties dialog, click Edit/New.
4. In the Type Properties dialog, under Dimensions, do one of the following:
• To use a default computation height, select Automatic Room Computation Height.

By default, the computation height is 4’ or 1200 mm above the base level of the room (the height of the default cut plane).

• To specify a computation height, clear Automatic Room Computation Height. For Computation Height, enter the distance above the base level to use when computing the room area and perimeter.

If the room includes a sloped wall, consider using a computation height of 0 (zero).

5. Click OK.

The change in computation height affects all rooms that use this level type family for its base level.

Automatic Computation Height

In most cases, the automatic computation height is 4’ (1200 mm) above the base level of the room. In some situations, however, the automatic computation height is different.

• Suppose the top of a room-bounding wall is lower than 4’ (1200 mm above the base level of the room), and it is joined to a room separation line. In this case, the computation height defaults to 0 (zero) to bound rooms by joined lower walls for that level.
• Suppose the top of a room-bounding wall is higher than 4’ (1200 mm), and its bottom is above the base level of the room. In this case, the automatic computation height is 4’ (1200 mm).

Room Separation lines.

I could not believe how wall and room separation lines can have an effect on each other. Below I have drawn an outline of a room with room separation lines, with one side not square.

Then use the Wall tool and pick line tool and draw in walls. You will get an error about Wall and Room Separation lines over lapping.

Now turn off the Walls. The top Room Separation Line will have moved . That’s not good.

I’ve also come across where room separation lines can cause problems in walls junctions.