Control visibility of masking region linework in Revit

While creating a custom office furniture family set for a client a while back, I had the need to control the appearance of boundary lines in a Revit masking region.

On the surface, it seemed like something pretty easy to do. While in Sketch Mode for the masking region, you can select the boundary line you want to paramaterize to control its visibility and add a Yes/No field to it. You can check out the accompanying image to see how I attempted this. Seems like it would do the trick, right?

The problem is that it just flat doesn’t work. For some reason, the Visibility parameter doesn’t apply to masking region boundaries. I fought with the masking region a bit before eventually, I figured out a pretty easy work around. It was one of those things I figured out while deep in the middle of a family creation project that saved the day, but I didn’t take the time to put together a blog post or video to share it with my fellow Reviteers.

Well, Jose over at Andekan has created a great (while lengthy) video showing the problem and the work around. Check it out, after this brief description of the solution. Here’s the trick:

You can’t control the visibility of a Revit masking region boundary with a parameter.

Instead, change the linework of the boundary lines that you need to control to ‘Invisible’. Now they will never be seen. Exit sketch mode for the masking region.

Next, draw new Symbolic Lines over the top of them. Guess what? Symbolic Lines CAN have a parameter that controls their visibility!

You should be able to take it from there. If you want to see a great step by step, check out the video from Andekan. Also, be sure to check out their high quality custom Revit families. These guys do a great job of creating powerful and parametric Revit content.

Multiple Column Text in Revit 2012

Multiple Column Text in Revit 2012

We’ve been waiting for it for years and it’s finally here! Well, sorta. Sorry, before I get your hopes up too high, let me tell you that the headline is a little misleading. There are many great new features and improvements in Revit Architecture 2012, but, sad to say, text manipulation and formatting still has a long way to go. So, how can we get our notes and text to wrap into multiple, free flowing columns? It’s pretty easy, once you know the technique.

We Know: Revit is not AutoCAD

If you’re at all like me, you probably hate it when people compare Revit to AutoCAD, i.e. “AutoCAD can do this… why can’t Revit?” It’s generally not very productive to make these comparisons, as these are two very different products. However, when it comes to text, it’s hard not to make comparisons. AutoCAD has made great strides in the last 10 years and now boasts a pretty full featured set of text formatting and manipulation tools that sometimes leaves Revit users envious. After all, MTEXT has given us easy column flow in AutoCAD for some time now. Just click the bottom grip, and, like magic, the text flows into multiple columns.

I understand that Revit is not a Word Processor, and it was never designed to be used to make large amounts of text look pretty. Even so, the fact is that in a typical set of construction documents, there are plenty of sheets that include a ton of notes. Sometimes, a whole sheet is dedicated to General Notes. So, how can we accomplish a multiple column effect? The trick is to create a Key Schedule instead of a Text object. Schedules can be split easily into columns and flow easily.

Here is how to Wrap Text into Columns in Revit:

Create a Key Schedule, using a category that you probably won’t use, such as Site.

Name the schedule appropriately, such as GENERAL NOTES, and add the COMMENTS field to it.

Name the headings # and Note, if you like (we’ll hide the headings anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.)

Now, cut and paste each of your notes into its own row. That’s the only tedious part, but getting the column flow flexibility makes it worth it.
If you really want the schedule to look more like notes than a table, turn off the lines.

I also like to shut of the Headers. We’ll keep the Title visible.

Sweet! Now we can easily break up the schedule into multiple columns.

You get a grip at the bottom very similar to the grip for MTEXT in AutoCAD that can be used to adjust the height of the column. You can continue to break up the schedule into even more columns.

To rejoin columns into a single column, just drag and drop it onto the main text block. Easy! By the way, this technique isn’t exclusive to 2012. It works for 2011 and 2010 as well.

The Future of Revit

So, this is a bit of a hack until we finally get some of those long awaited text tools in Revit. Rest assured, the Factory is not unaware of the current state of Revit’s text tools, and is always working on ways to give users what they need. Not being a hard-core programmer myself, I can’t really talk about what the hold up is, but I do understand enough to know that AutoCAD and Revit are built on very different software platforms, so it’s certainly not as easy as pulling a module of AutoCAD code and slapping it into Revit. Good things take time, and I look forward to the day I can announce that Revit 20xx has had a text formatting overhaul!

Until then, workarounds like this can get us through, and still let us benefit from the vast number of things that Revit really does rock at!

Happy designing!

Revit 2012 New Features part 1

Well, one of our favorite times of the year is finally here… The Autodesk 2012 software lineup, including Revit Architecture 2012, Revit Structure 2012, and Revit MEP 2012, has hit the streets and we’re eager to help all of our  users get up to speed as quickly as possible on all the great new features and improvements. All of us here at CADsoft Consulting have some great educational events planned to teach these new features and get you productive in a hurry.

As with any release, there are usually a few big changes or new functionality, along with a lot of little tweaks and improvements that often go unnoticed. The fact that some things go unnoticed is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it’s just evidence that a tool now works the way you always wanted or expected it to. It may not get a lot of fanfare, but you may still find yourself smiling when you use it and think smugly to yourself, “Hey, Autodesk listened to me. That’s just what I asked for!”

Well with Revit 2012, I certainly found some of those features. Some of my specific wants have been met and some things I didn’t even know I wanted are now included and I can’t imagine going back to the old way. As usual, I’ve been part of the beta team, so I’ve been able to put Revit 2012 through its paces for a few months, and while there is always room to grow (and still some of those things I’ve wanted that haven’t been built yet), this release has a lot to offer.

Here are a few of my favorite Revit 2012 new features

In today’s post, I’ll focus on the topic of Collaboration, with more posts to follow throughout the week.

Enjoy! I think you’ll find some great new features of Revit 2012 that will make your day.

Revit 2012 Worksharing Enhancements

The display in Revit has been modified to allow us to easily color code elements based on the Workset they belong to or the user they are editable by. This alone is an amazing timesaver that lets you see how your worksets are organized at a glance, as well as understanding who is working on what.

Best of all, however, is the addition of … drumroll… pop up Editing Requests!

Pop Up Editing Request Window

At long last, we have the feature users have been begging for since worksets were introduced — a request that users will actually see! Now, when you need to work on an element that is owned by someone else, you can put in an Editing Request, as before, but now, on that user’s machine, in the lower right corner, they will get a message that pops up that allows them to accept the request. Brilliant! No more lonely nights spent pining away at your Revit system, hoping and praying that someone would grant your unnoticed editing request.

Thank you Autodesk!

Stay tuned for an upcoming post on new tools for sustainable design.

Have fun with Revit 2012.

Autodesk Revit MEP 2012 New Features

I can count greater than three dozen enhancements in the 2012 release of Revit MEP, not beginning to count the platform-based enhancements for all three Revit products.  Here are just a few:

Sloped Piping

New tools assist in laying out pipe slopes with automatic calculation, read-out for invert elevations and on-screen tooltips.

Duct and Pipe Placeholders

Placeholder design has always been an early design stage recommendation, but at times can be difficult without the ability for system assignment and other engineering information.  With the new placeholder objects early stage layout can focus on design more than fitting choices and other modeling concerns.  Placeholders can be tagged and checked for interferences.  When ready, a tool to convert placeholders to more detailed objects is available.

Insulation and Lining for Ducts and Pipes

Easily and quickly add insulation and lining to entire runs and utilize interference checking with these elements.  Ducts will also adjust sizes when using the sizing tool of duct segments that include lining.  Many more features have been added or enhanced such as Revit Server for multi-site, multi-user collaboration, point cloud support for visualizing scans, systems and system browser improvements, parallel pipe and conduit runs, and much, much more.

We’ll be looking at more of the specifics as we get to explore them.

Please join us April 20th, for our Virtual Launch showing many of the Autodesk 2012 product releases.  Just click the link provided below.  Hope to see you there.

http://bit.ly/fFsMTo

10 Easy Steps to Conceptual Energy Analysis

As many of you already know, I’m a big Ecotect Analysis fan. Over the past year I’ve had the pleasure (well, mostly a pleasure) of helping hundreds of designers in the US and parts of Europe use this tool to improve the performance of their buildings. That being said, I’m also the first to admit that the process of creating an efficient BIM that can be used for energy analysis is far from perfect. At times it’s time consuming, and other times, it’s just frustrating. Even after getting the hang of it, the process could certainly be improved.

Well, the good news is that our great friends at Autodesk have been hard at work to improve this process and to lower the barrier to entry to start using analysis on all of your designs. The tool they’ve developed is the Conceptual Energy Analysis plug in and the best news is that it runs right inside of Revit!

I’m sure you’ve already heard of it, and maybe even checked out some of the videos Autodesk has posted on Youtube. But, just to show you how easy it is to start using this great tool, I’ve put together a list of 10 easy steps to jump start your building analysis.

This application makes it a snap to upload a properly formed thermal model to the Autodesk Cloud, making use of the Green Building Studio web service to perform whole building energy analysis but without the pain of submitting it to GBS yourself. The analysis is fast, easy, and turns out some awesome charts and graphics to help validate your design decisions. Get up to the Subscription Center right now and give this tool a whirl!

There you have it. I know I told you there were 10 steps. The 11th pic is not a step — that’s your results! Enjoy them. See, I told you it was easy…

Bonus Tip:

You can use Ecotect with the model the Conceptual Energy Analysis tool builds. Simply click Export and choose gbXML. Import it into Ecotect and you’re ready get down to business with an incredibly clean and well constructed thermal model!

1. Export to gbXML from the Results and Compare dialog.
2. Import the gbXML into Ecotect and perform your analysis with an incredibly clean, efficient, and well constructed thermal model!

Amazing! Thanks, Autodesk.