Navisworks 2012 Display Tips

New application releases sometimes change what we are used to seeing in our display windows.  Somewhere along the line we forgot that we changed what was originally the default, or something new in the software has been added, or maybe, we simply never used the feature before.  In Navisworks 2012, some new avatars have been added and the display, at least on all of our machines show the third-person avatar mode by default.  Certainly a little annoying if you do not use these much or at all.  Don’t forget about the Options dialog for we can turn this off as “our default” if we like.  Do so by opening the Options dialog from the Application drop-down menu.  Choose Viewpoint Defaults under Interface and select the Settings button under collision.  Here you can deselect Enable for Third Person so that he/she won’t appear when starting a new project.  Of course you can select which avatar to use when starting a project as well.

Another possible bother is the orbiting of your view.  If you’re like me – old school – I use the Shift+mouse wheel to orbit in my model views for all products.  When I do this in a fresh, new Navisworks project I get unwanted results.  Even though, again, there are Options dialog settings, I like to hit PgUp after loading the first file (Navisworks zoom extents) and then my orbit method works as desired.

Tales from the Helpdesk Crypt – Why are my materials on walls rotating?

What the heck? How's that rotated?

There was a recent case of materials of a stacked wall rotating, it looked like this.

After taking a closer look, I found that the brick material was rotated only on the walls with edited profiles. The stacked wall at the bottom had no surface pattern when the edited profiles were applied. To solve the issue, I added a surface pattern to the stacked wall family for the material to the proper orientation when the wall profile was edited. The mystery of the rotating materials is now solved.

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.