Month: May 2012

Australian Revit Keynotes and NATSPEC

Luke Johnson

You may or may not already know that the Australian Revit content includes keynote files for NATSPEC.

I struggle to find keynoting settings every time.

I have previously posted about the NATSPEC BIM Portal

The Natspec Keynotes have been available since at least Revit 2010, possibly earlier:

In relation to ‘element lists’ and Revit standards, the VA BIM Guide is an expansion of the AIA Document E202 BIM Protocol Exhibit – 2008.

You can download a copy via the Web Links/ BIM Standards page of this site [downloads link inserted] (See Main Menu to your left). The VA BIM Guide is the last item in the list. Coincidentally, NATSPEC is in the process of adapting the Guide for Australian use.
via
National BIM Guide review

The excellent and free Keynote Manager is still available at:
Keynote Manager – Home

More Revit formula for us babies

Luke Johnson

A couple of formula tricks from the CAD Shack:

Pick One and Only One






Here the condition number will allow only one paramter to be true in a list. Associated with a type, you could control a ton of things simply back picking the correct type.

“Don’t Change Me Bro”

If you need some text to not change, put that text in the Formula column with quotes around it. It greys it out in the Value column. This should stop the majority of users from changing its value.

via
CAD Shack: Revit Family Formula Examples and Tricks

Set up a NICE 3D View Template … for quick Cameras

Luke Johnson

When making a standard perspective Camera View, Revit 2013 allows you to effectively preset View properties, so that all new Camera views look nice.  These settings are from the BIM Technologist:

Then, save the View Template settings and go into the Type Properties of 3D View, and set the View Template applied to new views appropriately.

via

BIM Technologist, Quick Views & Effect

Formatting large drives as FAT32 in Windows

Luke Johnson

Windows 7 does not easily allow you to format a USB drive using the FAT32 filesystem.  Some media devices do not understand NTFS, and they need drives to be formatted as FAT32 (such as PlayStation 3 / PS3)

To format large drives using FAT32 in Windows, you can use a program called Swissknife:
Download Swissknife

Then:

  • install it.
  • plug your hard drive in your pc 
  • open the program.
  • click your drive in the devices list.
  • click format to erase everything.
  • once finished click partition type and select primary and then file system and select fat32.
  • drag the bar to the right of the pie chart all the way to the bottom, so the whole pie chart turns blue.
  • click create.  

via http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/602285#3639612

Simple methods to help with Civil 3D and Revit interoperability

Luke Johnson

Civil 3D is really good at some things.  I use it to perform graphic slope analysis on the site surface, which I then export and import into Revit as an image.  There are various ways to clean up and bring the Civil 3D surface data into Revit.   A simple workflow is described at:
Bringing a Civil 3D Surface into Revit as a Toposurface

There is a nice set of videos at:
Transferring Site Data Between Revit Architecture and AutoCAD Civil 3D

I previously posted about the recent Labs tool that may also assist:
Better coordination between Revit and Civil 3D? Yes please!

Are you using Adaptive Components yet?

Luke Johnson

Julien Benoit has put together a nicely paced introduction to Adaptive Components.

Some quotable quotes:
“The future of Revit family creation – adaptive components.” (at time 1:13:52)


“all our knowledge of families will die :)”
By attendee gaby424

Check it out at:
Adaptive Components By Julien

also on Wikihelp at http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Revit/enu/Community/Examples/Basic_Adaptive_Component_Families 

Yummy BIM Food…service

Luke Johnson

I previously re-posted about some of challenges of adopting Revit in the foodservice industry at Revit: Problem Or Solution?

A recent ‘tips’ post provides a couple of good guidelines, namely:

When working in Revit, focus on the families. Understand that families are everything…

and

Check the FCSI standards before beginning. (click the link to download PDF)

Read more at:
Tips for Adopting 3D Modeling Technology for Foodservice – Foodservice Equipment & Supplies

Cannot Restore Backup Version an Unknown Error Occurred

Luke Johnson

There is a nasty little bug that sometimes causes Backups (and any attempted Restore) to fail on a workshared project.  The way to avoid this problem is so simple that it should probably be implemented on all workshared projects in your office:

check Regenerate if view/sheet is not up-to-date.  This will create a thumbnail for the non-opened view to be included with the initial backup version and eliminate the error message when saving the backup version.
via
Cannot Restore Backup Version an Unknown Error Occurred – The Revit Clinic

However – if you have already come across this problem and it is too late to check the above box … you may be able to get the Restore to work IF you reinstate an appropriately named preview.xxxx.dat file into the _backup folder.  Its worth a try if you are struggling to recover some important data.