Month: July 2014

Embed Dynamo, Python, macro or other code to Create Self Aware Families in Revit – recorded RTCNA presentation from Zach Kron

Luke Johnson

Video:

via this tweet

my tweet:

Three things I've learned from 6 years of blogging

Luke Johnson

Back in 2008, I thought it might be cool to start a Revit and BIM blog – but I had no idea how long my interest in the subject would endure, or how many readers would actually be interested in what I had to say. I have certainly learnt a lot over that time, and I hope I’ve been able to help a few of you as well.  Here are 3 things that blogging has taught me:

  1. Writing forces you to distill and crystallize your thoughts, and often prompts you to challenge the very things you are suggesting your readers accept
  2. Its more important to be consistent rather than prolific (people get bombarded with way too much information as it is!)
  3. Attribution is key – if you always share your source, others will reciprocate

And one final thought: Share your unique knowledge and workflows. Once people know the basics of a thing, they are often only interested in the un-ordinary (like formatting their Autodesk USB drives).

Over 80,000 views to this page (and counting)

But I’m not giving up yet! Thanks for your continued interest and engagement.

Some recent milestones for What Revit Wants:

And one final, sobering static:

  • over 550 draft posts waiting to be finished (!)

Concurrent Keynote Editing, Instant Keynote Update and Keynote Search addin for Revit 2015

Luke Johnson

This new keynoting addin from Kiwi Custom Solutions stores per-project Keynotes in a database to solve concurrent access problems. Revit 2015 allows some interesting pathing to happen for keynotes, that looks like this:

Using this addin, you can either create a new set of keynotes for each project (based on a template), or you can “link” projects to one common keynote definition (allowing an entire office to work collaboratively on one master keynote file).

Any changes are updated instantly in Revit.

Here’s some steps:

  1. Download trial here
  2. Install
  3. Start Revit 2015
  4. You may be prompted to activate
  5. Open or Start a Revit project
  6. The Easy Keynoter setup wizard will start…
  7. and you will be prompted to select a local or network location for the database SDF file…
  8. and give your Keynote template a name, like Default
  9. Then import an existing Keynote text file. You could start with the Natspec version. Or import your office standard.
  10. From here, you can start using and modifying your Keynotes in the Easy Keynoter dialog.

You can close the Easy Keynoter pane with the little X (like other palettes), and open it with the button on the Addins ribbon.

There is also a search option:


 Summary of key features:

  • no problems with multiple users editing the keynotes at the same time as with other systems
  • keynote changes are reflected immediately in the Revit project
  • Drag and Drop Keynotes from the Palette
  • search function