Oh wait, you can’t… put more simply, you cannot override the lineweight of Generic Annotations for a linked file. In fact, it turns out you can’t override lineweights for anything, including Model elements in a linked file… you are stuck with them. You can Transfer Project Standards into the link but that is a painful workaround.

You can override the colour and linetype, no problem. But no matter what you try: Object Styles, Visibility Graphics, Revit Link Visibility overrides, none of this overrides the actual Lineweight of Generic Annotations in the linked file. It is using the value from the Line Weight settings, Annotation Line Weights tab IN THE LINKED file to draw these items in the host file. If Pen 1 is set to 0.3mm in the Link, you will never be able to get a lighter pen weight override in the Host.

To me, this is a bug. If the Revit Link visibility is set to Object Styles – By Host File, annotation line weights should be overriden to match the applied pens.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Here is a video showing the problem:

Upon further investigation, nested Annotations in Component families that live in a Linked File can’t really be overridden by Visibility/Graphics, unless you edit the Revit Link visibility. Even then, you can set line weights and colours but they will still reference the Linked File Annotation Line Weights.

Fairly nasty stuff, particularly if you are working with linked files from consultants / contractors that extensively use nested Generic Annotations inside their families (sidenote: I’m pretty sure this always a bad idea. Model in 3D, use tags for text, if you have to have text in the family use Model Lines or Model Text or some other method so that you don’t have nested Generic Annotations. They scale wildly around and become a crutch for not modelling in real world scale).

Ok, so we have a problem. I discovered that there is one master switch that works in the Host file to get around this.

1) Set the Family Category to Halftone, this will override the linked, nested Generic Annotation

2) When printing, tick the “Replace halftone with thin lines” box in Print Setup

I realise that this is not WYSIWYG, and I really don’t like that. But it does work. Here is a video:

But wait, there’s more. We can actually make it closer to WYSIWYG (is that a thing?), if we adjust the Manage – Additional Settings – Halftone/Underlay to 100. The lineweight will still display incorrectly, but it will print correctly, and there will be no halftone effect.

Some further reading:
Linked File Line Weights – The Revit Clinic

Konrad and Mostapha are working on something, and the functionality does not look shrimpy at all. Check it out:

“Mantis Shrimp is a Dynamo (Revit) and Grasshopper (Rhino) interoperability project that allows you to read Rhino’s native *.3dm file type as well as export geometry from Grasshopper. It is written in Python in form of a user objects (on Grasshopper side for exporting) and custom Python nodes (on Dynamo side for importing). It’s an OPEN SOURCE project with all of the source code available on GitHub. At the moment it’s a collaboration project between myself and Mostapha Sadeghipour.

I decided to make this project an open source for multitude of reasons but most importantly because it was written on top of Dynamo (an open source project) using OpenNurbs (an open source project) and inspired by Rhynamo (an open source project to be in December 2014), and finally I was helped along the way by Mostapha who’s almost never written anything that he didn’t like to share. I think i got the “bug” – not Ladybug – for sharing from him.

Here’s how to get started with Mantis Shrimp…”

Read the rest at:
mantis shrimp – getting started… | archi-lab

Most of you would be aware of keyboardshortcuts.xml in Revit. However, did you know about RoamerCommands.xml? This file lives in the Layout folder under you Navisworks install, and it can be edited to modify keyboard shortcuts in Navisworks.

Note: This process is very risky, so this file should be backed up before editing it. During experimentation, I had a lot of crashes and often had to restore this file to fix the issues.

  1. Backup RoamerCommands.xml (rename the backup or copy it somewhere, like this)
  2. Edit it in a text editor like Notepad++ or Sublime Text
  3. Look for something you want to change / add
  4. Modify the file
  5. Make sure there are no duplicate entries, like this
  6. Save it
  7. Restart Navisworks
  8. If Navis crashes on opening, restore the old file from Step 1 and start again
  9. If it doesn’t crash, see if your keyboard shortcut works

I was able to change the keyboard shortcut for File Open as shown below:

Video showing that my modified RoamerCommands.xml worked:

File location on my system:
“C:Program FilesAutodeskNavisworks Manage 2015LayoutRoamerCommands.xml”

There is a good list of the vanilla shortcuts at this post (this is also where Lee mentions RoamerCommands):
Keyboard Shortcuts (Hotkeys) for Autodesk Navisworks – Beyond Design: the Construction and BIM blog

Quote:
Finally, a few links, details and instructions for those of you who want to get rolling with the tools.  The nodes are available in Dynamo’s package manager, using a recent daily build of Dynamo.  We expect an official release with this functionality by the end of October, but in the meantime you can use a daily build to use the tools. 

To install the package, search for the name in the Dynamo package manager – Dynamo > Packages > Search for a package > ‘Energy Analysis for Dynamo – and install the package.  Once the package is installed, you’ll likely want to check out our sample files in the package’s ‘extra’ folder, and watch our first round of tutorial videos (1,2). 

We should also note that some analytical information (constructions, schedules, etc.) can only be analyzed using Dynamo on top of Vasari. The source code is available on Github under an Apache v2 license – it is open for anyone to use and modify.

via Energy Analysis for Dynamo – Open Beta Release! | CORE studio

The github page is here

Full credit goes to Adam Sheather for all his hard work on this. Basically, it is a Dynamo package that can talk to Navisworks. I think he has started something pretty special here…

How to get DynaWorks 15:

  1. Download and install Dynamo version 0.7.2
  2. Launch it from the Start Menu ie. DynamoSandbox.exe 
  3. You can download DynaWorks directly from http://dynamopackages.com/
  4. or to use Dynamo package manager: Open Dynamo from the start menu, Packages, Search for a Package, wait to synchronize package list, then click to install DynaWorks
  5. Install GetClashIDs too if you want
  6. Mine installed itself to this location:
    C:UsersLuke JohnsonAppDataRoamingDynamo.7packagesDynaWorks15bin
  7. To get my install to work, I had to copy missing XML files from step 2, and then used Import Library and chose DynaWorks15.dll from the path above to ‘refresh’ the install and display the extra nodes (you might not have this problem)
  8. To test it is working, grab the runClashTests definition from this folder,
  9. Open it in Dynamo, point it at one of your Navisworks files by modifying the String property,
  10. Click Run in Dynamo, and it will automatically open the file and run all the Clash Tests.

The above steps should get you up and running… but there is so much more capability here that it deserves more than one post. As Adam mentions in his post, you can use DynaWorks to run Navisworks in hidden mode. I’m looking forward to seeing how others use this … particularly in getting Navisworks to communicate with Revit more effectively.

Heads-up:

Adam’s video:
 

Adam Sheather:
#Dynamo #DynaWorks #BIM is released!! Check here http://t.co/jT7KjiKqwI for installation details or herer http://t.co/t9EvdfJxws for demo.
https://twitter.com/Gytaco/status/517624124986761216

The github page:
https://github.com/Gytaco/DynaWorks

More info at:
Stuff and BIMs: DynaWorks is here!! The Navisworks library for Dynamo

A document was recently released that essentially describes differences in the way that Tekla and RST respond to changes in a linked architectural model. This document doesn’t really take into account the other benefits of working in a completely Revit environment – not having to convert to and from IFC, tagging through links, scheduling, bidirectionality, and so on (I don’t feel a need to keep listing reasons 🙂

Download the comparison PDF (keep in mind this was prepared by/for Tekla)

via
LinkedIn

Interesting post by troywright on AUGI, in relation to setting up segregated links as room bounding in your Revit MEP file:  
We have this issue frequently, as with major projects we will receive different models for architectural fitout, shell and core and facades etc. 

The solution we have (in your example) is to; 
– Link the structural model into architectural as an overlay, set to room bounding 
– In your MEP model link in the structural model and the architectural model. 

That’s it. Essentially it is an extra step, but it means that the architectural model knows it is bound by the structural model, even though it is only an overlay! I think someone else mentioned this method earlier but with worksets. I can’t see a point in doing this as the nested structural model is an overlay, so it’s irrelevant. 

Another issue you may have is that your spaces act up when an architectural model has floor finishes set to room bounding that are higher than the level they are on. To fix this just change all of your levels to have a calculation height above that of the floor finish.

via 2014 MEP Spaces