When it comes to Revit visualization during early design phases, in the past you had to pick from one of these options to add Entourage to your presentation:

  1. Use some placeholder geometric family, 
  2. Use RPC and re-Render the view everytime you want an output, or 
  3. Export or Render a view as an image file and then open it in Photoshop to add extra Entourage.

    But now, there is another way

This new way allows you to leverage your current RPC library and modify the visual style or “look” of the Entourage families. In turn, this makes the use of your current RPC content much more flexible, and more applicable to the constantly changing, day-to-day design iterations (and visualizations) that Architects and Designers are required to produce.

In other words, we can take something that looks a bit like this:

And make it into something a bit more like this (Stylized Textures mode):

Archvision are the guys behind RPC technology – that’s the tech that allows you to add photorealistic people, trees and entourage to your Revit renderings. Recently, they released a new addin for Revit called Entourage Workshop (I previously posted about this back in November 2014). It is built to work with content downloaded using Archvision Dashboard, which is a paid offering that can manage, search, download, create and load photo realistic families into your Revit model.

I recently had a web meeting with Archvision CEO Randall Stevens, and we agreed to make you all aware of a special opportunity related to Entourage Workshop. Basically, Archvision is willing to give you access to their very powerful Dashboard, along with Beta access to the Entourage Workshop. All you need to do is go to this page, scroll down to Don’t have an ArchVision Software License? and enter your email address. The guys over at ArchVision will then issue you a temporary license of Dashboard to use while you try out Entourage Workshop.

Now here is something to keep in mind… the more you use the Dashboard and beta Entourage Workshop features, the more likely it is that you will be able to retain your ‘free’ access for a longer period. If you don’t use your license, you may lose it 🙂

How to apply styles to your Entourage in Revit:

  1. Install Archvision Dashboard and Entourage Workshop
  2. Open a project
  3. Place some RPC using Archvision Dashboard
  4. Start the Entourage Workshop addin from the Archvision ribbon
  5. Click the Styles button at top and add a new style
  6. After you add style, click in the Name area at the top of the color sliders and give it a descriptive name, then click Apply
  7. Click on the RPCs button at top and apply that style to selected Entourage families in your current project
  8. Switch to a Revit view and change to an appropriate display mode (Shaded, Consistent Colors, Realistic etc)

Short list of tips, tricks and features:

  • you can now have non-rendered but still “stylistic” presentation views using RPC Entourage (Shaded Mode, Consistent Colors etc)
  • it won’t work without a Archvision Dashboard license
  • “Gamma” slider gives a level of brightness control directly over Entourage RPC that was not available before
  • Geometry tick boxes – you can easily turn off base and one side view of the ‘placeholder’ representation
  • In the UI you need Apply after making the Style, then apply to items after pressing the RPCs button
  • Silhouette textures will face the Camera. This is when you take a rendered photo representation and override it with Transparency, effectively ‘ghosting’ it
  • If you want to create Style definitions and pass your Styles.xml file to someone else you can do that too.  The Styles.xml file should reside in your local profile AppDataRoamingArchVisionEntourage Workshop directory.  The easy way to get there is to type %appdata% in your Windows Explorer and it will jump to the roaming directory where you can then browse to ArchVision and then Entourage Workshop.
  • If you do use a silhouette style, you can trial various Line colours for the Entourage by Overriding the Projection lines by category or element
  • If the Photorealistic Textures radio button is used, then only Transparency and Gamma modifiers will apply
  • Some current limitations:
    – the ‘placeholder’ geometry does not automatically face the camera (although the rendered representation does, and you can still manually rotate the family to get it facing the direction you like
    – only works on Entourage that is RPC based (not geometric)
    – does not work with Autodesk Cloud Rendering (yet)
    – currently it only modifies Entourage Category representations

Here is a matrix that describes how the various Revit display modes are affected by the Render Mode options in the Style definition:

Here is a demo video:

And here is a step-by-step from Archvision to use as a guide to get you started:

We have all used various autoSectionBox addins to adjust 3D View section boxes quickly. But if you want to quickly match a Section Box to a Scope Box without using an addin, try this:

  1. In a 3D view, select the Scope Box and the Section Box
  2. Sunglasses (ie. Temporary Hide/Isolate) – Isolate Element
  3. Turn the Section Box off
  4. Turn the Section Box back on

It will basically try to match whatever it sees in the view – in this case, the visible Scope Box. There is one pretty big catch, though… it doesn’t really work well if the Scope Box is not aligned to Project North. In this case, go back and use one of those addins 🙂

Tip via:
http://sixtysecondrevit.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/how-to-orient-3d-views-to-scope-boxes.html

dp Stuff have updated their very cool Revit addins to work with Revit 2015, and happily I have three prizes to giveaway:

  1. Free Revit Utils 2015 and Randomizer 2015 pack
  2. Half-price Revit Utils 2015 and Randomizer 2015 pack
  3. 25% off Revit Utils 2015 and Randomizer 2015 pack

To enter the competition, scroll down to the Comments on this post and write your response to this question (don’t worry if your entry doesn’t appear straight away, it will 🙂 …

Name one challenge you have faced while using Revit.
How did you overcome it?

The deadline for this competition is Tuesday 10 March 2015. After this date, I will review the comments and then give the prizes to the entries that I think are the most original, thought-provoking, outside-of-the-box and interesting 🙂 Results will be announced in a comment on 11 March, and I will reply to the winners individually.

I have posted about Dima Chiriacov’s dp Stuff addins several times over the years, including this random tree generator post and this one about his Workset Explorer (which is now included in the “Revit Utils” pack).

Here are the links to the updated 2015 dp Stuff addins:
Revit Utils 2015
Randomizer 2015

Dima’s post:
Revit 2015 Addins Update – Revit Utils 2015 – dp Stuff

It is very easy to buy from the site, just

  • Add to Cart, 
  • Checkout,
  • Apply any discount codes
  • Fill out your details
  • Accept the terms
  • Proceed to download

BIM One have released a new automatic color filter addin for Revit. It is very simple to use, and its free:

  1. Install the addin using the install tool (refer here for steps on using the addin manager)
  2. Open a Revit project
  3. Go to BIM One ribbon
  4. Click on Color Splasher
  5. Click on a Category
  6. Click on a Parameter
  7. A color set is automatically generated
  8. Click on Apply color set

If we check the element VG, we can see that this addin basically runs through and applies a By Element override to each element in the view:

Note: a nice added bonus to the above functionality is that if you open Color Splasher and click “Clear Set”, every Element visibility override in the current view will be removed. Might be handy for QA and model management?

They have also provided a Element GUID tool. It works like the Select by ID tool in Revit, but instead of using the Element ID, it works on the GUID parameter inherent in all Revit elements:

I previously posted about the BIM One NWC Batch Exporter here:
NWC Batch Export from Revit – multiple Revit views to multiple NWCs with one click

via
http://us8.campaign-archive2.com/?u=f58c55b9516e3ecd984b6ff84&id=95df102b3a&e=3729ed9af6

Synopsis:
This short paper sets out Andy Black‘s personal observations based upon four decades of working in the hospital world. 

Link
Download the full white paper ‘Notes on the design of hospitals and their clinical organisation’, from the Australian HealthCare Week site…

Direct link

via
A New Approach for the Design of Tomorrow’s Hospital – A2K Technologies Blog

From joan.allen on the Ideastation:
..
I’m happy to announce that you can view gridlines on the iPad app – and control the visibility settings of grids in both 2D and 3D view – with the BIM 360 Glue iPad app V3.0 that was released today.  Learn more here about the new 2D to 3D “Map” navigation feature and gridline controls:  http://youtu.be/ILqdJVjloA0 


Related post:
http://autode.sk/1vItZ2K

Forum Link:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/bim-360-ideastation/make-grids-visible-on-ipad-glue-app/idc-p/5509989#M433

This tip comes from Troy. He has provided a simple Dynamo definition to set the element Mark to Element ID. It is very fast, and I have tested it on a fairly large data set. As usual though, ‘use at your own risk’ etc.

I posted about how Bonus Tools can handle this too, over here.

How to use it:

  1. Install Dynamo (currently 7.5)
  2. Start Revit, open a project
  3. Open Dynamo, then open DuplicateMarkValuesFromID file from here
  4. Click Run…

Basically, it iterates through each Category in the left most part of the diagram, and sets the Mark parameter to the Element ID. If you aren’t using Mark for anything else, this will instantly clear duplicate mark warnings for those Categories. You could expand or reduce the list by adding or removing Categories and All Elements of Category node sets.

I made a trimmed down version for one Category (Sprinklers), but you can use this to choose a specific Category if you just want to do one at a time.

Thanks to this email from Troy:
Here you go. Feel free to post it and use it as you wish. It is fairly straightforward.

At the left is all of the categories I was checking in my model (mostly mechanical and plumbing). To add or change them just copy and paste the two left boxes, then add an array to the list create. The list count and watch to the top are just there to tell me how many items are being modified. I did about 30,000 objects in all of 30 seconds in one button push.

I’m no expert with Dynamo but I just did this with a spare hour I had int he morning.

I obviously take no responsibility for any damage it may do to any projects, files or computers etc etc.

Regards,
Troy

I’ve spent the past year working in a coordination role on the new Royal Adelaide Hospital project. The sheer number and complexity of the Revit models involved is immense. But here is something interesting:

basically every contractor who works on this project is
required to deliver their work in Revit format.

So… if Revit is good enough for the 3rd most expensive building in the world, don’t you think it’s time you took some action? Maybe its time to get Revit, get learning, and enjoy the ride!

According to Emporis:
The most expensive buildings in the world | Statistics | EMPORIS
and via
The 9 Most Expensive Buildings Ever Aren’t What You’d Expect

Here is what it looks like today, 13 February 2015:

Some related documents:
http://www.sahp.com.au/downloads/Fact_Sheet_09_%20BIM.pdf

http://www.sth.com.au/site/DefaultSite/filesystem/documents/2015%20Publications/2014.03.04_ANCR_New%20Royal%20Adelaide%20edit.pdf

For some projects, Revit Warnings become a metric in model audit processes (this may be regardless of how much impact those warnings may have in real terms). For example, perhaps your model has become populated with many “Elements have duplicate ‘Mark’ values“. How can we fix these quickly?

I explored a number of options, and I think I have found the easiest. In one particular situation, the Mark value was not important for documentation, and it was simply necessary to make them unique to clear the warnings. What if we could also grab some otherwise unavailable information and apply it to the item? Like Element ID or GUID?

Bonus Tools can do that. Here’s the steps:

  1. Get Bonus Tools
  2. Open your RVT model, check the Warnings dialog, and see what Category is affected
  3. In Bonus Tools 1 ribbon, start Copy Parameter tool
  4. Pick options as per screenshot below

After clicking Ok, the tool will quickly copy the unique ID into the Mark parameter. You can now tag it or schedule it (keeping in mind that it is a static value and may need to be updated from time to time). What I like is how quickly the tool runs – it can do an entire category of thousands of elements in a minute or so.

Note: you could also use Bonus Tools to:

  1. Export multiple categories to Excel using a Multi-Category Schedule – “Export Schedule to Excel”)
  2. Adjust the Mark quickly in Excel with autofill, and 
  3. Re-import to Revit. This method is a bit slower, but you can have more control over how the parameter looks, and you can span multiple categories with unique-yet-readable Mark values.

There have been various other automated ways suggested to fix this over the years, such as:
Automatic Numbering of Elements Within Revit 2015 – Cadline Community 
using element positioning

Revit OpEd: Duplicate Mark Values
using Model Review
 
UPDATE: Recent updates to Bonus Tools include

  • new “Show Warnings” tool (applies a temporary Hide/Isolate after you select a html warning export from Revit) and 
  • a “Renumber Categories” tool (select multiple elements on different categories and it will renumber all elements on those categories by pushing the Element ID into the Mark parameter. It is very fast)

When building Revit addins, you may want to implement some specific selection filter. Here is some more good stuff via Alexander Buschmann and The Building Coder:
The zip file SelFilters.zip contains

  • the SelFilter class, 
  • the interface files, an 
  • example external command
    using some of the SelFilter functionality, an 
  • add-in manifest file for
    the example command and a 
  • small Revit project to test it in.

Source:
The Building Coder: SelFilter, a Powerful Generic Selection Filter Utility

To try it out:

  1. In Visual Studio (I use Express 2013 for Windows Desktop), make a new Class Library Project
  2. File – Save project as – RevitSelectionFilters.csproj
  3. Add RevitAPI.dll and RevitAPIUI.dll references (2014)
  4. Add – Existing Items. Choose all the .cs files from the zip
  5. Set project properties Assembly Name and Default namespace to RevitSelectionFilters
  6. Save All
  7. Build Solution
  8. Copy
    SelectionTest.addin and RevitSelectionFilters.dll
    to C:ProgramDataAutodeskRevitAddins2014

Related screenshots:

And screencast showing the examples:

Good intro to Revit customization:
http://help.autodesk.com.s3.amazonaws.com/sfdcarticles/kA230000000tiXXCAY/handout_2116_CM2116.pdf

From the help:
Help: External Commands

Setting up an External Command in Revit 2015:
EXTERNAL COMMAND IN 10 STEPS FOR REVIT 2015 API