Is anyone still here?

Yes!! And it isn’t an AI bot either! I know it has been a bit quiet around What Revit Wants lately, and you might have guessed that it has something to do with a little startup called Deep Space

I hope to one day share the whole story from Architectural drafting, to Revit, to Virtual Built Technology (BIM and VDC Consulting), to Revizto, and finally to where we are today – Deep Space!

For now, I just wanted to reconnect and get you thinking…

  • What will 2024 hold for our industry?
  • Where will the AI stuff finally land?
  • Will the global economy stabilise and accelerate?

What Revit Wants has always been about sharing. Sharing insight. Sharing best practice. Sharing the best tools. Sharing the best and craziest hacks to get your job done. And that’s not going to change.

But we are going to talk more about data. About automation. About AI – both real and imagined. About changing things for the better. About breaking down barriers. Barriers that divide us. Barriers in technology. Barriers in communication. Philosophical barriers. Our own self enforced mental barriers!

When I started using Revit, I knew it would be transformative. It was a smarter way to work! When we discovered Revizto, I was glad someone had built the tool I had sketched and prototyped in 2014 – an integrated collaboration platform for 2D, 3D and more. As we built Deep Space, we knew we were entering a new generation – The Next Generation. Something that would be practical, data-focused, agnostic, embodied with years of domain expertise. We called our proprietary engine “Core Thread Technology”.

Anybody can build dashboards, but only Deep Space has a data-first, structured, relational, historical, self aware, replicated, highly available, predictable, tenanted engine for capturing, storing and automating real digital design and construction workflows at both project and portfolio level…

I spoke to someone recently and we talked about “data, the new gold”. He laughed and said that phrase was used in some industries back in the 90s!! So ‘data’ isn’t really new. But for specific industries, at various times, it gets unearthed and polished and shaped into something valuable. That is happening rapidly now in AEC and Digital Construction. That is what Deep Space was built to do. Mine this AEC golden data, clean it, polish it, connect it with other gems of information and make something both beautiful and useful and transformative. Let’s actually make the most of the data we have!

Let’s use data to build better projects faster, and let’s start right now.

Look out for more posts and updates coming soon…

I have been receiving a few requests for access to files that were previously linked to What Revit Wants via Google Drive. Somewhere along the line, Google (in its wisdom) decided to change security requirements and now my inbox has been filling up with ‘Share requests’. My opinion on Google business practices in general is pretty well known after this saga.

Some of the more popular files requested in recent times have been:

  • CurvedMullionLJ.zip – from post here about Curved Mullions
  • SetMarksToElementID.zip – from post here
  • PointCloud.zip – from post here
  • Generic Label.rfa – from post here
  • URL Text Symbol Annotation D download.rfa – from post here

In any case, I have now decided to move the hosting of What Revit Wants files and resources to wrw.is and you can view and download them all below.

Note: you will need to login to this site FIRST to see and download the files.

Over at Virtual Built Technology, we have an aspirational view of our industry – that together, we can arrive at a set of best practice workflows for BIM and VDC projects.

We have been developing and refining our own set of internal workflows for a number of years, and today we would like to start sharing those with the world.

We will periodically post best practice workflows in the Resources menu on our site.

bim and vdc resources

From here you can browse to various resource types, including:

  • Workflows – for workflow documents and flow charts
  • Content – for BIM files like Revit templates and families
  • Automation – for scripts, like Dynamo graphs

The individual resource pages are also fully Disqus comment enabled, so you can start a conversation there. Let us know if you think we are on the right track… or not 🙂

Already, you will find our How to Use a Revit Control File guide, and a script that will automatically create section-boxed 3D views from a Revit Control File.

Also, from anywhere on our website you can immediately contact us using the Intercom badge at the bottom right of the screen – it looks like this:

Click on it anytime and let us know if you have any questions or suggestions, or would like assistance with your BIM and VDC projects.

We look forward to engaging with you soon!


Way back in 2008, I was super excited about all things Revit and started What Revit Wants. I’m still super excited about Revit and BIM, and this is just a quick note to say thank you for all of your recent and ongoing support (like your replies here and here). What Revit Wants is not going away! We have had an interesting couple of weeks but we are back with more features than ever on a new web hosting platform.

Over on the previous host, What Revit Wants had received over 6.7 million page views! I’m really motivated to continue sharing with such a huge audience. I look forward to engaging with you on social media and via your comments too.

A little bit of housekeeping…

  • The main URL for What Revit Wants is now https://wrw.is/  If you have your own blog or site and you have linked to What Revit Wants, please update those links to the new site. Thank you so much!
  • While the Feedburner feed is currently still alive, if you do use RSS I recommend that you update your subscription to the official feed at https://wrw.is/feed/
  • You can follow me on Twitter @lukeyjohnson
  • We also have a Facebook page here.
  • Have a Suggestion about how we can improve What Revit Wants. Head over to this page and add a comment. Thanks!

And for the first time, What Revit Wants will be set up to send newsletters to subscribers. Look out for the first one in your inbox soon…

Over the years I have used many workarounds to get things done in Revit, and usually I post about how to do it, and sometimes I offer a family or RVT download too. However, some of these resources are now deeply buried in the blog history (hard to believe I’ve been doing this since 2008!)

With that in mind, I have created this post to share some of the more useful and interesting downloads with you… again 🙂 I’ll try to keep this page updated with the current set of What Revit Wants freebies and downloads.

I hope you enjoy the huge range of samples, workarounds, hacks and scripts linked below. Typically the title of the download is the link to the family, and the next line is the source post:
Download Link
Source Link

Feel free to comment to let me know if these are useful, or if they are not 🙂 In some cases, Revit has ‘caught up’ and the older workarounds are no longer necessary.

Also, for resources I create and share I will now use the tag WRWdownloads for easy discoverability.

UPDATE: Refer to this page and use the Search Feature to find the files you want


FAMILIES and PROJECTS

Slanted Wall Family
What Revit Wants: Three ways to Model a Slanted or Tilted Wall in Revit (download)

Spot Slopes on Ramps
What Revit Wants: How to tag Ramp slopes in Revit 2013 and Revit 2014 with Slot Slope tool

Topography to Lofted Mass Surface Conversion
What Revit Wants: Convert Revit Topography into Massing Forms

Random Tree Heights and Locations
What Revit Wants: Random Tree Heights and Locations in Revit – make a forest in just a few clicks

Repeated Component Array
What Revit Wants: Why a Repeated component on a Divided Line Path is better than an Array

Issue Tracking Tool in Revit
What Revit Wants: Intelligent Issue Tracking in Revit, with download.

Gradient Annotation Family
post?

Detail Item for Scaling Images
What Revit Wants: Take the Guesswork out of Scaling an Image in Revit

Datum Scope Box Visibility
What Revit Wants: How to Show Linked Scope Boxes and Grids in a Host Plan View by Default

Level Parameter Tag workaround
What Revit Wants: Getting access to the Level parameter in Tags for Categories that don’t normally allow it

Detail Item Family with Adjustable Text (can be for dimensioning)
What Revit Wants: Detail Item Family with Adjustable Text – Dimensioning Tool

Generic Model family with a Scope Box in it that you can copy to other families:
Download family
From What Revit Wants: How to create a Scope Box in the Family Environment

2009 Mass
What Revit Wants: Using legacy mass forms in 2010 and 2011

Generic Label (automatic embedded tag)
What Revit Wants: How to add a label to a Component Family (automatic tag)

Mobius Strip
What Revit Wants: Mobius Strip Attempt with download 

URL Annotation for Hyperlink

or
Linker Symbol
From What Revit Wants: Launching Scripts and Programs directly from Revit

Super Void Generic Model Family for cutting anything
SuperVoid Family download
From What Revit Wants: Using a Super Void Generic Model to Cut Anything

Seamless Sphere
From What Revit Wants: Making a Seamless Sphere in Revit

Symbol for Use in Locked 3D Views
From What Revit Wants: Using Annotation Symbols in Locked 3D Views in Revit

Swappable Profiles in Adaptive Models
From What Revit Wants: How to Setup Adaptive Profiles to Allow Swapping between completely different Profile shapes (with free download)

Room Category Families
From What Revit Wants: You can break Revit by making Room families

Room Calculator for X and Y dimensions
From What Revit Wants: Room Dimensions X by Y – 2 methods in Revit

Family with RVT and DWG Link
What Revit Wants: Live and reloadable RVT and DWG Link inside a component RFA Family

Family with IFC Link
What Revit Wants: Link an IFC file into a Revit Family RFA File

Custom Railing Connections
From What Revit Wants: Custom Railing Connections in 10 steps (free sample download)


SCRIPTS

Make Link Index to all of your Revit Families
From What Revit Wants: Use a CMD script to create a Hyperlink index to all your Family RFA files

Enable and Disable Revit 2015 Addins
You can download both Powershell scripts here
From What Revit Wants: Script to Disable All Revit Addins  


ADDINS

Add Materials from Excel
From What Revit Wants: Add New Materials to Revit using an Excel file: including Cut and Fill Patterns, Transparency and RGB Values


EXCEL and Other

Duplicate Element Finder
What Revit Wants: Parse Element ID for quick deletion of “identical instances in the same place” errors

logo.png