Month: August 2011

Quad monitor setup using Geforce and Quadro mixture

Luke Johnson

My main video card is a Nvidia Quadro FX 580.  However, I wanted to run more than two monitors.  So I borrowed a old GeForce 7300 LE and installed it into one of the other PCI-E slots on my Gigabyte EX58-UD4 motherboard.

This is NOT an SLI rig.  But I can run it in a ‘hybrid mode’ where I’m essentially getting access to 4 monitors.  I try to make sure that I always run my main Revit instance on the monitor that is plugged into the ‘good’ FX 580 video card.

The main lesson here is that you need to install GeForce drivers to make this all happen properly.  The Quadro drivers do not seem to work very well in this hybrid setup. 

I am running 275.33 drivers, which you can download from here:
GeForce 275.33 Driver

This GeForce driver also includes cool stuff like overclocking options in the Nvidia Control Panel.

PC on a USB Stick for $25

Luke Johnson

Game developer David Braben has developed a $25 PC, in a USB stick with a HDMI port on one end and a USB port on the other.  The hardware inside is a 700MHz ARM11 processor with 128MB of RAM, together with 1080p graphics output and Linux operation.

This solution would put a slightly different spin on ‘mobile and affordable Revit-ing’ 🙂  It sure would take some coaxing to get Revit to run on this hardware though!

via
PC on a USB Stick for $25 | Geek with Laptop

Placing a Spot Dimension in a Detail Group

Luke Johnson

When in Edit Mode for a given Detail Group, the Spot Dimension tools are grayed out.

However, if you place the Spot Dimension OUTSIDE the Detail Group, and then ‘Add’ it to the Group – Revit is quite happy.  You can even place a Spot Coordinate in a Detail Group (in Plan View), copy the Group instance, and then drag the copied Group around with the Spot Coordinate continuously updating!

Here is a quick step-by-step:

  1. Exit the editing mode for the Detail Group
  2. Place the Spot Dimension (referencing an element inside the Detail Group)
  3. Edit the Group
  4. Use the ‘Add’ tool to add the Spot Dimension to the Detail Group
  5. Finish Group

 This works for Spot Coordinates in Plan View Detail Groups, and it works for Spot Elevations and Spot Slopes in Section / Elevation Detail Groups…