August 2012 » Page 2 of 4 » What Revit Wants

ArchiCAD and Revit Interoperability – Free Downloads

August 23, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Free Add-In developed for use by Autodesk Revit programs in the Structure and MEP disciplines. This application is recommended for use with IFC-based model exchange between GRAPHISOFT ArchiCAD and Revit applications. The Add-In for Revit applications variously enables direct import of ArchiCAD IFC models and IFC model export to ArchiCAD, or serves to optimize Revit’s standard IFC import and export functions used to exchange data with ArchiCAD.

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Interoperability Downloads

The download page linked above was updated: Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Heads up – Revit3D

Australian BIM and IPD Resources

August 22, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

First of all, this was a bit too funny not to share:

Finally! I am now subscribed to BIM itself! What will this new entity reveal? Has BIM become self-aware?

Enough of that…

From the BIM/IPD [AUS] website:
The Australian Institute of Architects and Consult Australia formed a BIM and IPD Steering Group in mid-2011 with participation of leading experts from architecture, engineering and construction. The purpose of this group is to develop resources and guidelines for practitioners in the Australian building industry. The Steering Group has formed four Working Groups with focus on particular themes to jointly produce material that will be managed and updated via this website.

There are a few handy resource pages, including the following:


BIM QnA >		BIM STANDARDS >
BIM GLOSSARY >		COLLABORATION DOCUMENTS >
REPORTS >		LEGAL DOCUMENTS >
WORKING GROUP PUBLICATIONS >		CONTENT LIBRARIES >
		REPORTS >

How to find Array Groups in the Revit 2013 Project Browser

August 21, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

I previously posted about how to duplicate Array Group types and swap them in and out here.

Interestingly, I created a detail Array Group in Revit 2013 today and noticed that it did not immediately appear in the Project Browser. Further to this, I could not Duplicate or Rename the Array Group Type. What to do?

The short answer – group the Array Group. This will force Revit to populate the Project Browser with the Array Group type name. It also allows you to Duplicate and Rename the Array Group. All of this then allows you to use the swap-in-swap-out method I linked to above.

Watch the short video here:

How to override Room Separation lines using the Keyboard only

August 21, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Follow these steps:

That should get you to the Room Separation line entry in Visibility / Graphics. Then, you can:

press Spacebar to toggle visibility on / off
press Right Arrow, then Spacebar to open the Override sub-dialog

As you probably know, I’m a big believer in Keyboard Shortcuts.

However, in all honesty, if you have mouse and are using Revit 2013, it is probably going to be quicker to:

Select a Room Separation line
Right-click
Override Graphics in View – By Category…

Parenting Your Design – "at least it was clear who did what, how, and when"

August 19, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

This interesting article appeared on AUGI recently. It likens building procurement with what it takes to raise a child … an allegory that, while seeming a little far-fetched, it does seem to carry through quite consistently. Here are a few quotes:

We are doing this collaboration trick together on multi-gazillion dollar projects, based on the rudimentary idea that we all, to some degree, use the same definition. To me that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. BIM was supposed to make all this more easy. We were supposed to make the entire design and build process less prone to errors. Yet, while we were doing our thing for a few hundred years with those awful “traditional” methods, at least it was clear who did what, how, and when.
…

When we look at the design process from first conceptual design (birth) to being construction-ready (graduation), we, the professionals in the AEC industry, need to teach our buildings.

The BIM philosophy states that we should do this as a continuous process with a regular addition of skills without gaps or dropoffs.

To do that, we need an educational plan, called a BIM Execution Plan, which defines who does what, when, where and how; and perhaps most importantly, illustrates the ways in which all these elements are tied together.

IPD is a logical next step, where we get one team of teachers to work the educational plan throughout the entire process of growing up. When you use IPD to nurture a building, the BIM-E/BEP is called an IPDP.

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Parenting Your Design – BIM & IPD | AUGI

Funny Revit Error Messages

August 16, 2012January 14, 2020 Luke Johnson

Go Team Leo:

Helpful…

Revit time travel?

Ever felt this way? (via (@apertedesign)

Even Revit knows that new features will be added in the future:

This post used to be titled Another dimension beyond XYZ? Inches to the fourth power …
but I have decided to collect funny Revit error messages and put them all here.

I received this message from Revit recently:

Revit, Navisworks and IFC – what about Parts?

August 16, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Some tips on using IFC with Parts from http://danielgijsbers.blogspot.com/2012/08/revit-parts-and-ifc.html

It’s important when you export a Revit model to IFC that the following conditions are met:

Export with “Current View Only” option
Parts must be visible in the view
If the “Split Walls and Columns By Level” option is chosen, then wall parts will be assigned to the appropriate level as determined by their spatial position

Be aware:

Parts import / export done for all categories except Roofs

Parts import from IFC : only geometry is imported not the parts information

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Revit parts and IFC

Area Calculation Totals – Rounding and Precision

August 16, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

The problem – even when you use Rounding (by changing precision settings in the schedule), the totals are still calculated from the most accurate measurement Revit has available. So, for 3 areas of 4.4m² Revit says that:
4 + 4 + 4 = 13m²

One workaround is to convert the Areas into Integers (using a Calculated Parameter), and hide the original Area column … still doesn’t exactly work sometimes. While you get an illusion of consistency, you tend to lose precision. The reason is that the overall rounding of the figures does not necessarily match the individual rounding of figures.

For example, lets say you have 3 areas of 4.4m² each. Using rounding to 0 decimal places by using the precision settings, you will get 13m² for the total, but using the integer method above you will get a less accurate but more consistent 12m².

I wonder if a percentage based technique could be used? It still wouldn’t be ideal, particularly if there were some ‘dumb’ constants that had to be added to Calculated Parameters.

What about you? How do you solve this precision vs consistency problem? One obvious way is to simply use more decimal places in your schedule – but then you cannot use the Integer method, and you can still run into the same problem… For example, 3 areas of 14.45m², using rounding to 1 decimal place:
4.5 + 4.5 + 4.5 = 13.4m²

Download the example file here

Here is what the Integer method looks like:

Some other info:
It’s possible with ordinary schedules too… There are a few things you need to do:

1. Sort your schedule on the units you want to differentiate on.
2. Add a calculated value, percentage, which calculates the percentage of a single element to the unit total (that’s why you need to sort on units, otherwise you can’t use the unit total in the percentage calculation)
3. Multiply Area by percentage in a calculated value, and check the “calculate totals”
4. Check off “Itemize every instance”. If you did it correctly it now shows proper totals.

This takes some fudging to get it right. If you can’t get it done, post an example.
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2012: Total Cost in a schedule – Page 2

Do you find that sometimes it is "hopelessly tedious to manage this data" in Revit?

August 15, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Mario Guttman does – he is a Senior Associate and the Firmwide Design Applications Research Leader for Perkins+Will. He is also the author of the Whitefeet Revit Menu Utilities.

He has changed the way that he provides access to his public downloads – go here.

In the video below, he speaks about the development of the Whitefeet suite. Here are a few quotes:

“I want to own the automation of my own profession.”

“I’m now part of a large community that has a very short attention span.”

“Let’s not become ‘knowledge Machine Operators’ “

“Own your own value proposition.”

Convert All Masses (including in-place Mass) to Generic Models via IFC

August 9, 2012May 7, 2017 Luke Johnson

Quite simple really. These steps were tested using Revit 2013.

Select all masses, Group, and then Save as Library – Group
Open the RVT from step 1
R button – Export – Export Options – IFC Options
Set Mass and sublevel Form to IfcBuildingElementProxy (copy-paste from another field)
Ok
R button – Export – IFC
R button – Open – IFC
Your new file has all the same Forms, but instead of being Masses, they are now of Generic Model category. You can copy-paste them back into the original file, and either delete or hide the original Masses.

You could vary some of these steps to change the target category. But once you have the in-place Generic Models, you can switch them to basically any Category you like.

Month: August 2012