Today is the 21 March 2014.  Last year, the NDA was lifted on Revit 2013 around 27 March.  There have been whispers of Revit 2014 features getting released on the LARUG blog, over at Revit OpEd and a few things happening on Twitter.  LARUG even has a little countdown widget to – guess which date – March 27, 2013.

So, I think I’ll just get ahead of the game a bit here…
To find out all the new features of Revit 2014, head over to http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com.au/ (insert sub page here: [http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/whats-new-in-revit-2014.html] on or around March 27 🙂

Just for reference, this was Dave Light’s post from last year, posted 27 March (it still gets reposted nearly every week to someone’s blog, somewhere in the world):
Revit: What’s new in Autodesk Revit 2013?

A new Revit addin from Dima over at dp stuff can do that – it looks like this:


The tool is pretty straightforward, so I will try to describe just in a few words how it works (the demo video in the beginning of the post shows it as well).
– assuming you already installed the WorksetExplorer, run the tool from dpStuff Utils in Add-on tab.
– the dialog box will open and in the “tree” your elements will be sorted by workset, then by category, then by family, then by type.
– every “branch” will have a name and the amount of elements on it in parentheses.
– once you see something that shouldn’t be on a particular workset then you can select the branch and click “Select Elements” button – that will add elements that belong to this branch to selection.
– now you can send them to the workset they are supposed to be on.
– repeat until all worksets are in good shape.
You can download the WorksetExplorer add-on from our download page or directly from this link.

via
dp Stuff: WorksetExplorer Revit Add In – What’s On Your Worksets?

Click on the little satellite dish, then InfoCenter settings:

Go to RSS Feeds and click Add, then copy and paste the following string:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=RevitHelp

Done!

While you are at it, why not add What Revit Wants:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WhatRevitWants

Notes:
Twitter RSS that doesn’t work in Communications Centre:
https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=RevitHelp

Read more:
Is there any way to display my tweets via an rss url? | Twitter Developers:

Coming from an AutoCAD background, it comes as second nature to me to draft bounds (boundaries) in AutoCAD.  Set your Units to Deg/Min/Sec, set north to 0 degrees and use Clockwise, then start typing and use the @ symbol to start the new line at the current location.  Its logical and reliable.  In Australia, we generally have all our survey reduced to that form – 0 degrees for North, then Clockwise bearings related to that.

Here is my experience with using Revit Property Lines as they were intended (?) to be used…

First step is to enable the Degrees from N/S setting in your Site Settings:

Then, go to a Plan View and set it to True North.  Start the Property Line tool and select Create by Entering Distances and Bearings.

Ok, basically you enter the length, the angle, and choose either N/S and E/W.  That’s it.  But what settings should you choose?

You always need to reduce your bearing dimension to something between 0 and 90 degrees (the dialog will not accept anything outside of this).  You can do this using a formula, like:

=180-140° 00′ 35″

Then you use the N/S and E/W switch to mirror or flip the dimension bearing.  In some cases, it is easier just to hit OK and see which way it is heading, then switch between the N/S and E/W settings till it looks right.  If it still doesn’t work, you may need to orient it inversely against 90 degrees, by doing something like:

=90-0° 44′ 10″

Let’s do an example.  Here is the Property Line segment we want to make:

We can’t use 261 degrees, so we use a formula to minus 180 from that angle.  Then, as my previous line was using S and W, I set those to the new line.  It works!  Here is what it looks like:

You can see that my line is slightly off the background image – this will be fixed once the whole boundary has been input (it can be moved at that point).

To reduce the above unit entry process into a simple step-by-step:

  1. Using an inplace formula, subtract 90,180 or 270 from the bearing to make it less than 90.
  2. Choose a quadrant into which the line will protrude from a given starting point -NE,SE,SW,NW
  3. If the line still does not match, subtract the bearing from 90 to correct it (flip within the target quadrant).

Good things about Revit Property Lines based on tables:

  • You can quickly check the data
  • Data can be changed relatively easily
  • Closing line can be added

Bad things:

  • Can be slow and repetitive

Interestingly, once you have created your Property Line, you can turn off the NS/EW setting in Site Settings, and when you Edit the Table, it will show all boundaries related to True North:

Further reading:
Property Lines by Distances & Bearings missing N/S and E/W – The Revit Clinic

Revit Architecture 2010 User’s Guide: Creating Property Lines with Survey Data

RevitCity.com | Property Lines

I would love to be able to press one button and see all of the current Autodesk products that I have installed disappear.  No, I’m not souring on Autodesk 🙂  It’s just that often the different suites and products do not play nice when trying to install them in an environment with existing Autodesk products of the same generation.

Autodesk has provided some tools to automatically uninstall certain products:

How to perform an automated uninstallation of the AutoCAD Design Suite 2013 family of products
The provided uninstall tool will detect and uninstall 32-bit or 64-bit versions of AutoCAD Design Suite 2013 (English only).

ADSUninstallTool.exe (exe – 844Kb)

How to perform an automated uninstallation of AutoCAD 2012 and Autodesk Design Suite 2012 Family Products
The uninstall tool will remove folders and registry keys related to the uninstalled product and plug-ins.

psebuninstalltool.exe (exe – 846Kb)

Unfortunately, I can not find tools to uninstall all Autodesk products of all generations, nor can I find specific tools to uninstall Building Design Suites. Can you find anything?

Try this:
Make sure that you are using the Face option for placing the component.
Turn off the Original Path by selecting the Divided Path and using:

Start the place Component command.
Make sure that you pick a Node on the Divided Path to place the Component.

The Repeat button should now be visible.

Note: you can set a Node of the Divided Path as a workplane (the Placement Plane dropdown in the Options bar will read “Divided Path”), but placing a Component on such a workplane will likely mean that the Repeat button will be grayed out.