Plan ahead when making a family

Luke Johnson

Sometimes, putting a bit of thought and planning into your family design well lead to far better results than simply ‘diving in there’.  The following post shows a list of such requirements.  Essentially, you write a ‘brief’ for your family, and then seek to meet the requirements of that brief.

Example at this link

However, at times I do things the complete wrong way about – like modelling them inplace, then converting them to component families and trying to figure out the origin and constraints later on – very messy and definitely not best_practice 🙂

 

Beware of Windows Update – nVidia Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.2

Luke Johnson

Windows Update is pushing an Nvidia driver update package as an Important update now (they are usually offered as ‘optional’).  In my case, it was listed as:
nVidia – Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.2, Other hardware – NVIDIA Quadro FX 580

I think this update is something that is aiming to align Windows 7 with Windows 8 DirectX 11 / 11.1.

Most tech / IT people recommend against using Windows Update to update graphics drivers.  I’m not saying that it will definitely cause you a problem … but its probably safer to use Autodesk certified drivers (select ‘Graphics’) at this stage.

If you want to go ahead and install it, let us know how you fare with Revit 🙂

EDIT related tweets:

Further reading:
View topic – Portions of DX 11.1 is being made available on Win 7 | Widescreen Gaming Forum

Optional update in windows update is giving me a blue screen. – Windows 7 Forums

M$ pushing nVida drivers as an ‘Important’ update…

 Windows Update, nVidia – Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1… – Guru3D.com Forums

Is this Microsofts way of saying it’s a new Nvidia driver?

How to reset the scale of an imported image to its original values

Luke Johnson

Once you have imported an image into Revit and then warped it (by unticking the Lock Proportions box and resizing it), then it is not immediately evident how you can reset it to 1:1 (its default X:Y state).  Even if you toggle the tick box, it doesn’t reset the scale to be un-warped.

Here is how you can do it:

  1. Select image and Edit Type
  2. Take note of the pixel sizes
  3. Directly set the image size using these values in the instance properties
  4. Tick the Lock Proportions box

Also, did you notice that Revit records where the image was originally loaded from?  Even though there is no ‘link’ as such, this does allow you to find and edit the source image easily.

    What is your favourite image editing program?

    Luke Johnson

    Some of you may be surprised to know that Windows Photo Viewer and Office Picture Manager are not the only ways to view and edit image files 🙂  Here are three of my favourites:

    1)  Irfanview has been updated to version 4.35.  You can download from CNET here.  This is a superfast image viewing and editing program.  I love it for its highly adjustable batch image processing ability.

    You can download all the current plugins from here.  This includes a new plugin that will allow Irfanview to open DXF files, as per this list.  The DXF plugin is provided by BabaCAD – they also provide free CAD software for download at http://www.babacad.com/index.html

    2)  Paint.NET – quick and easy

    3)  Photoshop – awesome filters and effects, and great at enhancing still photos of your buildings

    4) GIMP – Andy Milburn reminded me about this in the comments.  I haven’t used it for a long while, but it is essentially a free replacement for Photoshop.

    5) pixlr – another great tip from the comments.  RicardoCC referred me to this online image editor that was actually purchased by Autodesk.  Have you tried it yet?

    Free utility that will sort all of your families by Category!

    Luke Johnson

    From time to time, I export all of the families in a project and add it to our Library as a ‘snapshot’ of where our families were at during that project.  However, Revit still does not export the families into folders by Category (there used to be an add-in that did this).

    Happily, a new free tool from Kiwi Codes will take a folder and then sort all of the RFAs into folders by Category for you!

    1. Download (need to submit email as per image below). 
      You can also download it from Autodesk Exchange. (direct link)
    2. Install
    3. Run from Revit

      I did a test run of this on about 200 families – it sorted them in a couple of minutes.  If you don’t know how to export families from a Project, just go:

      1. File – Save As
      2. Library
      3. Family
      4. All families

      From their website:
      This tool takes all the families located in the specified folder and sub folders and organizes them into Category named folders in the target directory.
      via
      Family Categorizer | Products | Kiwi Codes Solutions Ltd

      Heads-up via
      Family Categorizer | AEC-APPS

      EDIT 2 – I have received confirmation from the Director of Kiwi Codes that the tool is “totally Free and not time locked …”

      EDIT – While the website clearly states ‘This tool is free’ (see image above), I received the following by email:
      Thank you for your interest in Family Categorizer and downloading the 21 day trial. We hope that you see the benefits that Family Categorizer will bring to your business like others worldwide are reporting.
       

      The difference between an Active Dimension and a Selected Label in the Revit Family Editor

      Luke Johnson

      There are at least two distinct ways to move an item via dimension edit in the Family Editor, but they can have very different results.  See video:

      My video is directly derivative of one from Steve Stafford last week.  Steve demonstrated some interesting behaviour along basically the same lines at:
      Revit OpEd: Two Minutes with Constraint Quirkiness

      Using Divide and Repeat for Site Masterplanning

      Luke Johnson

      You will find below a visual diary of some site master planning options – the Divide and Repeat tool was used to layout out the units.

      Here is a very concise how-to:

      1. Make a new Mass or Adaptive family (in-place or component)
      2. Draw a Spline
      3. Select it and hit Divide Path
      4. Place a two-point based Generic Model Adaptive family spanning two of the points
      5. Select it, and then click the Repeat button

      The images below will tell you more:

      Further reading:
      Use Divide and Repeat to Create A Curved (elevation) Railing – WikiHelp