Better coordination between Revit and Civil 3D? Yes please!

Luke Johnson

BIM Coordinator for AutoCAD® Civil 3D® and Autodesk® Revit® software is a free* technology preview that assists project team members with building and site grids.

Go to:
Autodesk Labs Utilities BIM Coordinator for AutoCAD Civil 3D and Revit

Heads up from BIM Apps:
http://bimapps.typepad.com/bim-apps/2012/05/share-coordinates-between-autocad-civil-3d-and-revit-structure.html

Forcing Revit 2013 Railing Parameters into upgraded Railing Types

Luke Johnson

Interesting tip from the Autodesk BIM Blog – after you upgrade Railings to 2013, the actual extended parameter values are not populated until you Duplicate the upgraded railing types…see image.

This goes for upgraded Project Templates too – you won’t see the additional parameters until the types are Duplicated.

via
Google Translate
of
http://bimblog.typepad.com/autodesk_bim_blog/2012/05/erweiterte-typenparameter-von-gel%C3%A4ndern-aus-vorg%C3%A4ngerversionen-anzeigen-revit-2013.html

Graphic Display Options in the Family Environment (2013)

Luke Johnson

In Revit 2013, the Properties Palette does not expose the Graphic Display Options button in the Family Environment:

However, you can still get to the Graphic Display Options by using the View Control Bar:

This is handy, because it lets you use the nice Transparency slider while editing complex families or when tracing over Raster Images.

On a side note, if you ever want to know what each part of the User Interface in Revit is officially called, check out this link.

Various methods to upgrade your office RFT files to 2013

Luke Johnson

In the past, a workflow was available in which you could rename older RFT files to RFA, then upgrade them to the most recent version of Revit (perhaps using a batch upgrade tool), then rename back to RFT.  This was one way to upgrade your customized family template files.  This method does not always work in Revit 2013, due to newly introduced restrictions.

There are still a few ways to upgrade your Template files, however:

  • Use the free File Upgrader add-in.
  • Make a new Family using the RFT file that you want to upgrade.  Then, save as RFA.  Navigate to the folder, then rename the RFA to RFT.  This is a slow, one-at-a-time method.

In some cases, you can still use the original workflow (rename the RFT to RFA and then open) – but this likely will only work on 2011 and older RFT files, not 2012 RFTs.

Confused yet?

Please comment if you have any tips or workarounds related to upgrading Template files.

Bring your Minecraft model into Blender

Luke Johnson

Have you made something cool and architectural in Minecraft and you want to make it real?  How about sending it out to Blender?  Direct CG has made a tutorial to show you how …

This tutorial covers:

  • downloading and installing the mcobj Minecraft to .obj exporter by quag
  • converting your Minecraft world into usable .obj format
  • importing your Minecraft world into Blender
  • rendering your first Minecraft image
  • how to showcase your world with clay materials with Fabio Russo’s Clay Render addon

If you then want to move the OBJ file between formats, check out my previous posts:
Sketchup tools – DWG import / export, OBJ importer, IFC importer

Convert OBJ, DXF, DAE and 3DS to FBX for free

Read on at:
Minecraft to Blender – directcg

Revit eStorage – time to add some external file data to your model!

Luke Johnson

What does Revit eStorage do?
Stores and Restores the data of an external file into Revit extensible storage on a selected element.

Download Revit e-Storage link

How to install (from the readme):
Copy the following files to the appropriate Revit Addins folder,
either “%AppData%AutodeskREVITAddins2013”
or “%AppData%AutodeskREVITAddins2012”:

– ADNPlugin-eStorage.addin: add-in manifest
– ADNPlugin-eStorage.bundle: bundle folder which contains all
other supporting materials

In this 30 second video example, I take a PDF file and save it in the extensible storage of a Raster Image in Revit, then I Restore the contents back out of the image into a PDF file again!

Using the ‘List’ button shows all of the file data stored in extensible storage in the current RVT project.

This actually reminds me a little bit of VEO Archive (a model linked document library) … the concept of attaching documents and file data to elements in a Building Information Model is actually VERY powerful!

EDIT:

Guess what – you can also store this file data in family RFA files!  Yay.  For example, I opened a Door family and then attached a PDF to a Text Note.  I then loaded this into a project, closed the source family, and opened it again FROM the project – and the extensible data stays with the Family. 

 


EDIT 2:

Jeremy Tammik actually describes how this works on page 8 of this PDF:
http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/files/cp6760-l_tammik_estorage.pdf

EDIT 3:

How about this for an idea – set up a File Browser drafting view with Text Notes.  Then, attach project related documents to these notes using eStorage.

  • This could be very handy in a Worksharing scenario as a way to push out Meeting Minutes / Agendas / Deadline documents inside the Revit model
  • You could even scale this idea up to Revit Server as a way to track, update and distribute project related documents throughout the globe!
EDIT 4:

What about embedding your Project Standards as a RVT file in eStorage?  Whenever you want to Transfer Project Standards, just save the file out, open it and go for it.

A few other links:
ADN Plugin of the Month main page

Autodesk Labs Utilities Plugin of the Month Updates

Heads up about eStorage from Revit Add-ons
http://revitaddons.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/estorage-for-revit-adn-plugin-of-month.html