Tricks from the 45 Tips

Luke Johnson

I recently viewed the class 45 Autodesk® Revit® Tips in 45 Minutes (Smith, Chad) on AU Virtual.  It was an excellent class.  Here are two things that I learnt:

You can Tab BETWEEN elements – in other words, select one wall in a chain of walls, then highlight another wall in the chain and press Tab.  Only those walls in-between the two will be selected!

Pre-select when Filtering – before making a Filter, select an element first.  Then go View – Filters – click on the ‘New Filter’ icon.  The Category of the element that you select is automatically pre-selected for the new Filter!

Thought-provoking excerpts on form derivation and design analysis

Luke Johnson

Here are a few quotes from a recent review of a symposium at the Design the Dynamic conference by Generative Design (Bold emphasis added by me.)

” Design is described as a process that stretches between the implicit and the explicit. While a sketch is an implicit design model, BIM is an explicit construction model. “

” While some CAD companies rely on strategies that depend on the capabilities that they have developed or acquired, some rely more on the energies and abilities the vibrant communities that they have nurtured around their offerings. “

” Whiles the tools like Vasari reduced the complexity, they were discovered to be less accurate than more advanced analytical tools such as ANSYS that are usually operated by experts.  However, tools like Vasari were found to be useful despite their limitations and misuse by the “Jonny English of CFD” as a presenter described himself, because they can be fixed quickly with a bit of timely expert input. “

” Scripting seemed to have entered the center stage. Unnoticed by academics, it entered academia through the back doors for student usage, thanks to tools such as Grasshopper. Perhaps because it had no known association to any ancient ideas of orders, it remained unnoticed by academics though now some may wish to authenticate it belatedly, given its current dominance…
Architects are now increasingly addicted to the richness of form authored by code. Scripting is most definitely here to stay. “

Quotes via, and Read More at:
What is missing ? � Generative Design

Image from http://generativedesign.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/whats-missing/

Anti Revit Twitter feed ?

Luke Johnson

Just as being overly positive about Revit leads to inflated expectations, if you are overly negative about it eventually people will realize you were wrong – and then your credibility will be in question.  Here are a few tweets from @RevitFacts – can you tell me if this is a good tweeter to follow, or perhaps someone with a particular bias?

FACT: #Revit has no Drag & Drop capability for external content like #ArchiCAD

Did you know RAM requirements are still 20 times model file size!

Did you know there is A LOT of customizing required (e.g Tags for Walls, Doors, Windows) compare to other #CAD softwares.

Revit is not compatable with #MAC :(.

via
Revit Facts (revitfacts) on Twitter

I guess these statements are true, in some ways – but I think RevitFacts may perhaps be trying to make us switch to ArchiCAD 🙂

Dynamo on gitHub

Luke Johnson

This previous post on using a Microsoft Kinect in Revit generated quite a bit of interest. Do you want to get more involved with Dynamo?  Quote:

… go to the Dynamo site on gitHub, download the source or the executeables and open an issue if there’s a feature you’d like to see implemented. I’m in the process of putting together a tutorial for how to create your own nodes. In the meantime, if you’re a developer and you want to take a crack at coding your own components for Dynamo drop me an email, and I’d be happy to help you get up and running.

via
This is the software you’ve been waiting for… (Ian Keogh)

From the gitHub page:
Dynamo: Visual Programming for Revit
This project was started by Ian Keough. The intent of this project is to provide a code playground for building interesting parametric functionality on top of that already offered by Revit, and to do so with a graphical interface that allows you to share your work with others less inclined to write code themselves.

Area and Color Scheme Problems??

Luke Johnson

The last color scheme of some area schemes were lost, therefore the color fill function for that area scheme was also lost in the model and the user is unable to assign it color schemes.

Solution

To restore a default color scheme for these problematic area schemes in the Revit Project follow these steps.
  1. Create a new Revit project (project1.rvt) with default template.
  2. In project1.rvt, open the Home > Room & Area > Area and Volume Computations dialog.
  3. On the Area Schemes tab, click the New button to create an area scheme and rename it to match the Area scheme name in the Revit project containing the missing color schemes.
  4. Click OK to exit the dialog.
  5. Switch to the original Revit project file and go to Manage > Transfer Project Standards.
  6. In the dialog, choose Copy from: Project1.
  7. Click the Check None button and select Color Fill Schemes.
  8. Click OK.

via
Autodesk – Autodesk Revit Architecture Services & Support – Area schemes have lost their color schemes