Codeless Revit Customization – October 2011 AUGIWorld

Luke Johnson

The October 2011 AUGIWorld magazine contains an article titled ‘Codeless Revit Customization’.  You might think that it is about customizing the UI and Option settings.  However, it is actually a how-to guide on developing your own Template, including workflows for incorporating General Notes and adding typical CAD details.

The author, Ibrahim Hakki, also gives some tips on presenting your model to a Client and setting up Sheets in your Template to speed up documentation.

He also makes plenty of references to Star Trek, and some to Star Wars (which do your prefer?).  Spock and Kirk both get a mention.

Direct Link to article – http://issuu.com/augi/docs/aw201110hr/35

Download links for AUGIWorld October 2011:
Low Resolution PDF (5.3mb)
High Resolution PDF (50.3mb)

Issues | AUGI

NATSPEC BIM Portal

Luke Johnson

The review process for the NATSPEC National BIM Guide has been completed and it is now available for use.
Learn more about the project or download the NATSPEC National BIM Guide document set v1.0. [390 KB]
The associated NATSPEC BIM Object/Element Matrix can be downloaded separately here. [4 MB]

NATSPEC is a specification framework that is widely used here in Australia.  I received an email from Mark Cronin today that alerted me to the significant number of BIM related resources they have developed or facilited.

The main portal link is:
NATSPEC BIM Portal

On the projects page you can find links to a number of other resources, such as:
NATSPEC BIM Scheduling project
Start date: 2010 Status: Complete
NATSPEC undertook this project as an initial response to subscribers’ requests to develop a standardised Australian practice for the exchange of digital building information. The goal of the project is to recommend a consistent, systematic approach to allocating properties to BIM objects to facilitate the generation of useful schedules.
View pages about the project or download the project report.

Further information on BIM scheduling can be found at the Resources page

buildingSMART BIM survey
Start date: 2010 Status: Complete
NATSPEC hosted a survey on current patterns of use of BIM in Australia as part of the economic study commissioned by the Australian Government’s Built Environment Industry Innovation Council (BEIIC) to examine the potential for BIM to improve the productivity of the building sector. (See BEIIC BIM Economic study.)
See a summary of the survey results in Chapter 5 of the BEIIC study report . Click on link at bottom of page to download

Thanks again to Mark Cronin for the heads-up on this one!

Revit Minimum Room Size

Luke Johnson

Revit does not allow rooms to become smaller than certain dimensions – it simply switches to Not Enclosed when one dimension goes below about 276 mm (when using room separation lines on a rectangular room).  However, this dimension may be slightly different depending on the surrounding wall thicknesses.

The following videos demonstrate the limitation:

There is a forum thread at
2011 Minimum room size? – AUGI

On the forum, Dimitri Harvalias makes the following observations.
When using room separation lines the minimum size seems to be limited to about 1sf. When using walls it appears to have some relationship to the wall thickness used.
See the attached image.
If walls are 150 wide then the minimum dimension of the room is 150. If some of the walls are 300 and some are 150 then it bottoms out about 85mm. If all the surrounding walls are 300 then I can get it down to virtually nothing.

 

Introducing Revit Architecture 2012

Luke Johnson

An interesting packaged arrived on my desk on the 5 September 2011.  It contained a copy of the book Introducing Revit Architecture 2012.  Right from the outset, it can be seen that this book is targeted at new or beginner Revit users:
This book is for the new user who is looking to understand the fundamentals of Revit Architecture…

However, most advanced users would still agree that they learn something new every day.  This book does cover some advanced topics as well.

In the Introduction (page xviii) it is stated that the book assumes you know little or nothing about Revit Architecture.

It is nicely set out, with step-by-step guides and lots of screenshots.  It also has a nice glossy color insert, with some example projects.  At 682+ pages, it is a good size for a reference or even for some lunch-room reading.  It might be a good idea to obtain one for your practice, particularly if you have some staff who are just beginning to delve into Revit.

Starting on page 642, there is a Tips and Tricks section that includes some very useful information, including how to prepare CAD files for import in an intelligent and controlled manner.

To find out more, or to purchase, go to:
Main Sybex page : Introducing Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012 – Book Information – Sybex

As mentioned before, the download resources for this book are located at this link.

Quote:
This book does a nice job of providing lots of good information for the architectural designer in a practical method.
From
http://aectechtalk.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/revit-architecture-2012-book-review/

If you are interested in a book for more advanced users, check out this link.
Become a True Master of Revit
(Mastering Revit Architecture now comes in a 2012 version)

Revit Wants a ditty v1.0

Luke Johnson

Pink lines
Pink lines
Whatcha gunna do
Whatcha gunna do
When they won’t form a closed loop?

Con-straints
Con-straints
Whatcha gunna do
Whatcha gunna do
When they ask to be removed?

Pro-jects
Pro-jects
Whatcha gunna do
Whatcha gunna do
When they become really huge?

Ren-drings
Ren-drings
Whatcha gunna do
Whatcha gunna do
When they take a week to do?
 
Up-grade
Up-grade
Whatcha gunna do
Whatcha gunna do
When your project has 50 RVT links?
 
Im-ports
Im-ports
Whatcha gunna do
Whatcha gunna do
When zooming in makes them jump around on you?

Rev-it
Rev-it

Whatcha gunna do
Whatcha gunna do
When you’ve just read a silly blog post without useful content?

Here’s what – post your own verses as comments, for everyone to enjoy.

Transfer Legend Views between Projects

Luke Johnson

A well known limitation of current Revit versions is that you cannot easily transfer a Legend View between projects.

However, you can do the following with Legend Views:

  1. Save to Project as Image (just right-click on the Legend View in the Project Browser – you will probably have to open or activate the view before this command will ungray itself)
  2. Export the View as an Image
  3. Export the View as a DWG

If you are going to export the view as an Image, I recommend a minimum DPI setting of 150.  You can then import this image to another file.  If you Save to Project as Image, you can just copy-paste the image between open projects, or use the Save to New File command on the actual Rendering view itself.  Obviously, you need to manually update this image whenever the Legend changes.

If you Export as a DWG, you could then Link that DWG into other projects.  When you want to globally update the Legend View, you could re-export the Legend from the original RVT project and over-write the Legend DWG you exported and linked earlier.  You would probably have to tweak the visibility settings a bit to make this Legend-export-link method to work effectively.

Hope some of these ideas are useful to you!

Find the Average RGB Color of a material sample and get the RGB values with free tool

Luke Johnson

In Revit, we often have to input RGB values for various color properties, such as shaded view colors for a particular material, or if you want a specific Paint color for a rendered material.  To do this, you can use Paint.NET and the Color Picker tool – the resultant properties include the RGB values you need.

However, you may obtain a sample image of a material, but the color is irregular.  For example, you scan in a paint sample and there is a color variation in the scanned image.  Or perhaps you simply want to take a detailed pattern sample image and find out the average color of a particular part of that image.

Here’s how you do it:

  1. Download Paint.NET
  2. Download Average Color plugin
  3. Copy the DLL file from the extracted Average Color ZIP you downloaded into the ‘Effects’ folder, which is in you Paint.NET installation directory (for example: C:Program FilesPaint.NETEffects)
  4. Open Paint.NET
  5. Open the image you want to find an average color from.
  6. Make a rectangular selection.
  7. Click on the Effects menu – Average Color
  8. Now click on the Color Picker tool (looks like an Eyedropper)
  9. On the ‘Colors’ palette, click the More>> button
  10. The RGB values for your selected color are shown.
  11. In Revit, input those RGB values for the desired color or material

Average Color of Selection forum thread
Plugin to Average Color of Selection – Paint.NET Forum
Primary post
Main post

Locate32 – for very fast searches of specific directories

Luke Johnson

Locate32 is a free tool that allows you to create custom search database files for a nominated directory (including network resources and USB storage).

You can then manually update these database files when you want to do a fast search.

It is very quick to index the files and the search results pane is very fast and functional.  I have used it in the past to delete or archive Revit backup files.

Check it out at:
Locate32 Web Site – Downloads

Compressing PDF using free tools

Luke Johnson

Do you have some large format black and white PDF drawings that are taking up excessive space?  Perhaps they contain multi-layered vector information that is clogging them up.  You can easily make them smaller by recompressing into TIFF format with G4 compression.

Option 1 – PDF Tools and Irfanview

  1. Convert PDF to multipage TIFF using PDFill PDF Editor with FREE PDF Writer and FREE PDF Tools
  2. Open TIFF and save as TIF with G4 compression in Irfanview (suggested dpi setting 200 dpi)

Option 2 – PDF-Xchange Viewer

  1. Open PDF in PDF-Xchange Viewer
  2. File – Export – Export to Image
  3. Page Range – All
  4. Use TIFF format, Options – Compression – CCITT Group 4 fax
  5. DPI settings at 300 all round (for other settings also see image below)
  6. Click Export…

If you want to make a TIFF into a PDF again, just open in Irfanview and Print to PDF file using CutePDF or similar.  The resulting PDF will generally be way smaller than the original PDF.