Create a Component Family with Category set to Walls (or other system family category)

Luke Johnson

Have you ever wanted to make a Component Family with the Category set to Walls?  Or Roofs?  Or some other system Category?  There are no templates for this, and it doesn’t show up in the Family Category dialog box, so you may think that you limited to using In-Place families when you want the category to be Walls, Roofs or similar.

Think again.

An interesting offshoot of the method that I described at this link is that when you save the In-Place family as an RFA, it adopts the Category that it had AS an In-Place Family!!

In simple terms:

  1. Make an in-place Wall family with some geometry in it.
  2. Save it as an RFA
  3. Load the RFA into your project
  4. It is a Component family with the Category set to Walls!

And guess what – it shows up in a Wall Schedule 🙂  I’m a little scared of what the repercussions of this hack may be, so please use at your own risk.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Find Bloated Families living in your Projects

Luke Johnson

If you want to find out the actual file size of families that are living in your project, follow these steps:

  1. In Revit 2012, export all families to RFA files (File – Save As – Library – Family – ). 
    In 2011, you might be interested in this method.
  2. View the exported folder in Windows Explorer.
  3. Sort By – Size
  4. You will see the most bloated families at the top.

Here is an example:

To reduce the size of the largest families, I can now:

  1. Open them from the project
  2. Delete any unnecessary data (such as imported DWGs)
  3. Purge and then 
  4. Reload them into the project.

I anticipate significant size decreases for my (currently) 547 mb project!

Certification Preparation Classes – Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, 3ds Max, Maya

Luke Johnson

Learn from the best. The following selection of AU Virtual certification preparation classes are now available online.

AB7000
Autodesk® Revit® Architecture Certification Preparation, Part 1
AB7001
Autodesk® Revit® Architecture Certification Preparation, Part 2
AC7163
AutoCAD® Certification Preparation, Part 1
AC7164
AutoCAD® Certification Preparation, Part 2
CI3863
Incredible AutoCAD® Civil 3D® Users: Prove Your Credibility with Civil 3D Certification, Part 1
CI3865
Incredible AutoCAD® Civil 3D® Users: Prove your Credibility with Civil 3D Certification, Part 2
DG7160
Autodesk® 3ds Max® Certification Preparation, Part 1
DG7161
Autodesk® 3ds Max® Certification Preparation, Part 2
DG7166
Autodesk® Maya® Certification Preparation, Part 1
DG7167
Autodesk® Maya® Certification Preparation, Part 2
MA6300
Step Up and Get Certified in Autodesk® Inventor®, Part 1
MA7170
Step Up and Get Certified in Autodesk® Inventor®, Part 2
CM5033
Mastering the Skills: The Ultimate Autodesk® Certification Preparation Guide Revealed!

View the preparation classes at:
Autodesk University – Certification Preparation Classes

Revit Central File Maintenance step-by-step

Luke Johnson

Sometimes Central Files can become large and unwieldy.  Imaginit have put together a step-by-step process for cleaning up and maintaining your Central Files.  You wouldn’t do all these steps every day (more like every 6 months maybe), but this post is a good reference point for the key steps that are required to keep things running smoothly.

1. Have all users synchronize and save to central, make sure all worksets are relinquished, close the local files

2. Have one user Open the Central file. From the Open dialog box, clear the check box Create New Local, place a check in the boxes for Detach from Central and Audit (you will see a warning like below)CF #2

Read more at
Revit Central File Maintenance – IMAGINiT Technologies Support Blog

Exporting Hatches from AutoCAD and importing into Revit (German)

Luke Johnson

The German Autodesk AEC team have put together a step by step tutorial on exporting a PAT file from AutoCAD and then importing it into Revit.

They have even shown how to correctly scale the imported PAT files numerically – rather than the haveAguessAndSee method that I generally use.

Image from autodesk.de

Here is a link to a translated version of the post:
Google Translate

Here is the original post:
http://www.autodesk.de/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=403786&id=17857940

Who can put it better than Google Translate?

Much fun and success with Revit Architecture
, Autodesk AEC team

Revit Timeline – History of Revit software and companies

Luke Johnson

Steve Stafford tweeted a link to this thread. It shows the major milestones in Revit development, including company acquisitions, product renaming and discipline-specific additions.  For example, here are the release dates of the very early versions:
Revit Technology Corporation
1.0 2000 04
2.0 2000 08
2.1 2000 10
3.0 2001 02
3.1 2001 06
4.0 2001 11
4.1 2002 01

Read more at:
Revit Timeline (W.I.P.) – AUGI

If you want to see a video of version 4:
Revit History – Revit 4.0 video

And here is a screenshot of version 3:

Heaps of Revit related videos by Russian Borissofff

Luke Johnson

In most cases the language barrier does not matter too much – you should be able to follow most of his workflow.  Here is a video of that Dubai building:

Here is a link to a cool playlist related to the building above:
Borissofff’s Channel – YouTube

And here is a link to a grid view of all Borissofff’s uploads:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Borissofff#g/u

Image from his Google Site: