Family Creation Groundrules

Luke Johnson

Martijn is starting up an interesting series of posts about Custom Curtain Wall creation at RevitForum Blog – it would pay to follow this series of posts.

In part ‘zero’, he establishes some groundrules that any decent Revit user will be interested in reviewing. I was particularly interested in his Family creation guidelines. The workflow he presents may look basic enough, but if you do things in this order, you may save yourself much heartache and re-work. Check it out:

When creating Families, there’s a set workmethod:

  • Draw the desired geometry layout in Reference Planes and/or Reference Lines

  • Dimension Refplanes / Reflines

  • Add parameters to dimensions

  • Flex parameters and check if they don’t break

  • Add geometry and immediately assign it to a subcategory

  • Add more parameters to define geometry and add data.

In Family Creation, parameters are placed in one of the following views:

  • Plan View, Level 1

  • Elevation View, Exterior

  • Elevation View, Left.

via Martijn de Riet at
RevitForum Blog: Custom Curtain Wall, pt 0: setup

Certified Revit Graphics driver list

Luke Johnson

The Autodesk Certified Hardware page allows filtering by the products you intend to use (ie. Revit).  This page should be your ‘first stop’ when installing or updating your Graphics Card / Display drivers.  Once you find a Certified, Recommended driver, you can download it direct from this page.

Autodesk – Certified Hardware – Find Graphics Hardware

Autodesk – Certified Hardware – Find Graphics Hardware

Revit: Problem Or Solution?

Luke Johnson

An interesting little article that relates to the food service industry and the fact that Revit is something they may not want, but will have to deal with.

Because Revit was not specifically developed for the foodservice industry, it presents a steep learning curve for design consultants and equipment distribution channel companies. This concern is reinforced by the fact that no single standard for Revit applications to foodservice facility design projects has yet emerged, leaving industry members to sort among different erstwhile providers claims and features to determine whether to go with “VCR” or “BetaMax.”

via
Revit: Problem Or Solution? | tsrmag.com – The Schechter Report –

Revit and points in DWG files when making topography

Luke Johnson

Sometimes you may have trouble using a DWG that contains ‘points’ to create a Revit topography.

There are two main ways around this.

METHOD 1
Here is a LISP routine to export points in a DWG to CSV file:
http://www.revitcity.com/forum_files/69930_RegCoorPointsCsv.lsp 

These points can then be imported when making a Revit topography by selecting ‘Specify Points File’ on the Ribbon.

via
RevitCity.com | Topo point does not import?

METHOD 2
Alternatively, you can Replace the points with some other object that Revit will make use of more easily (for instance, a block with some very short lines).  To do this, use the ‘RP’ LISP routine from the following post:
Re: Replace point with block/object – Autodesk Discussion Groups

Room computation height changed to instance parameter in Revit 2012

Luke Johnson

I can’t believe I had not come across this change until today. In Revit 2012, the Room Computation Height is no longer a Type Property of the Level – it is now an Instance Property.

Some of the impacts of this when upgrading are described in the Revitez post below:

This eliminates the need to create a kind of different level for adjusting the heights of the different calculation levels.

When your old projects, where you took the trouble to create these types of additional levels, your types still exist, but they no longer control the height and therefore not used to anything if their purpose was the control of this value.

The value is copied into the parameter of occurrence. All is well, just be careful if you need to change height calculation, there is no need to change the type as you did in the 2011 version, this will have absolutely no effect.

via
Google Translate of Revitez post

Finding views in the Project Browser

Luke Johnson

I received this comment to one of my posts:

…Being new to Revit (2011) is there a way to locate newly created views in the project browser? Or do a search? Or am i stuck using filters? 
Comment link

Here are a few different ideas that may assist:

  1. Remove all filters / folders from the Project Browser (so that all views are grouped together).  When you make a new view, Revit ‘activates’ it (and makes it bold), so you can just scroll down through all the views until you see one with a bold name.

  2. Set up a Quick Filter parameter.  Let’s say it is called ‘Job Task’ or something.  Add this parameter to all views.  Then, Filter your Project Browser by ONLY that property.  When you make a new view, set the ‘Job Task’ parameter to something – and then you will see the view appear under that folder.  I currently use this method on a large project to divide views logically by the actual Revit work that they are associated with.

  3. Make a View List (Schedule – View List) that includes the View Name property.  Now, filter by View Name – contains – whatever text you are searching for.  You have created a ‘View Search Tool’.  It’s not perfect, but it does work.

  4. Set up your Project Browser folders and your Default View Templates such that you ‘know’ which folder a particular View type will end up in.  This kinda works for new Views, not so much when ‘Duplicating’ a view.

  5. If you do ‘Duplicate’ a view, look for ‘Copy of’.  Annoyingly, Revit hasn’t adopted the Vista / Windows 7 convention of appending ‘- Copy’ to copies of things.  This has been on my wish list for a while!

Hope some of these ideas help you newer users to find those sneaky new Views!