Dimond Architects have launched an exciting new landing page for their website.
Please email us if you would like to know more about us.
There has been a few posts about Revit content recently, one being at http://chrismounts.com/content/places-find-revit-content and another at http://excel2bim.com/revitbim/?p=2238. These are related to a LinkedIn discussion on Club Revit.
Some of you would be aware of the Revit Blog Directory I have set up. I have taken this content link list and added it to the blog directory site at http://www.revitprofessionals.com/
So you have some electronic information that you really want to read, but you just can’t find the time?
You are madly Revit-ing away, and you have some PDF training files that might really help you, but you are just TOO BUSY to read them?
Then try out this free program. It basically uses inbuilt Windows text to speech tools to read any document. I use the SpeakComputer TTS Reader. Just select the text you want to read, and paste it into the box…
Then press Play! There are a few other options to do with speed of reading etc – just tweak these to suit yourself.
If you can’t find anything Revit related and interesting to read, head over to Scribd and search for Revit…
PS – Hopefully Microsoft Anna doesn’t distract you too much from whatever work you are actually doing 🙂
Let’s say you have isolated a few categories, and you have included Dimensions so that they are still visible.
However, your dimensions are no longer showing the Centerline symbol text – do you know why?
It is because this item is on a different category to dimensions themselves. In my case, I had to turn on the ‘Generic Annotation’ category in order to show this text.
Okay, xxx means “insert your desired roof type here”. One of the best and easiest ways to find find the answer you are looking for is by downloading this file on Roof Forms from the Revit 2011 Content Distribution Center.
From here, you should be able to figure out the ‘best practice’ when it comes to creating the various different roof forms.
Strangely, Autodesk Seek ‘knows’ about this file, but you can’t download it from there – yet.
I read the following on the Revit 2011 help today:
Ketiv’s Modern Medium Library has been converted into Revit Architecture families and made available on the Web
Okay, I didn’t really know what Ketiv’s library was, but I found it! To access this library:
- Go to the Revit 2011 Content Distribution page.
- On the left, you can click on the ‘Modern Medium 2011’ library.
- There are a number of subcategories to browse and choose from.
Enjoy your access to this free content 🙂
I recently spent some time troubleshooting a netbook that was unceremoniously ‘dropped’, and I thought I would share the things that I found most helpful.
Basically, there was physical damage to many of the sectors on the hard disk, meaning that the system did not boot and had some serious issues.
After booting using a USB drive into a diagnostic version of ‘mini’ XP, I was able to run a program called HDTune. An Error Scan using the ‘quick’ option showed the area of the drive that was affected.
I then basically resized the partitions on the disk so that the ‘bad’ parts of the drive were in the unallocated space – hopefully meaning that it won’t cause any future problems.
I backed some of the necessary data, then formatted and I will now reinstall XP. Hopefully all is well!
PS – Try not to drop electronic devices.
This guide is for beginners who want to view the Revit database in 2011. I have previously posted about rvtmgddbg. This has been replaced in 2011 by RevitLookup. This is an API tool that allows you to view (‘Snoop’) the elements in the Revit database.
How do you set it up? Its quite simple really:
- Download this file (thanks to The Building Coder).
- Unzip the file to the C: drive (such that you have paths C:RevitLookupCS etc)
- Double click on the file “C:RevitLookupCSRevitLookup.csproj”, this will open in Visual Studio tools for Applications.
- Click on Build – Build RevitLookup (this creates the RevitLookup.dll file)
- Now, open the file “C:RevitLookupCSRevitLookup.addin” in Notepad.
- Replace this-
RevitLookup.dllwith this-
C:RevitLookupCSbinDebugRevitLookup.dll - Save the file.
- Now, copy the RevitLookup.addin file you just saved to the following location (depending on your OS):
For Vista
C:ProgramDataAutodeskREVITAddins2011For XP
C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataAutodeskRevitAddins2011 - That’s it! You should now see the Revit Lookup menu on your Add-Ins ribbon:
One of the simplest ways to use this tool is to select an Object, then use the ‘Snoop Current Selection’ option. Enjoy!
Structural Beam Systems are a very quick way to make your Architectural model more intelligent. Depending on your workflow and your consultants, it may be up to you to ensure that structural elements are not interfering with your beautiful architecture.
Here is a few tips for using Structural Beam Systems:
- Structure usually holds up the roof – it is situated underneath a roof. In keeping with What Revit Wants – set the Workplane for the Beam system to the Underside of the Roof! Then, when the roof pitch changes, the Beam system will update. And you don’t have to mess around trying to match angles etc between the Beam system and the roof. Thanks AUGI.
- Work in 3D – this way you can see what is happening and see what Revit is doing.
- Use Fixed Distance / Centre justified and tweak the distance to ‘fill up’ the roof – this way you can get around the fact that Beam systems do not create an ‘edge’ beam by default.
- Have a look at the ‘International’ Revit content if you can’t find the structural families you need.
- If you are struggling to get a beam to the edge of the system, offset the system lines outwards by 50 or 100 mm.
- Keep in mind that an ‘Automatic’ Beam System needs a perimeter of structural beams to work nicely.
- If you need to, hack into and modify the Structural Beam Systems to suit your needs. For instance, you may not need the ‘Coarse’ heavy lines – just delete them out of the family and make the 3D extrusion visible in all modes (Coarse, Medium, Fine).
- Play with Object Styles to make the Structural Beams look nice in your Architectural documents.
I just found a very interesting trick. Have you ever wanted to jump directly to a sheet in Revit, from a section or elevation reference mark? Usually, if you double click a section mark, it will take you to the relevant View, not the Sheet that the View is on.
However, IF the Sheet is open AND the View is ‘activated’ on the Sheet (right click, Activate view), then when you jump to the View from the Section mark, Revit will actually take you to the ‘Activated’ view on the Sheet!
Pretty cool huh?
