Revit natively supports importing Sketchup up to version 8. If you want to import ‘new’ Trimble Sketchup files, like some nice content you have download from 3D Warehouse, you have at least 2 different options:
Open the file in a new version of Sketchup and save down to version 8, then import to Revit
Import to AutoCAD first (IMPORTSKP), then save as DWG, and then bring it into Revit. You may need to install the Sketchup Import addin for AutoCAD to import 2016 and newer versions of Sketchup.
Based on some preliminary testing, I think option 1 is probably the better / easier way to go at the current time.
Getting lighting to work in Revit can seem like one of those things that are ‘possible’, but ‘too hard for now…’
We are all busy, so it can be challenging to really dig down into some of these deeper Revit topics and develop a workflow that is both predictable and efficient. However, Revit Wants you to make the most of the information that you have embedded in your model. If you can see any usefulness in performing lighting calcs directly in Revit, you should check out the online training courses that Dan Stine is running with ElumTools (Lighting Analysts).
Daniel Stine is an incredibly knowledgeable and highly experienced Revit professional. It is incredible how many books he has authored and co-authored 🙂 Suffice to say that he definitely knows what he is talking about! See the outlines as linked below, and you can Register for the courses here.
Revizto completely transformed the way we manage and coordinate BIM projects, and I have posted about it several times before. I’m really pleased to share a very comprehensive PDF help document put together by the team at Revizto.
It goes through all the steps needed to get up and running with Revizto, including setting up your environment, creating and sharing projects, navigating your model, and collaborating in the Issue Tracker.
I’ve been using Revizto for years, but even I learned some things… like this tip about using FBX to get models from Revit LT into Revizto: Revizto supports all versions of Revit starting from 2014 except Revit LT. For Revit LT you can
load models into Revizto via FBX format.
Throughout the document you can click on links to immediately watch videos:
It has fully detailed descriptions of the various control schemes, including controllers for VR, and the general hotkeys:
If you are interested you can download and try out Revizto here.
The internet is bleeding hard today due to the well-publicized Amazon S3 outages. Autodesk services are also severely affected.
Collaboration for Revit (C4R) users may be wondering how to get access to their files when the service is down. Your best bet is to find the most recent local copy and possibly use that for the day.
You can find it by going to Windows Explorer and copying this address:
%localappdata%\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2016\CollaborationCache
or for Revit 2017:
%localappdata%\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2017\CollaborationCache
Then, go looking for your RVT files. They will have a long name with letters and numbers.
I recommend you open this file ‘detached’, and be fully aware that your project will not sync to C4R after you do that. You could isolate your work to part of the project only, and then possibly copy / paste back to the C4R project when it comes back.
Alternatively, save it as a new Central to your local file server, and then overwrite the C4R project later when it comes back online.
None of this is ideal of course, but if you want to get any work done today, you may have to try the above workarounds.
Autodesk’s answer to realtime rendering from Revit is continuing its steady development. Now known as Autodesk Revit Live (formerly Autodesk LIVE), the new features include being able to choose visual styles for RPC, and support for Revit LT.
Level of Details geometry generation and material instancing have been added to the LIVE Service to enhance performance when working with large models and/or virtual reality.
Virtual Reality
The handle used to move and rotate the Minimap has been replaced by using the Controller Grip buttons. This provides a more natural and instinctive way to move, rotate, and scale your Minimap model.
People Styles and Animation
You can choose between three visual styles for the RPC characters imported from Revit as part of your scene.
Characters have subtle animation that can be turned on or off.
Characters can be hidden or made visible.
Header
The view name is part of the default header.
The scene’s header is editable.
Textures
Texture orientation and offsets are consistent with what is set in Revit.
Customer texture files placed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Materials\Textures folder are used in LIVE service to generate the LIVE models.
Publishing
Presentations published from scenes prepared from the same Revit file but different 3D views no longer overwrite each other.
In case you missed it: Autodesk Suites are gone, you can’t buy them officially anymore. Instead, you can buy into an Industry Collection. Here are products in each Collection, from the FAQ:
And here is some information on renewals and floating license provisioning:
I’m wondering if 2017 will be the year that BIM content management stopped being hard 🙂 Maybe that’s going a bit far, but the fact is that there are some great content management tools out in the market now. In fact, I have spent the last few months doing some detailed analysis and comparison of these. But more on that later…
In the meantime, how do you go about integrating Manufacturer content into your Company BIM / Revit library? Its an interesting question because usually your company content may be high quality, audited, approved, and regularly updated. But the manufacturer content can sometimes leave a lot to be desired. With those thoughts in mind, the upcoming webinar about UNIFI Connect could prove to be quite helpful. Unifi are looking at ways to share manufacturer content through their already awesome platform.
This all plays into a larger conversation about BPM. Think about the recent merge of the Autodesk Seek content over to BIMobject. It is one thing to collect a lot of manufacturer content, but quite another to ensure its quality and applicability to a given user. How are you going about solving this problem? Do you use BPM at all, or do you use generic in-house content?
Have you experienced a blank and somewhat non-responsive Print dialog in Revit? Pressing Setup does nothing in this situation:
What’s going on here? Well, there is something in the Microsoft Print to PDF driver that Revit doesn’t like, possibly to do with paper sizes or something. How do we fix it?
Just set your default printer to something else, like Bluebeam or CutePDF. Then, Close and re-open the Print dialog in Revit:
As you can see, now the dialog is happier and you can proceed to setup your sheet print settings.
As we move more and more information and services to the cloud, 100% uptime becomes more and more necessary. In our BIM world, if you are running a project on C4R (Collaboration for Revit), and that cloud service goes down, the project could be severely affected.
If uptime is important, so is monitoring and reporting. You can now view the latest “health” status and history of Autodesk Cloud products using the Autodesk Health Dashboard.
