Moving your Windows Temp folder so that Revit doesn’t Fill Up Your SSD with Temporary Files

Luke Johnson

Do you have a problem with your SSD getting maxed out by a bloated TEMP directory (%temp%) ? In Revit, you might have an issue with revittemp_ files, particularly if you are using massive federated models with lots of Revit links…

Maybe this is an ‘edge case’, but I’ve tweeted about this issue a couple of times:

Three big Revit instances. The revittemp files in %temp% folder cause disk space problems, even with 512gb SSD. pic.twitter.com/A0dpL6ca0u

— Luke Johnson (@lukeyjohnson) January 20, 2016

To stop this problem from affecting your main, system SSD hard drive disk space, you can move your Windows Temp directory. Here’s how:

Go to This PC, Properties:

temp1.png

Go to Advanced system settings:

temp2.png

Go to Advanced tab, Environment Variables:

temp3.png

Then for TEMP and TMP, edit the path:

temp4.png

And input a location on a larger, secondary hard drive:

temp5.png

Here are the same screenshots for TMP:

temp6.png

 

temp7.png

Then, restart your computer:

temp8.png

After restart, you should see files showing up in the new TEMP directory:

temp9.png

And when you open Revit file with links, you may see the revittemp_ files starting to appear:

temp10.png

Autodesk Revit 2015 Update Release 12 Direct Download Links

Luke Johnson

Wow, Revit 2015 is really going for the ‘most updates’ record!

update12-1798399

Autodesk Revit 2015 R2 Update Release 12
Autodesk Revit 2015 R2 Update Release 12 Readme

R2 Download link:
http://up.autodesk.com/2015/RVT/Autodesk_Revit_2015_R2-x64_Update12.exe

New build number for Revit 2015 R2:
20160120_0715

Enhancements list should (eventually) be live at:
http://revit.downloads.autodesk.com/download/2015RVT_RTM/UR12/Enhancements_List_RVT_2015_UR12_forR2.pdf

non R2 download link:
http://up.autodesk.com/2015/RVT/Autodesk_Revit_2015-x64_Update12.exe

A note on C4R Update 9 and Revit 2015 Update 12:
Users of A360 Collaboration for Revit may experience an error on Revit startup if they install the Revit 2015 R2 Update Release 12 but not the corresponding A360 Collaboration for Revit update, version 2015.9.
The error dialog will reference the following: File name: ‘Autodesk.RevitServer.Versioning.Client,…..

  • To continue using A360 Collaboration for Revit, close all sessions of Revit, then download and install the Collaboration 2015.9 update and restart Revit.
  • To stop using A360 Collaboration for Revit, uninstall this program via the Programs and Features functionality of the Windows Control Panel.

Two Ways to Solve the “Can’t edit the element until ‘problemUser’ resaves the element to central…” Revit Worksharing Issue

Luke Johnson

I’m sure you have probably seen this message before:
Can’t edit the element until ‘problemUser’ resaves the element to central and relinquishes it and you Reload Latest

This may be caused by one of your team members not syncing with Central, and then experiencing a crash, or just logging out and going home. Before you send off an angry email, perhaps you could use one of these methods to get rid of the element locks and keep being productive. Method 1 is a bit more disruptive to a large team, while Method 2 is a bit more ‘hacky’. Important: Both methods will mean that ‘problemUser‘ has lost their work and will have to redo it.

So, maybe Method 0 is ‘call problemUser on the phone’ and see if they want to come back into the office to try and sync their work back to Central… but if that isn’t an option, you may have to use one of these methods:

Method 1 – Recreating the Central File:

  1. Notify all team members to Sync with Central and Close Revit
  2. Make a copy of your current Central file and _backup folder and put it somewhere for safekeeping
  3. Detach from Central
  4. Save As Central – overwrite the same file
  5. Notify your team members to open the model again, using ‘Create New Local’ tickbox

method1.png

Method 2 – Using a Known User Name to Relinquish Element locks

First, make a note of the user name that has the lock. In the image below, it is ‘rds check3‘:

c1.png

Open a new Revit instance and set that as the user name in Options:

c2.png

Open the model normally (Create New Local) under that user name, and immediately click ‘Relinquish All Mine’…

c3.png

… and then Synchronize with Central. The element locks should now be gone.

c5.png

In one of the other model instances (ie. your own user name), you can now Sync with Central… (or Reload Latest)

c6.png

… and you can successfully modify the element that was previously locked.

c7.png

As usual, the best idea is to do What Revit Wants and Sync with Central regularly so that lost work is minimized.

Ways to Get a Navisworks NWC into Revit

Luke Johnson

I have posted some other methods before…
Batch Convert DWF to Revit using Navisworks
How to Convert a DWF to Editable Format, or How to Export from Navisworks and Keep Modelling in BIM
Export Geometry from Navisworks into Revit (and back again) using only AutoCAD

… but here is one going via 3dsMax:

  • Export FBX from Navisworks
  • Import to 3dsMax
  • Export SAT
  • Import to Revit

via

http://www.revitforum.org/architecture-general-revit-questions/7636-anyone-ever-import-navisworks-file-into–revit.html#post63006

Also, keep in mind that newer versions of AutoCAD can directly link NWC or NWD Navisworks files using CMATTACH (Coordination Model Attach).

Adding Lightbox Style Image Zoom to a WordPress.com Site

Luke Johnson

Guess what? WordPress.com is different to WordPress.org. WordPress.org is self hosted and you can do things like install plugins. WordPress.com is hosted by, uh, WordPress and you can’t install plugins. But the com version is very easy to set up and use and everything kinda just works.

But have you ever tried to get a Lightbox style ‘click to zoom‘ effect in WordPress.com? Its not immediately obvious, so after figuring it out I wanted to share it.

Firstly, go to your admin dashboard and tick the “Display all your gallery pictures in a cool mosaic” option.

wp1.png

Then, go to a post that has a plain image and start Editing it:

wp2.png

Position your cursor above the old image, then click Add Media.
Important: select Multiple Images here and you will get a Continue button:

wp3.png

In the next screen, click Edit and then use the X to remove any superfluous images, so you can just have one image in the ‘gallery’ if you like:

wp4.png

Set your Layout to Tiled Mosaic and Link to Attachment Page:

wp5.png

After inserting this gallery, you will see that there is a new Gallery object above the old image:

wp6.png

Now, you can delete the old image:

wp7.png

And Update the post:

wp8.png

Now, when you go to the post and click on the image, it will ‘zoom‘ to the image like this:

wp9.png

Here is a live WordPress.com page with the Carousel ‘lightbox‘ enabled:
Rooms to Polycurves – dynamoworks

And here is a link to some documentation:
Galleries and Slideshows — Support — WordPress.com

Using Office Lens, a Windows Phone and Surface Pro 3

Luke Johnson

Office Lens is an amazing app for scanning documents or even whiteboard images directly to images, PDFs, even OneDrive and Office documents. The smoothest way is straight to OneNote. However, it doesn’t run natively on a Surface Pro 3, partly because the Surface Pro 3 just has a fixed focus camera so it doesn’t offer great fidelity when taking a photo of a document.

However, many Windows Phones have great cameras (I use a Lumia 930, with 20-megapixel 1/3” PureView sensor with Carl Zeiss optics). And obviously, they do run the Office Lens app. So, how do we scan a document and get it across to the Surface Pro 3? Well, if we have easy internet access we could just use the integrated OneDrive or OneNote cloud storage. But what if we don’t want to use our mobile data plan?

Here’s one way:

  1. Using Bluetooth, pair your Windows Phone with your Surface device
  2. On the Windows Phone device, start Office Lens and scan the document
  3. Click share this image…
  4. On the Surface device, use Windows+R (Run), then type fsquirt
  5. Click Receive files…
  6. The Surface is now waiting
  7. Back on the Windows Phone, choose Bluetooth
  8. Select the computer name of the Surface device
  9. The image should transfer as a JPG, and you will be prompted to save it

The limitation with this particular method is you have to do one image at a time, it doesn’t transfer multi-page documents as one file. For that, you will probably have to use the OneDrive or OneNote integration… and your data plan or wifi.

fsquirt-6132079

Using Elk for @DynamoBIM to Import Maps and Topography into Revit from Web

Luke Johnson

Brian Nickel recently sent through a link to the very Elk package for Dynamo, that essentially opens up web geographical data access to Dynamo and thus through to Revit for topography creation and similar.

It was already an established plugin for Grasshopper, but developer Timothy Logan has released a port for Dynamo which can be accessed through the Package Manager.

elk_dynamo-7256719

Elk HKS site:
Elk Mapping Plugin | HKS LINE

Heads-up from:
The Revit Saver: Dynamo – Elk for DynamoBIM by Timothy Logan

Quote from The Revit Saver:
Thank you to Timothy Logan for making Elk available to Dynamo users!

Here are his two videos for how to use the OSM data and Topographical data.

Elk for Dynamo – OSM from Timothy Logan on Vimeo.

Elk for Dynamo – OSM from Timothy Logan on Vimeo.

Some of the links referenced in the above videos:

 https://www.openstreetmap.org/
http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2_1/
http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
http://www.opentopography.org/