A360 Team officially launched

Luke Johnson

A360 refers to a suite of products for cloud based file sharing and team collaboration, just like BIM360 refers to the more AEC-focused cloud collaboration services. The A360 moniker currently covers products including A360, A360 Drive, A360 Rendering, and now A360 Team.

Initial pricing:

Personally, I’m interested to see if this can become a central point for collaboration across all Autodesk products and services. On a wider scale, I’m keen to investigate any collaboration tools that allow quick and easy discussion of “issues” – when I say issues, I mean “anything that needs to be discussed and solved.” AEC teams have these kinds of discussions throughout the entire building design and delivery process… but there isn’t a nice, clean, easy solution to manage all of those issues and conversations (yet). I can picture it in my mind, I just haven’t seen one in real life (yet).

You can start a trial of A360 Team here:
A360 Team

The A360 forums:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/a360-products/ct-p/200

You might be interested in my previous post about the Autodesk 360 Viewer.

More info:
Autodesk A360 Team Now Available in North America, Continues to Advance Design and Engineering Project Collaboration

Using the Default Lookup Table Location to Upgrade MEP Projects without Losing Types

Luke Johnson

So, you have received a RTE or RVT file (along with related CSV lookup tables) and want to upgrade it without getting the “One or more families in this project are missing .csv files” error…

For example, you may download a Piping Template (like this one from AUGI), and it comes with CSV files but you don’t know where to put them? Or you have received some other MEP template file from the wild, and you would like to upgrade and use it?

The thing with MEP content is that some of it is based on, or related to, Lookup Tables. These are text (CSV) files that contain type data, essentially making it easy to create and manage types without having to always use the Family Editor to do so. However, if these are missing, you will get an error message when you attempt to open or upgrade a project that needs them:

To fix this, you need to copy the required CSV files into the Pipe and Conduit subfolders of the Lookup Tables folder that matches the version of Revit that you are upgrading TO.

The key Project Browser tree entries are Conduit Fittings and Pipe Fittings:

If you have a Suite installed, you may find that these CSV files are duplicated in various locations, to provide support files for 3dsMax and Navisworks. Some of these paths are shown here:

You can browse to the above paths, and start to put together a “consolidated” or “combined” CSV Lookup Table folder, that you may want to maintain in a network location. Once you have collected all of the necessary CSVs, here is how you “install” them:

  1. Determine location to put the CSV files into (usually it will be near your Family Templates folder, a few example paths are provided below)
  2. Create a master folder of all required CSV files (you could maintain a consolidated folder in a network location)
  3. Copy these CSV files to the Pipe and Conduit folder locations (you shouldn’t need to restart Revit).
  4. Open the MEP RVT or template file that you wish to upgrade
  5. Any CSV files that are still missing are the ones you need to find, and put in the Pipe and Conduit subfolders as per steps 1-3.

You could script some of the above steps to aid in deployment.
Revit 2014 Lookup Tables default location:
C:ProgramDataAutodeskRVT 2014Lookup TablesPipe
C:ProgramDataAutodeskRVT 2014Lookup TablesConduit

Revit 2015 Lookup Tables default location:
C:ProgramDataAutodeskRVT 2015Lookup TablesPipe
C:ProgramDataAutodeskRVT 2015Lookup TablesConduit

NOTE: Massive amounts of CSV lookup tables in the default directory may result in slow Revit performance, particularly when starting Revit.

If you want to import Lookup Tables directly into families (and you are perhaps experiencing errors with nested families), this PDF may be of interest.

Finally, you can actually modify Lookup Table location using the revit.ini file, as described here. You could therefore point your Revit installations to a network location containing all of the required CSV files for your firm.

You can download content from Seek and other places online. Sometimes you will find a CSV file, sometimes you may have to export one as per the video below:

There is some related info at:
http://revitoped.blogspot.com.au/2008/10/revit-mep-lookup-tables.html

Feel free to comment if you have any other tips related to Lookup Tables…

Zoom to Awesome download link

Luke Johnson

Phil recently posted a link for Zoom To Awesome at:
http://t.co/h645Tg2AEM

If you haven’t heard of it before, Zoom To Awesome instantly zooms the active window in Revit to the selected objects. Combined with Select by ID and COINS Auto-Section Box, you can find and correct almost any error or warning in your model…

Tested and working on Revit 2013, 2014 and 2015. The Screencast below also shows how to add a keyboard shortcut to the Zoom To Awesome command.

via this tweet:

How to Install Autodesk 360 Sync for Desktop as a Standalone Package (without AutoCAD)

Luke Johnson

You probably won’t find Autodesk 360 Desktop sync install package for download online, but you can install it “standalone”.

  1. Find some Autodesk install media
  2. Look for a subfolder named Cloudsync (make sure it is beneath x64 or x86 as appropriate for your system)
  3. Copy this folder to USB or a network location
  4. Run the file AdSync.msi on the PC you want to install Autodesk 360 on
  5. After install, you will need to restart
  6. After restarting, you may need to sign in using your Autodesk ID

I have previously described how to use Autodesk 360 as a cloud storage location for Revit (and any application) here:
Access Autodesk 360 files in any application, including Revit

Some paths that may assist – these were from BDSU2015:
Building_Design_Suite_Ultimate_2015_English_Win_64-32bit_dlmx64ComponentsCloudsync

Building_Design_Suite_Ultimate_2015_English_Win_64-32bit_dlmx64ComponentsCloudsyncAdSync.msi

Autodesk Building Performance Analysis Links

Luke Johnson

I received the following list of links and resources from a helpful Building Performance Analyst at Autodesk:
· Autodesk FormIt Product Page: 3D Conceptual Design. Any time. Anywhere.
· Building Performance Analysis Blog: Read all updates on BPA tools on this blog.
· Revit 2014 Automatic Energy Analytical model Creation and Analysis. · Autodesk Project Solon Dashboard for Revit.

Get more information about Lighting Analysis for Revit from the following places.
· Lighting Analysis for Revit Product Page
· Lighting Analysis for Revit Students Page
· USGBC Reference Page

This latest version 1.23 has the following updates and new features:
· Analysis options now include LEED v4 EQ credit 7 option 2 in the Run Analysis dialog
· New Analysis Display Styles are added for LEED v4 and other styles
· Schedules are created using field id’s instead of text to fix bugs with some foreign language installs
· Schedule names are changed to include “_” in front so they are organized better in the Project Browser
· AVF view settings (9am vs. 3pm) are preserved when clicking Generate Results
· Analysis Display Styles are preserved except if type of analysis changed, and then a corresponding analysis display style will be selected automatically
· Phase filter is set automatically for view plans (unless override flag is unset in config file)
· View templates are turned off when _Lighting views are created (unless override flag is unset in config file)

Other reference material:
· Revit BPA Help – Lighting Analysis help topic
· Blog Intro – Includes video with older but still relevant workflows.
· Video0 – First instructional video on the release 1.0
· Video1 – Hour long video including Rendering Illuminance and Lighting Analysis workflows. · Article – Revit community overview article.

Hotfix for Revit 2015 File performance problem due to multiplication of Standard Materials

Luke Johnson

Interestingly, this hotfix comes in the form of a macro to clean up your files. The issue as stated on the Autodesk Knowledge Network is:
In Revit 2015 the performance of some file is very slow. This means that
opening material browser may take an extremely long time or Revit will
hang. Typically you cannot execute the “Purge unused elements” command
as well, because Revit will freeze. 
…
Every time you edit a family and load it back in > overwrite > the
number of materials will grow substantially. For example after 5 or so
subsequent reloads in our sample file it jumps from 15551 to 186623
materials.
…
We have seen this most commonly when editing titleblock familes in the German and Japanese version of Revit. 


Download the macro:
DeleteStandardMaterials.zip

Please go through the process below to clear out the extra materials:

  1. Close Revit.
  2. Extract the zip file: It will contain a DeleteStandardMaterials folder with two subfolders (AddIn + Source).
  3. Copy the AddIn + Source folders on the following path:
    C:ProgramDataAutodeskRevitMacros2015RevitAppHookupDeleteStandardMaterials
  4. Start Revit.
  5. Open the file.
  6. Open Manage/ Macro Manager/ Application Tab: The macro should
    show up in the Macro manager under application > macros as
    “DeleteStandardMaterials”.
  7. Select here “Execute” and start the command “Run” > This will delete Standard Materials.

After these steps use Save As to save the file with a new name.

Here are 2 videos showing the steps:
https://screencast.autodesk.com/Main/Details/5bfa2fff-3443-45e0-a156-4c530c594c28
https://screencast.autodesk.com/Main/Details/fb7eaa0a-b529-47b7-9e35-7d42c3944a0b

Main page:
File performance problem in Revit 2015 | Search | Autodesk Knowledge Network

Heads-up:
Be Revit – Do Family Planning: Revit streikt / Datei wird immer größer und reagiert nicht mehr?

Workaround for Horizontal View Titles when Views Rotated on the Sheet (Clockwise or Anti-Clockwise)

Luke Johnson

Short version:

  1. Edit View Title Family
  2. Turn on the reference planes in the Visibility / Graphic Overrides, select all three items. 
  3. Rotate these items opposite of what you think to offset the rotation of the view. So if you are rotating the view on the sheet 90 degrees counterclockwise, you have to create a view title with these three items rotated 90 degrees Clockwise. 
  4. uncheck “Keep Readable” under the instance properties of the text labels or Revit will try to make the text read up the page, not down.
  5. Save View Title family and apply it to Viewport Type in project

Long / original version, this idea and steps above taken from this post by IMAGINiT:
View Titles for Views Rotated on the Sheet – IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog