Why Viewing BIM After Dark will be Worth It for You

Luke Johnson

I’m honest enough to admit that Revit has the unfortunate reputation as a tool that is “bad” for presentation. Happily, BIM After Dark aims to correct that – by making all of us better at using Revit for a variety of presentation tasks.

BIM After Dark is essentially a training video series prepared by Jeffrey A Pinheiro, who many of you know as the author of the excellent, long-standing Revit blog The Revit Kid!

I had the opportunity to preview this video series prior to its release, and I must say I am impressed. Firstly, I’m sure you all realise that as good as Revit is, we still need to use other tools for certain presentation tasks, the foremost being Photoshop. It’s great that Jeff covers the effective use of Photoshop in considerable detail, and provides task-specific and industry-specific tips that will give you a real head start over the competition. Jeff covers some truly advanced, unique methods, and at the same time he includes some basic stuff that will help you if you are just starting out with Revit.

The plethora of included content and samples are also of very high quality, so if you can get access to them, I recommend that you do so.   It includes texture, background and entourage images, Revit library files and some Photoshop PSD files too.

Here are some examples of the tips and workflows covered in this series:

  • how to override the Shaded representation of RPC trees
  • 70 50 20 method for shadows (I guess the old 10 6 10 is superseded now) 
  • overlay method in Photoshop for images, such as section perspectives (“multiply”)
  • comparing 2am rendering quality for local vs cloud
  • “core” method for quick interior context
  • panel sized bump mapping for realistic glass
  • “screen” layer overlay for lighting rays (combine with various blurs to increase effect)
  • cgtextures and gobotree
  • using the burn tool for ambient occlusion of entourage

These are just a few reasons why you should check out this new series.  If you are serious about using Revit for presentation, BIM After Dark will definitely be worth it for you.

You can get it from here:
http://www.bimafterdark.com/

Here are some example videos:

A few thoughts I had while viewing the series

  • the autoclicker tool could be launched using the script launching method I describe here
  • Jeff mentions he doesn’t quite understand something that happened with site cut pattern – this was because the extra bit of the puzzle is the “poche” setting in Site Settings 
  • you can right click on the ViewCube to quickly align a 3D Persective view to a normal Section view

Auditing and Comparing Model Groups in Revit 2014

Luke Johnson

I have been searching for a quick and easy way to compare exclusions between Group instances – and nothing really exists at this point.  So, I have developed a method to do this by using Revit and some schedules.  It doesn’t require add-ins, macros or extensions – but it does require full Revit 2014.

Part A – create a Shared Parameter, applied to all Categories, that can vary by Group instance

Part B – To automatically create selection sets for each group instance

  1. Open a new 3D view
  2. Edit the most complete version of the Group (the one with the least exclusions, ideally none)
  3. Select everything
  4. Save Selection set
  5. Finish Group – Revit will automatically create a unique Selection Set for each Group instance

Part C – fill the parameter from Part A with appropriate values for each Group instance:

  1. Load one of the automatically created selection sets
  2. Determine what parameter value represents that Group instance (for example “Level 8”)
  3. Filter the Selection – you will need to untick Lines, Wall Openings and Curtain Wall Grids (these items do not accept parameters)
  4. Make Elements Editable
  5. Edit the Shared Parameter with the appropriate value and Apply (ie. “Level 8”)
  6. While the elements are still selected, save the filtered Selection Set
  7. Deselect everything
  8. Select the Group instance and Isolate it
  9. Load the Selection Set from step 6 and Temporary Hide
  10. Any elements left over will need to be selected and have the same parameter from step 2 applied to them
  11. Rinse and Repeat steps 1 to 10 for each Group instance you want to audit / compare.
Make a set of Schedules.  You will typically need at least these Schedule types (depending on what Categories exist in your Group):
  • Multicategory Schedule
  • Walls
  • Floors
  • Ceilings
  • Columns
Make sure the Schedules have at least these fields:
  • The Shared Parameter you created in Part A
  • Family and Type
  • Count field added and set to Calculate Totals
Filter the schedules – you can use the Shared Parameter you set up with an “is greater than” blank operator to show only elements that have something in that parameter.

Using Sorting to make things look right, you can end up with a schedule you can quickly scroll through to find differences in Model Groups:

Additionally, using Highlight in Model directly from the schedules will help you to figure out exactly what elements are missing or different.

EDIT Along similar lines, you can check out Dave Light’s post at:
Revit : Scheduling Apartments

Take the Guesswork out of Scaling an Image in Revit

Luke Johnson

After inserting an image in Revit, sometimes the X and Y (Raster Image Width and Height parameters) values of the image are somewhat “warped” and need to be adjusted to match your model background.

I created a Line Based Detail Item family that generates a scaling factor that can be used to properly warp the image aspect ratio.

Just untick Lock Proportions, type an = sign in front of the value that needs to be warped and then put an asterisk (meaning multiply) followed by the Scaling Factor that the family generates.  It will look something like:
=34542.8*1.056

The image below explains it further:

Download the Family here

AroCLEAN available for Free (French)

Luke Johnson

UPDATE: most of the links seem to be dead now… here is latest from archive.org:

 

What is it?  It is essentially a cleanup utility for Revit backup files.

AroCLEAN offers to clean these files backups and copies to take care of the free space on your disk storage space…

Click to download

Icone100_Download_Free

Serial valid to Jan 2014:
1-B-1530-BbCc-112-OVMM

From here:
http://arodev.fr/aroclean-2014-mise-a-jour/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=aroclean-2014-mise-a-jour

Read:
Translated page

How Developers can Gain Access to the Autodesk REST API

Luke Johnson

Autodesk offers several different browser-based user interfaces for different reality capture scenarios.

They all use the same underlying ReCap REST API.

You need a special developer key to make use of the API. To obtain one, please contact ADN and ask to become a pilot partner.
…
ReCap is built on Amazon web services, using queues to manage jobs.
…

current pilot partners and their work, some of which was also being shown in the AU exhibition:
  • SoundFit custom fit ear gear, creating a precise model of the inner space within the ear for prosthetics, a fully automated complete custom application.
  • Kubit, dealing with AutoCAD applications for real-world as-built capturing.
  • Skycatch, providing a low cost, highly flexible, intelligent & scalable aerial robotics platform.
Tilo Pfliegner of Kubit demonstrated easy integration of calibrated photos, point clouds and ReCap models into AutoCAD.
Point clouds are sometimes too imprecise for modelling needs. Using photos directly instead is better, because they are often more precise, and the photo quality is often better than the generated point cloud.
Read more / via:

Free Ebooks and Resources from CADLearning

Luke Johnson

Go to this link to download free resources / ebooks:
on Itunes

Other direct links to free items:
http://www.cadlearning.com/products/ebooks/autocad-2014-new-features/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/reality-capture-autodesk-recap/id643288491
http://www.cadlearning.com/products/ebooks/revit-architecture-2014-new-features/

Heads up:

Free Family Browser Labs goes Public – you can join now

Luke Johnson

via email:
We are very pleased to announce that today we have released the first build of Family Browser Labs Project to the general public. Family Browser Labs Project is the most powerful & sophisticated Family Browser for Autodesk Revit. It handles not only Revit RFA Families but also Revit System families, drafting views, schedules and groups. The best part of this is that it is absolutely FREE. The only thing we ask in return is your feedback.

Check it out at:
http://www.kiwicodes.com/products/31-family-browser.html