Making a None option for Family Type parameter switching

Luke Johnson

Dieter Vermeulen describes an interesting workaround – when using a Family Type parameter, how can you turn “off” the family without using Visibility parameters?

His solution is essentially to delete geometry out of a copy of the Nested instance, and leave only one Type in that blank instance.  Call it None, and it shows up in the Family Types list that way.

Read the whole post:
http://revitbeyondbim.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/how-to-set-family-type-parameter-to-none/

via
https://twitter.com/RevitbeyondBIM/status/407975518768594945

Installing Android apps in Linux by running Android in VirtualBox

Luke Johnson
Download:
vbox86tp version with gapps & houdini & flash:
In VirtualBox, import the OVA appliance.  Then, you may need to disable mouse integration and allow Android to update itself on first boot.
Once it has booted, you should be able to login using your Google account and access the Play Store to download and run Android applications.

From:
http://androvm.org/blog/download/

More info:
http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/03/01/how-to-run-android-apps-in-linux-with-androvm/

How to find the IPs and Usernames of Users Logged In on your Network

Luke Johnson

Install and Run Windows Powershell

Give yourself unrestricted script access:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

Make a list of IPs to query and put it in a text file (1 IP per line).

Modify script below and put it in a text file with extension .ps1 (like script.ps1)

$ErrorActionPreference = 'SilentlyContinue'
$computers = Get-Content g:scriptipaddress.txt
foreach($computer in $computers) {
$ping = Test-Connection -ComputerName $computer -Count 1 -Quiet
$computerName = [system.net.dns]::Resolve("$computer")
#$hostname = $computerName.HostName
$shortHostname = $computerName.HostName.Split(".")[0]
if ($ping -eq 'True')
    {
        $UserName = (Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $computer win32_ComputerSystem).UserName
        Write-Host "$shortHostname  $UserName" -ForegroundColor Green
        #Write-Host "$hostname is pingable" -ForegroundColor Green
    }
else
    {
        Write-Host "$computer is not pingable" -ForegroundColor Red
    }
}

Put the .txt and the.ps1 in the same folder.

Browse to the folder in Powershell.

Type .script.ps1

Wait for the query to find all the logged in users on your IP range…

from
Power ping and get computer, username

Free Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 Testing VM VirtualBox images

Luke Johnson

http://lumion3d.com/

Read more / via
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201309/page15.html

You can access images for Linux, Windows or Mac.

Just extract and import the appliance to your VirtualBox installation.

EDIT It would seem that there is “approval” given for reusing and rearming these images beyond the trial period – this screenshot is taken from one of the imported VMs in VirtualBox:

My New PDF Markup Rig

Luke Johnson

One side-effect of moving home base closer to a city is the likelihood that one will have to commute, perhaps using public transport on a day-to-day basis. This means potentially having two hours a day in which you are sitting on a bus or a train. How to spend the time? Invariably, you will be surrounded by people with screens of all different shapes and sizes…

So, I began looking for my next device, something that would tick all the boxes for me. My Lumia 820 (a Windows Phone 8 device) is great, but leaves a few things to be desired due to the closed ecosystem – a plight shared by ios users, I’m sure. I considered getting a tablet – but I didn’t feel that Android would satisfy my needs, and iPads were out as I am essentially an anti-Apple guy (not for any real reason other than that we all have likes and dislikes, and I want to be an individual 🙂

I have a large library of PDFs, some Revit-related and others not, so I thought it would be good to find a way to read and potentially markup and cross-reference these during my time to and from work. I found out about a free Linux program called Okular – it stores markups in XML files, so the original PDF is unchanged. This idea appealed to me – with large PDFs, I would only need to transport or synchonize a small set of XML files between devices. Of course, iAnnotate PDF was out of the question (due to the aforementioned), and I didn’t like the fact that the Mendeley research tool required a pretty solid connection to the cloud.

Additionally I am, for-better-or-worse, a blogger, so it would be good to be able to type easily and quickly on whatever device I choose. So, drumroll please … what did I end up with?

It is a 4 year old piece of technology called a netbook. Haha, even *I* am laughing at myself. I’m sitting on the bus with a Lenovo Ideapad S10, which I found on Gumtree and bought for $100. It has 2.5gb of RAM and a 250gb hard drive. After purchasing it, I removed Windows 7 Pro and installed Linux Mint 15 Olivia, XFCE edition. It runs smooth and fast, the battery lasts (after a few Linux commands which I will include below), and I have installed Okular and copied my PDF library directly to the hard drive.

I can easily watch videos, listen to music, connect to wifi and bluetooth devices, work with documents and other files – but the real “killer app” for me is Okular. Its easy to use, has cool features like the ability to invert colours, and just generally makes it a joy to markup PDF files. As I’m running Linux, I have a huge library of open source software at my fingertips.

And who knows – the way things are going, if 3g/4g internet becomes super affordable, and Revit-in-the-cloud becomes globally accessible, this little netbook here could become my next workstation (joking, really).

Here is where you can find Linux Mint – I’m running 64bit Cinnamon on my main laptop, and 32bit XFCE on my “bus” netbook.

To get some simple power management happening, use these commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw smartmontools ethtool
sudo tlp start

After you have marked up a few pdf files, can find the XML files for these Okular markups here (copy paste into File Manager):
~/.kde/share/apps/okular/docdata

Showing Structural Column Cut Pattern from a Linked Revit File through Walls in a Host

Luke Johnson

Painfully, Architectural Walls in a Host model often occlude the Cut Pattern settings for Structural Columns in a Linked Model.  You may be able to see the edges of the Structural Columns, but any View overrides to the Revit Links tab, and even Filters, do not show the Structural Column cut pattern.

Essentially, the Walls in the host model are hiding them (like taking view order precedence or something).  Structural Columns should have Cut Dominance, but this does not seem to work where links are involved.

So, here is how to fix it – just override the Transparency of Walls to 1:

The Cut Pattern, including any overrides, instantly display:

Obviously, you can do this in a View Template for easy application to multiple views.

Helping search index:
structural column in revit link cut pattern

Forcing the Leader to Always Attach to the Top Line of multi-line Label tag Element in Revit

Luke Johnson

Make your Label aligned to Top and Left.  Add a long line of Invisible Lines type a little bit further Left than the label itself.

Your leader will now attach at the midpoint of the Invisible Line, provided the Label element does not become bigger (too many carriage returns) than the Line itself.

This works for any kind of basic annotation tag – Keynote Tags etc.

From:
Revit – Multi-line Workaround for Generic Annotations – Autodesk – Video Tutorial

Analytical model edge cannot have a length of zero (0)

Luke Johnson

We are seeing this error on a received Structural model:
Analytical model edge cannot have a length of zero (0)

Revit does not offer a solution – you can’t Delete Checked, and you can’t press OK.  It just keeps coming back.

Unticking the “Structural” instance parameter for the hosting floor will work (it just gets rid of the problematic Analytical Floor), even if unticking the “Enable Analytical Model” box in the Properties Palette won’t…

However, I think this is a bug or at least an undocumented problem that needs a better fix.

Some forums mention the issue, but there is no real solution yet:
Analytical model edge cannot have a length of zero… – Autodesk Community
Analytical Model Edge Warning