Tag: families

Tips for Good Revit model maintenance and better performance

Luke Johnson

Nice ‘checklist’ style post over at RevitKing.  Most things just come back to sensible modelling:
Revit.King’s BIM coordinator/ Revit Blog: Optimal performance for Revit!!!

One of the tips:
Create a family component instead of in-place families when possible, especially for repetitive components. Each in-place family has separate type attributes that Revit has to reference.

To implement this on an existing model, you could convert some of the in-place families to Component families using this method.

Downgrade Revit projects and families to previous version

Luke Johnson

OK, the title may be a bit misleading.  But this is how you can try to do it:

For Project RVT files:

  1. Export from higher version of Revit to IFC
  2. Import the IFC file into the lower version of Revit

Tip – use the best available IFC format that both versions of Revit understand

For Family RFA files:
 Either:

  1. Load the family into a project in the higher version
  2. Follow the above steps for Project files
  3. Once you have the project in the lower version of Revit, open the downgraded family from the Project (select in Project Browser – Edit)

or //

  1. Export to DWG or SAT from the higher version
  2. Import the file into the lower version

Tip – you probably can’t explode the resulting import, or everything will disappear.

Basic tip via CAD Forum – How to save Revit project to an older version?

Also check out Sharing a Revit File with a Previous Release

Find Bloated Families living in your Projects

Luke Johnson

If you want to find out the actual file size of families that are living in your project, follow these steps:

  1. In Revit 2012, export all families to RFA files (File – Save As – Library – Family – ). 
    In 2011, you might be interested in this method.
  2. View the exported folder in Windows Explorer.
  3. Sort By – Size
  4. You will see the most bloated families at the top.

Here is an example:

To reduce the size of the largest families, I can now:

  1. Open them from the project
  2. Delete any unnecessary data (such as imported DWGs)
  3. Purge and then 
  4. Reload them into the project.

I anticipate significant size decreases for my (currently) 547 mb project!

Something Revit Hates

Luke Johnson

While discussing an interesting baluster-with-lighting family, Steve reminds us that “Revit hates switching between shared and not shared status.”

You have to follow a strict process of deleting and / or renaming affected families that exist in the project if you wish to switch them from Shared to non-Shared, or vice-versa.

If you want to read the rest of Steve’s, post, here is a link:
Revit OpEd: Dept. of Quirky – Baluster with Light Fixture

Vault can be used to search Revit families

Luke Johnson

Do you know much about Autodesk Vault?  Watch this quick video to see how powerful it can be in searching through your Revit family library:

 
Video via

‪Autodesk Revit and Autodesk Vault Collaboration AEC‬‏ – YouTube

A few links to help you:

  1. You can download Vault if you are on Subscription at this link.
  2. To get started installing and configuring Vault, check out the wiki.
  3. Autodesk Vault 2012 updates can be found at this page.

Here are some links to the current updates for Vault 2011 and Vault 2012:
Autodesk® Vault 2012
Autoloader Compatibility Update
Vault 2012 Client Update for AutoCAD 2010
AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 – Autodesk Vault 2012 (Server) Support Patch
Vault 2012 Client Update for AutoCAD 2011
Copy Design Hotfix
API Log In Hotfix
Check In Performance Hotfix
Custom Numbering Scheme Hotfix
Multi Issue Hotfix
Vault 2012 Documentation
Civil 3D Object Based Security Removal – Server

Autodesk® Vault 2011
Migrated Inventor 2010 Content Center Libraries, for use with:
AutoCAD Civil 3D, Vault Add-In Hotfix
Security/Property Hotfix
Multi Issue Hotfix
Multi Issue Hotfix
Autoloader Hotfix
Multi Issue Update
Move File Hotfix
MSG File Property Extraction
Hotfix – To Get Untranslated Software Strings Translated (Vault)
Autodesk Vault 2011 Update 2
Office 2010 Vault Add-in
Hotfix – “show all version” checkbox unavailable in explorer (simplified chinese only)
Hotfix – Civil 3D MAPIINSERT
Hotfix – Multi Issue Hotfix
Hotfix – Title Block Property Hotfix
Vault 2011 Client Update for AutoCAD 2010
Hotfix – Localization Check Out Hotfix
Autodesk Vault 2011 Update 1
Hotfix – CIP Hotfix

Save an In-Place Family as an RFA for use in another project

Luke Johnson

Do you have some awesome in-place families that you would like to convert to normal Component families, so that you can load them into other projects?

Here’s how:

  1. Open the Project containing the In-Place family
  2. Edit the In-Place family
  3. Select all of the elements in the family
  4. Group all of these elements using the Create Group tool.  Give the Group a name.
  5. Select the Group
  6. Do not Finish Editing the In-Place family yet!
  7. Go to the ‘R’ button (Application Menu) – Save As – Library – Group
  8. You will notice that the filetype is RFA!
  9. Save the Group somewhere.
  10. You Component Family IS the file that you just saved.

 I’m sure there are limitation to this method, but I think it is very cool.

Here is a quick video:

 
Credit for this tip – KarelCAD support document