Font Mishaps – or – Where is that crazy BOX key

Our good buddy Revit uses the Windows installed fonts for all of its font needs.  This isn’t just for fonts used in your text and dimensions, but also fonts that the ribbon and help files and other “software-y” stuff needs.

A former co-worker sent me an email recently with an odd problem that he was having on a PC in Revit Arch 2010.  The ribbon, the drop downs, even the search text in the help search box was showing up as a bunch of boxes:

What the what?

Having spent some time in the Windows Character Map program (don’t ask – I don’t like to relive those days) I recognized those boxes as characters that a font didn’t have access to.  Except in this case, it was ALL the characters.

Must be a bad font, or missing font in Windows.  But what font was Windows trying to use to fill out the Revit interface?  Time for some digital sleuthing…

• A quick Google search turned up nothing worthwhile. 
• A fast check in the help file brought up nothing as well.
• I did a screen capture of my non-boxey interface and uploaded it to http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ to see if the “magical cloud” could figure it out.

My searches turned up nothing.  So I made a guess.

When we deployed Office 2007 in our firm, I remember reading about Microsoft getting hooked on Calibri for the new default.  So, I wrote my coworker back and told him to see if Calibri was installed on that PC; if it wasn’t install it… if it was, delete it and install it again.

That was the trick!  Calibri is the magic font that will allow you to actually read your Revit interface.  Once he installed the font and restarted Revit, everything showed up fine.

I Can’t Read Your Mind, Revit

The editing request “feature” in Revit has officially been put on the NEVER EVER USE list in our office.  It joins the ranks of “Insert DWG File” and “That one vendor who called and claimed he was calling me about jury duty to try and trick the receptionist” (true story.)

For the most part, worksets and worksharing function far better than they have any right to.  It is a complicated and memory intensive process that for the most part just works. 

With proper team management, you can coordinate folks to work on different tasks so they aren’t stepping on each others toes.  However, every once in a while, you try to get an element to work on, but someone else has it “borrowed”.

Revit offers you the wonderful opportunity to place a request to the owner.  Hey!  That sounds great!  I’ll click this button and that guy will see that I need that wall and he’ll click “Sure, friend!  Take it!  I’m done with it!” and I’ll get the wall and everything will be great!

Except you click the button and wait.  And wait.  And wait.

See, there is no magical popup on the other person’s screen, which is what EVERYONE thinks it will do the first time I teach them worksets.  You should see their faces when I explain that their request does not create some instant message like blurb on the other person’s screen.  That it secretly hides the request in a very hard to find menu.  It’s like I showed them a cake, then told them they had to eat this carrot.  And not a clean carrot.  A dirty one, straight from the ground.

The Revit help files even say that once you place the request, you have to “Ask the owner to approve your request.  The owner does not receive automatic notification of your request. You must contact the owner.”  You have to ask!  The computer can’t ask for me?!  What?!

Sorry.  It’s been a long week.

Anyway, we had a big issue over the past weekend where Person A placed a request, didn’t talk to the Person B and then left.  Because it was Saturday, and who can blame them?  College football, man.  Person B then sync’ed and left for the weekend.  Hooray!  Good job, Person B!  You sync’ed and checked all your stuff back in!

You know there’s a “but” coming.

BUT, when Person B synced, the unknown requested element automatically reserved the element for Person A.  That’s what we call Revit being “helpful”.  We have a list of items of Revit being “helpful”.  Person C then needed to work on the element.  Both Person A and Person B were off doing some weekend stuff, Person C got (justifiably) frustrated, they called Persons IT, and someone had to pretend to be Person A, relinquish all, and then sync.

Obnoxious.  And it could have been solved by having Revit pop-up editing requests.  Yeah, I know that the Workshare Monitor can help… sort of… but that thing sometimes likes to report that I’m in the model six times, and no one else is in it, even though they are sitting right next to me and I can see their screen, so I look at the Workshare Monitor with a skeptical eye.

So, for now, we tell our folks to never use the place request button.  We tell them to use the phone, or to go see the other person, because it just isn’t worth the hassle.

Quick Tip – Your Model Looks Great

We sometimes (all the time) find ourselves needing to adjust the appearance of our model elements in a view to get stuff to look… well, just plain right.  And then there are the times when we cut a detail view and frankly, the model just isn’t looking too good at that scale and we just want to hide it all and draft over top of it.  Heartbreaking, but it happens.

You can open Visibility Graphics and select all your families and change the appearance right there, but Revit does offer up a quicker way to make some very basic wholesale changes to your model elements in your view.  Under View Properties, there is a parameter called “Display Model”, and frankly, it’s one of those parameter names that scares people.  Normally, I’d say it’s good to follow that gut feeling and NOT push the button, but this button is benign.  At least, it’s easy to undo.

Hitting the dropdown will show three options, each one hopefully self-explanatory.

• “Normal” will not make any changes to your model elements in this view.  It will look “normal”
• “As underlay” applies your project’s underlay appearance override to every model element in the current view
• “Do not display” just turns off every single model element in the view

A very simple function, but very powerful when you need to make this kind of change.

Quick Tip – Dangerous Duplicate Views

This is a nasty one.  We have a lot of users that will duplicate a view to save time.  We’ve actually been endorsing a course of action of NOT duplicating views.  We’ve found too many things that folks forget about tweaking on a new view (this of course, does not go for Duplicate as Dependent) that was duplicated from another view.  Categories turned off, elements hidden, etc.

But here’s the nastiest.

We had a batch of section tags that looked like they were being censored.  The detail number and sheet in the tag had lines through them.

That’s not good.  It looks like the world’s worst censor got their hands on our drawings.  And it just looks plain dumb.

Turns out what happened is that the view was duplicated, for one reason or another.  WHEN A VIEW IS DUPLICATED THE VIEW TAG IS DUPLICATED AS WELL.  The second view was never put on a sheet.  So we had two section tags on top of each other.  One that was on a sheet and one that wasn’t.

If you duplicate views, pay extra attention to the tag for the original view.  Scoot it out of the way to find the duplicated tag and hide it.

Before anyone speaks up, yes we could just not print unreferenced views, and we often do this, but the above is still sloppy, and we are always trying to keep our Revit model clean.  Because a clean model is a happy model.

Quick Tip – Smile for the Camera!

I am always surprised when I find a very experienced Revit user unaware of some feature or function in the software.  I shouldn’t be surprised, because I’m often finding new things and a piece of software like Revit is amazingly complex, and knowing every single facet has to be a Herculean effort.

In this light, I teach a class for our firm called “The Top 10 Things All Revit Users Should Know” where I spend a couple hours going over some tips and tricks that can get forgotten or overlooked.  Can you guess how many tips and tricks?  That’s right!  64!  Why that many?  Why not 10?  Because there are WAY more than 10 tips and tricks that I expect all our users to know.

I am going to drop a handful of those tips throughout some upcoming blog posts.  There’s a good chance you know the tip.  If you do, don’t roll your eyes and make rude noises, just let the rest of the folks out there go “huh, I didn’t realize that.”  Hopefully, everyone will learn something and we will (checking business-speak manual) “raise all the boats together.”

(Just shut up and get to the tip)

You place a camera view in your model.  It’s just slightly off kilter, maybe not looking far enough up, or maybe not looking enough to one side or another.  You could select the view, click SHOW CAMERA, go back to the plan view, spin it, change the properties to adjust the height, etc etc.  But it would be a lot easier if you could just pivot that camera on its tripod while you are in the view.  I’ll break the tension.  You can.

Here’s the trick.  To simply “pivot” and “rotate” the camera on its tripod, you need to select the CROP REGION BOUNDARY for the camera view (so it’s highlighted), then in the view, use your SHIFT-middle-button pan and rotate to simply look around.  If the crop region is NOT selected, then you will just be doing a typical rotate where you move around the model.  This will work for any 3D view, not just a camera view (it’s just more impressive in a camera view).  Give it a spin to see how it works.

Get it?  Give it a “spin”?

Sorry.  Next post I’ll try to be pun-free.

Haikus Galore… Sort of

Thanks everyone who posted an entry for the Avatech Utlities.  It was surprisingly tough picking out one of the haikus to be the winner, but sadly, only one could be picked.

Like a hawk grabbing
Its prey, each grid I touch is
Numbered in order

Congratulations, Joe!  Your words made my heart swell with pride, I could feel the air blowing through the noble bird’s wings!  I yearned to be outside in the cool mountain breezes… instead of sitting in front of this computer under these flourescent lights.

Again, thanks to everyone who entered and everyone who read the posts.  I hope you had as much fun with them as I did.

And be sure to check out the Avatech Utilities.  They have a batch of them free, and those are all quite useful.

Avatech Utilities for Revit 2011 – Come and Get It

If you read the Revit blogs, you’ll know this isn’t the first post like this, so you probably know the drill.  Avatech has been kind enough to let me give away some of their stuff!

Avatech offers up an assortment of utilities that fill in some pesky gaps with the basic Revit functionality.  We have been using them for years and I can attest that we would waste a lot of time without some of these tools.

They offer a free version, but it only has a handful of the tools, and let me tell you, the Door Mark Update tool is an absolute lifesaver.

Would you like a free copy?  Absolutely you would!  How can you get one?  Post a comment to this article and let the world know how you plan on saving time with the Avatech Utilities, how you have saved time with them, or what you plan on doing with all the time you’ll be saving.  If you don’t know about them, be sure to take a look at their page for some more info.

Here’s the catch:

It has to be a haiku.

Oh yeah, I’m serious.  Three lines, 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables (if you are a syllable over I’ll probably overlook it). 

Am I evil?  Maybe.  But I thought it would get those creative juices flowing, and frankly, make it easier for me to read.  If no one replies, then I’ll know it was a bad idea.

Feel free to enter as many comments as you like.  Be sure to have your name and correct email address when you post.  That’s the only way we can get in touch with the winner.

After the 30th, I’ll pick the one that made me smile the most (might get some help from some friends) and you’ll get a code good for a free copy of the utilities.

Good luck!

Our Mama Bear Size Revit 2011 Deployment

Heads up!  This post is kinda heavy on the IT end of things.  EDIT: Code snippets included at bottom… You’ve been warned.

Just this week I finally got around to pulling the trigger on our 2011 installation of Revit Architecture, MEP, and Structure.  This goes to about 120 PCs over six offices in the firm. 

We aren’t the big boys with 1,000 designers and a team of 20 people on our IT staff, one whose specific job is to figure out how to deploy software.  Neither are we the little guys with only five employees and you can carry a CD to each desk to install new software in the course of an afternoon.  We’re right in the middle.  We’re the warm porridge of firms, which offers some interesting “opportunities” when trying to deploy and manage software.  (You like that?  I pulled out my business speak thesaurus and got the word “opportunity” in place of the word I wanted to use!) 

The question then is, how to deploy software to over 100 desktops without having to walk/drive to each one.  That might take some time.  We’re going to walk through how we overcame some of these hurdles and hopefully you can learn from our mistakes or maybe pick up a tip or two. 

First up, simply make the deployment.  Using the deployment wizard, we tweaked the install and set file locations and other wonderful settings and saved it all to a central location (we call it our “Library” server).  This Library drive gets replicated over the WAN to each office every night.  This was a lot of data, so we made the deployment on a Friday to copy over the weekend.  Pushing three different installs of Revit to five remote offices wrapped up the following Thursday. 

Then it was onto a test.  We had a spare PC in the “lab” (this term is used loosely).  Remember all those file locations and other great settings tweaked in the wizard?  Turns out Revit decides to ignore a lot of them during the actual install.  Hooray!  This write-up on the AU Website gave us a hint to tweak an install, then copy the Revit.ini file around AFTER installation.  Good tip.  I also like how at the bottom he says that “Installing Revit is a three-part process”, then lists 5 steps.  But I digress.  And seriously, we got some good tips here.  Be sure to read it if you are prepping your own deployment.  EDIT: Matt Stachoni sent a note to let me know that there is another location for the above mentioned deployment article here.  This one is better and has not been edited.  And five does equal five. 

So.  We now will need to copy the Revit.ini file over to the PCs after the install, if we want to get the most customized bang for our buck – file locations, template locations, etc.  Great.  Let’s tackle that later. 

Aside from the ini file, the install goes fine.  How are we going to get it on everyone’s machine?  In the past, we tried to use the msi files, and push the deployment through Active Directory to the PCs.  We ended up with many failures due to some missing prerequisites.  Then trying to push the prerequisites before the install got difficult. 

At the completion of the creation of the deployment with the wizard, you get a nice shortcut that you run that points to the install executable with all the tweaks that Revit will try to ignore later.  This is the most solid way to get the deployment out there, because the install executable includes the prerequisites.  So we really just want to copy this process. 

However, we couldn’t just have people double-click the shortcut because
1) our users are not admins on their PCs
2) I still want to PUSH this out as much as I can, so everyone gets it.  If I ask folks to double-click on something, it won’t happen on probably 30% of the machines, then I’m back to what would be a manual install 

We looked at RUN AS batch scripts, but anyone could open a .bat file and see the login credentials of an admin user pretty easily.  We needed something that could build a RUN AS wrapper to allow us to assign a login script that would give users temporary admin rights to install the software. 

Enter one of my favorite tools, AutoIt. 

If you do any IT management or work, you should download this now and look through some examples.  It’s a scripting platform that can do many things and will compile a nice little .exe file when you’re done.  Oh, and it’s freeware. 

Writing an AutoIt solved all four problems – .exe file that we could assign as a login script, allow to run with different credentials, run the install exe and arguments exactly like the wizard shortcut, and at the end of it all we copy over the tweaked Revit.ini file. 

Using a script wrapper is how we are making the majority of our installs now, and we have a nice generic script that we just tweak for each one.  There are actually two scripts, one local and one network due to an odd issue with Vista and Windows 7 UAC, but it works.  The network file is run first, which copies the local file over to the PCs C: drive.  Then the network file runs the local file under admin credentials.  The local file actually runs the install exe.  When it’s all done, we write a little text file to a folder on the C: drive, this way the network file has something to check to see if the software has installed, otherwise it will just run every time the user logs in. 

That’s the basics of it.  We’re happy with what we’ve worked out and have had several successful deployments using the above method.  If there’s some interest, I’ll post the actual script files up here later (EDIT: I’ve posted them below in this article), just let me know via comments or email.  But right now, this post is getting pretty long, and I’m getting kinda tired.  That bed looks good.  No not that one, that one’s too hard.  No, that other one looks too soft.  I’m talking about the one in the middle there. 

Yeah, that one looks just right.

---

OK, so here’s the code I mentioned above, with some notes in there and the fie locations genericized.  Watch out for line-wrapping and weird HTML format crap if you copy and paste.  As always, this is provided as-is and I would strongly recommending testing before throwing into a production environment.

The first is the network script which is the actual file that gets assigned as a login script.

Local $TxtFileName
Local $TxtFileName2
Local $LauncherFilePath
Local $LauncherFileName
Local $LocPath
Local $LocLauncher 
Local $SoftPath

;create a temp folder to copy the local wrapper to – make sure that people have execute rights to it
DirCreate(“c:\temp_wrapper”)

;the next location is where we write/check for the text file to see if the script should run completely
$SoftPath = “C:\WINDOWS\OurSoft\”
$LauncherFilePath = “(network path of the local wrapper file, not including the filename, ending with a \)”
$LocPath = “c:\temp_wrapper”

$TxtFileName = “(name of text file to see if the wrappers have already run”
$LauncherFileName = “(name of local wrapper file)”
 
;checks to see if the text file exists and if it does, it does nothing – if it doesn’t it runs the else
If FileExists($SoftPath & $TxtFileName) Then
 
Else 
 $LocLauncher = $LocPath & “\” & $LauncherFileName
;copies the local wrapper from the network location to the location folder – needed to get around UAC issues with Vista and 7
 FileCopy($LauncherFilePath & $LauncherFileName, $LocLauncher)
;runs the local file as admin
 RunAsWait(“(admin login)”, “(domain)”, “(password”, 0, $LocLauncher)
EndIf

Next is the local file that gets copied over and run with the RunAsWait.  Some of these strings I just copied directly from the shortcut that gets created by the deployment wizard.

;UAC prompt
#RequireAdmin

;name of the text file to create when local wrapper has run
Local $TxtFileName
$TxtFileName = “C:\WINDOWS\OurSoft\(name of textfile from network wrapper)”

;belts and suspenders – warms up the network location before the install
DriveMapAdd(“”, \\server\share)

Local $ProgramFile, $argFile, $command
;location to the setup.exe file copied from the shortcut
;does NOT include arguments
;filename shortened to 8.3 filename
$ProgramFile = FileGetShortName(“\\server\share\path to install\AdminImage\Setup.exe”)
;location to the ini file from the shortcut
;does NOT include /qb /I etc, ONLY the ini file
;filename shortened to 8.3 filename
$argFile = FileGetShortName(“\\server\share\path to install\AdminImage\install.ini”)
;the following string rebuilds the link from the wizard created shortcut with all arugments
$command = $ProgramFile & ” /qb /I ” & $argFile
 
RunWait($command)

;checks for the revit.ini file to exist
;if not, loop until it is installed
;was necessary to wait until AFTER install was complete before copying final revit.ini file
While FileExists(“C:\Program Files\Autodesk\(Revit flavor)\Program\Revit.ini”) = 0
 Sleep(30000)
WEnd

;once revit.ini exists locally, copy our tweaked one over top of it
FileCopy(“\\server\share\tweaked-revit.ini”, “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\(Revit flavor)\Program\Revit.ini”, 1)

;creates and writes a note in the text file stating that the install is done 
FileOpen($TxtFileName, 1)
FileWriteLine($TxtFileName, “Revit 2011 installed.”)
FileClose($TxtFileName)

Hope this helps as a jumping off point for everyone.

Crazy Dimensions Strings

Dimensions, who needs them? 

Sadly, we all do, at least until the rainbows and unicorns of sharing the model comes to pass.  I know.  I hear all the sales guys tell me the same thing:  “Soon no one will be printing anything!  You’ll give a CD of the model to the contractor!  And donuts will rain down from the sky!”  I like to think I’m a pretty forward thinking guy, but we still have a long time until no one wants drawings.

In the meantime, we have to make due with creating a highly accurate model, and slapping dimensions all over it.

Revit does a couple “goofy” things with dimension strings and I thought I’d list a couple here, mainly so I don’t forget (that’s really all this blog is – a list of items that I KNOW I will forget about in a week or so).  I put “goofy” in “quotes” because once you understand what Revit wants to do, then it’s not “goofy” “at” “all”.

Revit has some nice features for dimension text.  One of these is the ability to add text above, below or as a prefix or suffix to the dimension text itself. 

So, you have placed a window in a masonry wall and you want to dimension the opening.  The dimension string snaps nicely to the window edges and you place your dimension.  Double-clicking on the text brings up the Dimension Text box where you will deflty type in “MO” to the field below the dimension. 

Except, you won’t.

What the heck is that?

The “Below” field is already taken by some other dimension!  How very rude!  What in the world is it?!  I won’t keep you in suspense anymore:  When you dimension to the edges of a window, the Below text is automatically filled in with the window’s height parameter.  You can’t change it, you can either tell your dimension type to show it or not:

What do you do?  Put in a piece of text?  Of course not.  You have to move your witness line.  It won’t actually move, but you drag the middle square grip to the wall edge and not the window edge. 

They’re the same line, aren’t they?  Pretty sneaky, sis.

While you are dragging, move your mouse over the edge.  It will highlight the line.  Check out your status bar and it will report the window element.  Slap your TAB key until the status bar is telling you that you are now selecting the wall.  Let go of your mouse.  You are now dimensiong the wall and not the window.  Congratulations!  You can now edit the Below text!  And as a note – yes, the Above text is also grayed out, but I have no idea why.  When we find the top secret Revit manual, I’ll let everyone know.

Another “fun” dimensioning oddity is a long dimension string that will either disappear, or chunks of it will disappear.  This one is actually much easier to understand.

You can dimension to pretty much anything in Revit.  Those dimensions are view specific.  If, for one reason or another, the element that you are dimensions no longer appears in that view, the portion of the dimension string that was touching it will hide too.  Why might an element no longer appear?

• The element was hidden
• The element’s category was hidden
• The view range changed
• The element was deleted
• The element was NOT in the original view, but in an Underlay (yes, you can absolutely dimension to elements in Underlay, then someone turns them off and your dimensions poof away, too!)

One of our biggest tips for dimensions has been to wait as long as you can during the documentation process to place them.  ABSOLUTELY build your model accurately (I shouldn’t even need to write that, but you know someone out there is shocked at it), but wait until the end to place your dimensions.  That way your views have had time to settle in, and certainly your model has baked nicely. 

Now where are those donuts?

Revit 2012 New Features – While They Last

This week, Autodesk dropped the latest version of Revit on the world – Revit 2011.  While much fanfare and excitement has been raised about its new features (and rightfully so), I am more excited about the super-duper sneak peak I got at the new features for Revit 2012, internally being called the “Apocalypse” edition.

Everyone knows that the world will end in 2012, and that gives us a whole year to use the exciting new features in Revit 2012, or until the impending planetary crisis and destruction allows the electric infrastructure to keep our PCs running!  I for one, plan on getting a nice big generator, to keep posting blogs and tweeting, because when we are faced with the end of humanity, who wouldn’t want to keep reading about design software!

To be honest, the “experts” can’t agree on precisely HOW the world will end.  Being a forward thinking company, Autodesk is thankfully working on new features that can help the survival minded work with many of these potential catastrophes:

New floor design type – The “Hull” floor building tool will allow designers to barrel-curve their floors to allow free-floating buildings, in case of global flooding.

Enhancements to walls – An additional wall function type has been added.  “Bunker” can be used to create exterior walls for structures that will be integrated into mountains or at least 100′ below ground.

Integrated building analysis tools for hermetic seal – Quickly analyze your Revit model to see if it’s airtight.  No one wants a pesky zombie and/or flesh eating virus sneaking in to your safe house.

Enhancement to phases – The current phase model in Revit allows designers to show conditions from previous work.  But what if the Large Hadron Collider, or some other combination of solar flare and electromagnetic pulses, creates spacetime distortions?  The new Minkowski Phase option allows you to see the ramifications of your design decisions pushed through a fluid four dimensions or other potential spacetime ripples.

Additions to solar tracking tool – The new sun tracking system is nice, but a smart designer needs to pay attention to all the planets and other heavenly bodies.  The “Extraplanetary Tracking Tool” includes orbit and tracking data for over 100 planets, comets and stars, so you can safely align your building along proper astrological lines of power.

Numerous new components:

• Over 200 new models of generators
• Stand-alone turret or tripod mounted defense weapons
• Baseball bat, chainsaw and other excellent zombie stopping devices
• Nuclear-blast grade doors

This is just a small sampling of the new features.  I’m sure that this is bittersweet for the software team.  After such a strong showing, you’d want to keep working on the next release!  However, they realize the futility in this, and how difficult it will be to work on Revit 2013 when the planet has been destroyed.

In the meantime, I’m certainly enjoying all the new goodness that is in Revit 2011, in between the time I spend building my bunker.