Network Licenses Over a WAN or VPN

I’m writing this down because I ALWAYS forget it, and it just happened to me again the other day. I was trying to open Revit and the license server was really far away in another office and I kept getting a pop up saying “A valid license could not be obtained by the network license manager.” I could ping the license server, I could browse to it, but no license.

After pulling some hair out (not much left) I remembered the FLEXLM_TIMEOUT variable.

Granted, you aren’t supposed to try to access your Autodesk license server (FlexLM) over a wide area network or VPN, but sometimes it just makes sense. If you have to access your license remotely, the FIRST THING you want to do is tweak your FLEXLM_TIMEOUT environment variable.

Win 7 Environment Variables

This article says it’s for AutoCAD, but it’s really for almost all their software that uses the FlexLM server, and it does a great job of laying out the steps and recommendations for Windows 7. Here’s where to find them in Windows 10 and 8, just add the same variable and setting from the Autodesk article. You could even get your IT guys to add this as something that gets pushed to all PCs at the domain level via GPO (or GPP), and not have to do it PC by PC. It’s not going to hurt any machine that doesn’t need it.

Make Your Model Look Like a Model

I saw a Tweet recently (I think it was a Tweet, I can’t find it again) that had an interesting workflow to make your Revit model render in a single material. The post had a rendering look like a hand made model fashioned out of wood. It was a neat idea, but it implied that the single material rendering inside Revit was not possible, mainly because you can’t override materials with View Filters. And while that last part is true, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it right inside of Revit. It takes a little cheating, but it’s cheating in a way that probably won’t hurt anything.

While View Filters don’t allow for material overrides, Phase Filters do. Taking a look at my Phases dialog box for the default Revit template, there is no default Phase Filter that has the New phase state set to overridden; and that makes sense because when do you want to override thew new work? You just want it to look like it normally does.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. I made a new Phase Filter called Single Material and set the New phase state to “Overridden”. Then for quick access, I went to the Graphic Overrides tab and opened the “Phase – New” material. My project didn’t have an appropriate material, but the installed asset browser got me a “good enough” chipboard material from the Autodesk material library. I didn’t bother making a new material, I simply replaced the asset for the “Phase – New” material. I did tweak the bump map, dialing the scale up to 40’x40′ since I was applying this to my whole model and I wanted it to look like it shrunk.

Sidenote – decades ago in architecture school, I was working on a model for a project up to the last minute (shocker) and I took a nice slice through the side of my thumb with a utility knife. I wrapped my thumb in those crappy brown paper towels you always had in school, and taped it up with masking tape. I did my charrette for that project with a hack job wrapped up bleeding thumb! Immediately after I presented I asked my professor if I could go to student health. She hastily agreed and I went and got stitches! You can still just make out the scar…

Back in 2016… In this specific case, my entire model was in the New Construction phase so it was pretty straightforward, but the same could be done to the other phase materials because honestly, when do you ever need to use those materials.

The results weren’t half bad:

Chipboard! I usually don’t say this, but it actually does look better full size, so click away!

Apply a touch of tilt frame effect…

Blurry chipboard!

I was pretty happy with the results considering the minuscule amount of time I spent on this thing. If I understood how exterior shadows worked, I could probably get those adjusted to look more appropriate. There are a ton of tweaks you could do if you wanted to apply this process to your own models, but you can easily start right in Revit for your rendering.

Sagrada Familia and the Importance of Deadlines

I remember (way) back in architectural history class, the Sagrada Familia was one of those projects that we were amazed at the scope and unique nature of it, and then when we learned the legacy of construction our minds were a little blown.

Fast forward a couple decades, and the basilica hadn’t completely left my brain, but it was certainly stuck way back in the recesses. Until I found myself in Barcelona for a quick trip. You can’t not see Gaudi while you are there. I have a hard time putting my finger on any other architect who has had such an impact on the style and culture and feel of a whole city they way he did on Barcelona.

Seems like Gaudi and his never ending project have become more prominent recently. A fantastic video visualizing the completion of the towers is finding its way around the web, and rightfully so.

I was overwhelmed with the design of the church; the interiors (especially early in the morning) are breathtaking, and the iconic towers fill you with both a sense of whimsy and wonder at the same time. But I had no idea the scope of the completed project until I saw this video. It’s monumental and when (if) it wraps up, I need to find a way back to Barcelona to check it out.

At this point, the construction is a labor of love, and it needs to be completed, but of course no story of the Sagrada Familia is complete without mentioning how long it has taken. While we can do amazing things, we really need to keep an eye on that gantt chart.

I keep this photo that I took on the wall in my office:

First off, I like reminiscing about the trip. It’s not a great photo, but it’s a different look at the project that you rarely see. It reminds me about detailing, and working with volumes, and light, and space, and all that stuff that they talk to you about in architecture school, but really only hits home when you experience a space like this one.

I also keep it on my wall to remind me about deadlines. Deadlines, like them or not, are important. People need to get stuff done, and a lot of times those people are relying on me, and probably you. Even if you are not in a billable position, give yourself a deadline and try to stick to it.

Sorry for the sidetrack. We’ll get back to geeky stuff next time. Thanks for indulging me.

Quick Tip – TYPE v INSTANCE

From the Revit help file, a type is “a subdivision within a family of elements,” as opposed to an instance which is “an individual occurrence of an element.”

So, in your model you might have a window TYPE called “A”. When you place a window, you have created an INSTANCE of it. Each element is controlled by its type and instance parameters. Instance parameters will only impact that one specific individual element that you are looking at. Type parameters will impact all instances of that specific type.

When you are chaning the type parameters, be careful and be sure that you want to make that change to all the instances of that type. It can have major ramifications. Revit even tries to warn you before you do!

If you do need to make a type parameter change, but don’t want to change your current instances, duplicate that type first to make an entirely new one.

Tiny Windows and Graphics Cards

Recently saw a Tweet from Tom Whitehead concerning a teeny tiny window that showed up in his Revit. While it wasn’t EXACTLY like a problem that has been occurring over the last few years, it looked awful close to a problem that has come up with Revit and desktop management software like nView and Hyrdavision.

.@AutodeskHelp Any ideas on this? 2016 r2 UR12 pic.twitter.com/nwPbRKjDLR

— Crusty McFussypants (@swittersTX) February 9, 2016

I dropped Tom a quick note to test out my hunch, and it turns out that yes, nView was the culprit.

So what exactly is going on here? Honestly, I’m not really sure, and there hasn’t been an official fix from Autodesk; they have a page that outlines a less destructive fix than I do, but if I can take a hammer to something, I’m gonna take a hammer to it. But if you are using Hyrdavision or nView, you might see these random tiny windows. Traditionally, they have been the size of a postage stamp, with mainly just the X close button, and the tiny window is usually sitting in the middle of Revit.

Disabling nView or Hydravision seems to alleviate the tiny window syndrome (T.W.S. for short). When installing new graphics drivers, I will typically go the “custom” route and just not install either of those features and skip the hassle of having to disable them later on.

The earliest I have seen mention of this issue online is 2009, and that is probably close to when I first saw it as well. It’s stupid, and it’s annoying, but at least it’s easy to fix.

Quick Tip – Missing Sheets From Plots

Well, this was a weird one. We had a situation where a user was having very inconsistent results while plotting. He’d plot and maybe half the sheets would come out. He’d plot again and a totally different set of sheets would come out.

We tried the usual and expected troubleshooting steps: restart Revit, reboot the PC, reload the printer driver, etc. On a whim, we took a look at the video driver and found out it wasn’t the latest supported version. Autodesk maintains a database of supported drivers that you can search through based on video card manufacturer and software version.

The unsuspected culprit!

I wager you can see where this story is going, but in what seems like a disconnected solution, updating the video card driver cleared up the plotter issue. For the most part, Revit is pretty hardware agnostic, but it’s important to 1) make sure you are using a supported video card and 2) keep an eye on the supported driver list and make sure you are using the most recent supported driver, you don’t want to necessarily use the most recent driver on the hardware manufacturer’s site, pay attention to Autodesk’s own list.

Equal Spacing Trick

No, not THAT equal spacing trick. Well, it is that one, but it’s a tweak on it. It’s not ONLY that one.

Recently, I was having a nice chill Q&A session on Revit families and we, of course, starting talking about things other than families. A user had an issue where she wanted her windows equally spaced. Yeah, we all know the EQ trick on the dimensions. You dimension a bunch of items, click the EQ toggle and Revit magically does math and spaces them all the same distance.

It’s Magic!!!

But she didn’t actually want that. She wanted the space BETWEEN the windows to be equal. And no math.

Luckily, we came up with a solution. We had to start with a reference plane the width of the windows past the end of the wall. And then, instead of dimensioning to the center of the windows, we dimensioned to the edge, and included the reference plane. The plane was kind of like a phantom window, so when we hit EQ, it all lined up!

Booyah!

Not the traditional way, but way easier than doing a bunch of math!

 

 

Quick Tip – The TEMP Folder

Revit acting a little funny? How long has it been since you rebooted? It might be time again.

Something else to check would be to clear out your TEMP folder. Make sure Revit is closed and click START and go to RUN (or press the Windows key + R). Type in %TEMP% and hit OK. That folder is your TEMP folder. Select all the files and delete them all. Windows will need to skip some, that’s OK.

We found that there are some ghosts that get cleaned up nicely when you periodically scrub your TEMP folder. Revit (and other Windows apps) is (are) supposed to keep this clean on their own, but like the typical teenager, sometimes they need help keeping their room clean.

Not sure, but I’d bet a teenager

Standards, Mud, and the Middle Ground

Over at the ever excellent Revit OpEd blog, Steve Stafford recently posted a response to a Quick Tip I, uh, recently posted. His post does a great job of thoroughly explaining the issue I hinted at (and frankly, makes me a little ashamed that I didn’t go into much detail.)

My initial response was, “Holy crap! Steve Stafford reads my blog!” After that, my brain, in its never ending quest to not let me fall asleep at night, went down a rabbit hole of standards, procedures, and users.

Steve lays out a procedure to follow that filters all content loading on a project through a single user to help avoid issue like this. And while this is a great ideal solution to aim for, I tend to offer my tips and advice in more of a triage functionality. I do love standards and aiming for the ideal, but I also have seen many projects and many users panic at the eleventh hour and simply need to get the job out the door. I want to make sure their panicked clicking does as little damage to the model as possible. Sometimes this leads to conversations with owners, sometimes it leads to more education for users, sometimes it leads to tweaking of content and procedures to help users from shooting themselves in the foot.

This roundabout finally gets me to the point on this post: standards and procedures and users.

Right off the bat, I don’t have a great answer here, but this is a discussion that has been going on for decades and will continue to go on for decades more. Your firm is going to have standards, and the industry and technology has best practices that everyone should aim for. As a BIM (or even IT) manager, your job is to push people in the direction of best practices, but you also need to balance that push with the culture and specific needs of your company. Somewhere in the middle are your standards.

You working on your standards

I’ve always said that standards are set in mud; they need to be solid enough so everyone can see them and follow them, but malleable enough to update as needs arise. One set of standards and procedures is not going to be ideal for two different firms, there is a delicate balancing act that support staff needs to maintain, and knowing the users and how they work is critical to that. The users may not be advanced enough for a tricky technical procedure, the staffing levels might not be high enough to support having a dedicated model manager, the owner of the company might REALLY LOVE that font that is a pain to make work in the annotation families. As a support person, you need to know where to draw the line, and where that line needs to get erased from time to time.

Just try to make that line a Detail Line and not a Model Line. That Model Line shows up in everybody’s views.

 

Quick Tip – Clean Up After Yourself

After you import a view from another model, clean it up. There is a chance that it brought in some new annotation styles, or detail items. Change them all to corresponding elements already existing in your model, and then delete the newly unused ones that just came in.

One of our most notorious examples is the infamous Break Line. Each drafting view we imported had a copy of the break line family. By the time anyone noticed, the project model had “Break Line (1)” through “Break Line (22)”. We have since updated our details to avoid detail components and be exclusively linework, but something always seems to slip by.

A clean model is a happy model!