Curved Monolithic Stairs – Am I Doing Something Wrong?

One of my Revit Architecture users hit a snag the other day when making a curved set of stairs to get up to a stage in an elementary school.  They were going to be cast-in-place, so we opted for monolithic.

Now, I have never been a huge stair fan in Revit.  Most of the time, in fact, I hate them (I despise their close relative, the railing, who has become my nemesis).  So when something started going wonky, I wasn’t surprised.

Maybe we’re doing something wrong.  Maybe we have a parameter set incorrectly.  But let me tell you, I tried it on multiple projects, with multiple combinations of parameters, and different materials, and heights, etc etc.  Always had the same bizarre situation:

In plan, everything looked nice and played well together.  So we thought we were good. 

Looks great!

A section cut is where something told us things were angry.  Where are the stairs?!

Something is amiss

When in doubt, go to 3D.  A quick camera dropped in, or switching to your 3D view can answer many questions that other views cannot.  That’s why we model it!  Unfortunately, this was not the case.  Going to 3D just was more bizarre.

Where are my stairs?!

The only thing we can figure is that Revit is refusing to let the “section” of a monolithic stair go past its calculated point, so it just slices it.  What?  And this is only for stairs whose type is checked as “monolithic”.  Non-monolithic curve fine.

Non-mono looks goooood…

This is crazy.  We opted for an in-place family sweep, but even that doesn’t make me happy, because you cannot use the STAIR category for in-place families.  Another bizarre and severe limitation.

If you have seen this issue, and you know how to work past it, feel free to post a comment and let everyone know.  Otherwise, just be aware of the insanity, and cross your fingers that stairs (and their jerk cousin, railings) get an overhaul soon.

Gridline Gridlock

A question I find myself answering a fair amount is “Who put the cat in there?!”; more Revit related, I get asked “what the heck does that little ‘3D’ by my grid bubble mean?” a lot.

What the heck IS that?

The “3D/2D” button by gridline heads is often a source of confusion, partially, I think, because of the nomenclature they used for the system.  It’s a good system, but really has nothing to do with the traditional definition of 3D and 2D.  Semantics has often been an issue in Revit (looking at you, “Save to Central”) that often the team does a good job of fixing (looking at you, “Synchronize with Central”).  So far, the 3D/2D toggle is not one of them.

So, if you click a gridline, you will see a tiny “3D” up by the grid bubble.  The terminology is flawed.  Essentially, what the “3D” means is that this grid bubble position is shared throughout the project, and if you move it, you will move it in other views as well, and wherever you put it, that’s where it will show up in any view where that grid bubble is marked “3D”, or just outside the annotation region, depending on which is shorter. 

When you click it, it changes to “2D”.  This basically means “View Specific”.  So, if you move the grid end now, it won’t affect any other views.  This view is it.  You will see a ghost grip where the “3D” of the gridlines is.  Dragging the head back to this will reset it to “3D”. 

Now, let’s say you click the 2D on for some of your grid bubbles and you move them and you really like the positioning in this view, so you want to copy it to other views.  That’s where the “Propagate Extents” button comes in to play. 

Select the gridlines you want to copy and click “Propagate Extents”.  You will be prompted with a list of parallel views.  Select the views you want to copy to and then the gridlines position settings will be copied onto those views.  It’s a one-time thing for the “2D” gridlines, so if you were to tweak the position after propagating, you would need to re-propagate to get those new settings pushed over.

Do I have a solution for the 3D/2D terminology fiasco?  Not really.  The only better icon I could think of would be a little chain to replace the current “3D” and a broken chain or chain with a slash through for “2D”… for “linked” and “unlinked”, get it?  Is it better?  Who knows.  Will it ever change?  Who knows that either.  But hopefully the above clears it up.

Revit Arch 2010 Advantage Pack and 2009 UI Issue

I haven’t been able to extensively test, but it looks like the aforementioned 2009 UI “hack” that you can do in 2010 gets confused a wee bit with the Advantage Pack on Revit Architecture 2010.  I plan on spending some time in an upcoming post discussing the Advantage Pack (I know – you can’t wait), but wanted to get this out there now since I haven’t seen it in the Intertubes yet.

We always knew the 2009 UI tweak wasn’t fully supported, but it looks like the Advantage Pack has set it a couple more steps out of alignment.  First up, the newly introduced (and much loved) Structural Ribbon loses the Truss tool in the non-ribbon interface.  Just can’t find it anywhere.

The “Tools” toolbar is… weird.  The tools seems to have been shuffled.

In order from left to right, I have listed what the icon is, and what the command acutally is:

What it looks like	What it really does
Show Work Plane	Work Plane
Linework	Work Plan Visibility
Spell Check	Spell Check
Join Roof	Find Replace
Some kind of mini Work Plane button	Tape Measure
Measure	Match Type
Show Hidden Lines	Linework
Hide Hiden Lines	Show Hidden Lines
Paint	Remove Hidden Lines
Split Face	Paint
Edit Cut Profile	Split Face
The Hammer from Demolish	Edit Cut Profile
Join Geometry icon next to the word “Demolish”	Demolish

So, that looks like one tool (Spell Check) that does what it looks like it’s supposed to do.

Align, Split, Trim and Offset all seemed to be saved from this madness, but the next batch of tools fared worse.

What it looks like	What it really does
Unjoin Geometry	Join Geometry
Cut Geometry	Unjoin Geometry
Don’t Cut Geometry	Cut Geometry
Copy/Monitor	Don’t Cut Geometry
Edit Wall Joins	Edit Wall Joins
CENSORED	Edit Beam Joins
Match Type	Join/Unjoin Roof

Again, we have one tool that matches its icon.  Weird.  Mousing over any of these will tell you what it’s going to do, you just have to ignore the picture.

A couple other items:

• If you have installed the Model Review, that just throws a nice error on bootup and won’t even load.
• The DB Link tool seems to be MIA
• The wonderful Convert Lines tool is also not to be found in the 2009 interface.
• I have not installed the Framing Tool, so cannot comment on its availability

That’s all that really jumped out at me.  I imagine I am missing some.  I also was not able to test/verify if keyboard shortcuts to these missing commands will work.  Also, I cannot verify if the other Revit flavors will have these same hiccups.

I’m not too surprised by this.  There was no reason for Autodesk to maintain support for a tweak that was completely unsupported.  The moral is just to pay attention if you are using the 2009 UI and have or plan on installing the Advantage Pack, you may be forced to hop in the Ribbon to see the full benefits of it.

I Hate It When I’m Wrong – Revit 2010 UI

We waited until the first service pack was out (web update – whatever they call it) before we deployed Revit 2010.  I, for one, was singing the praises of the much maligned Ribbon.  “See how clean it is?” I would say.  “See the nice big icons?” I would point out to the nonbelievers.  “See how it’s organized so well?” I would show my cats – who frankly didn’t care.

The first indication of something VERY bad showed up when one of our more experience Revit users reported crashes on his brand new 2010 model.  Not much content in there at all.  Very few views.  This was a tiny file that should have been able to run on a PC that was four generations old.  But he was crashing.  A LOT.  Up to seven times a day.

Soon after, another experienced user was reporting the same thing.  Different project.  Different user.  Virtually same hardware.  A recent multi-core XP 32bit workstation, 4GB of RAM, and a nice video card.  About 18 months old.  The hardware shouldn’t have been the problem.

We spent a LOT of time back and forth with Autodesk support.  They looked at the model, they told us to downgrade the video driver (yeah, you don’t hear that one too often, do you?) they said to not run anything along with Revit.

Same results.  Numerous crashes each day.  And these weren’t gentle “Revit is about to die – let’s save a recover file for you” crashes.  These were “POOF! Revit is gone!” style crashes.

We took two approaches.  For User A, we wiped his PC, upgraded him to XP 64bit and threw 8GB of RAM in (the max the motherboard could handle).  About 2 total hours of work stretched out over 2 days waiting for updates and installs, plus around $170 for the RAM.  He reports that 2010 is running great now!  Whoo-hoo!

For User B, we edited the ini file that allows 2010 to run in “debug” mode and use the 2009 interface.  About 2 minutes of work stretched over 2 minutes, plus around $0 for buying nothing.  He reports that 2010 is running great now!  Whoo-hoo!

Wow.  I am scratching my head over this.  I am so frustrated that the user interface was designed so poorly that it alone causes enough memory to be sucked from resources that are essential to the software running in a stable state.  I can’t be the only person out there.  And I’m not.  I think the 2009 UI tweak was one of the most re-tweeted Revit items on Twitter in a while.

We have been training new users on the Ribbon interface for months now.  Do I go back and spend my time showing them the old interface?  This is crazy.  This is shameful that Autodesk let their product ship with such a major memory drain.  Two updates later, still a big hole.

I certainly hope this is a major priority for the team.  I love the Ribbon.  I just wish it didn’t suck so much… memory.

Revit, EcoTect and Green Building Studio – Just Like Peanut Butter and Salami

Watched Autodesk’s webinar today titled “Sustainable Analysis and Revit Architecture.”  LEED and BIM.  I challenge anyone to find two “hotter” acronyms in the industry right now.  So clearly Autodesk is going to be on top of this and come at us with some amazing software that will blow our socks off, right?  Right?

Sigh.

First, a couple caveats.  I had been keeping an eye on this software for a while now, in fact, I watched a very similar presentation last year.  My expectations weren’t high, but I am always hoping for a miracle.  Secondly, the presenters did a very good job.  They clearly knew their stuff and presented it well. 

But the software.  Oh, man, the software.  It absolutely felt like they were trying to sell us a portable cassette player for me to listen to my songs from iTunes.  Sure, I could convert my songs to analog and find some cable and recorder to put them all on cassette.  But… really?  And the worst part is, the guys selling me the cassette player are the ones who convinced me how awesome iTunes was in the first place.

Here’s Revit.  It’s a bucket for me to put in all this amazing and valuable information about my building.  I love it.  I am not only drinking but I am mixing and serving the Kool-Aid as well.  I also love other software that can look into my bucket and do something with that information.  It doesn’t have to add to the bucket, but if it’s looking at the bucket and I make a change, I know it will see that change.  Or at the very least I can export A LOT of my bucket’s data to another file.  I spent all this time putting info in, I want to be able to get it out.

Neither Ecotect nor Green Building Studio can look into my bucket.  I don’t think Autodesk created these apps originally, but they’ve had them for a while.  And this software cannot read a Revit file.  Just won’t happen.  You have to export your model to GBXML for one and DXF for another (wait, is that right?  DXF?  really?) 

So, with the DXF all you get is geometry.  All of the information (the “I” in “BIM”) is gone.  Poof.  If my model contained that data, I have to re-enter it.  That is so amazingly counterproductive it makes my brain want to bleed.  The GBXML takes my rooms.  Nothing about the fenestration, no material data, just the rooms.  Again, loss of “I”.

Autodesk has been pushing Revit as the cornerstone to the Rainbows and Unicorns world of BIM for some time now.  And it is absolutely a platform that could support it.  It frustrates me that that the two services that the guys who make Revit have for us to analyze and make important decisions about our design are so stone-age when compared to Revit.  I will not ask my production people to input building information and data more than once on such a grand scale.  That is a waste of time and hence money.

I certainly am not privy to the inner decisions at Autodesk, but from what I’ve seen of Ecotect and Green Building Studio, nor am I a software developr, my suggestion would be to scrap them both and start from the ground up with a new service/software that is built on the Revit database model and can talk directly with and pull data from an RVT file.  This shoehorning of the Revit files into anitquated and ineffective software is just going to frustrate people and send them to find another solution in the end.

Now, pass me some of that Grape Kool-Aid.

Plan Region Oddities

We had a hiccup with our Plan Regions today that I thought I would throw out here so others can enjoy our twenty minutes of panic and confusion.

For a little background so we’re all on the same page… let’s say our cut plane is about 4′-6″ on a typical floor plan.  Actually, let’s say it’s precisely 4′-6″.  That gets us through most doors and windows and walls.  Things that we like to slice through (through which we like to slice).

But, alas, this one little roof shed has a louver that’s up around 8′-0″.  It would be absolutley silly to make another plan simply to show this louver.  What is one to do?

Luckily, Revit has a solution for us.  Looking under VIEW you will see the PLAN REGION tool.  This is a pretty nifty thing.  A plan region allows you to define an area on the plan that follows different view range settings.  Which will allow us to move the cut plane around the lovers to 8′-2″.

Clicking PLAN REGION will take you into the ubiquitous sketch mode where you will sketch out the perimeter of your new plan region.  While still in sketch mode, you can click the Plan Region Properties button and in there you’ll see the View Range button.  Click that, and you get the same view range settings that you would see on any view.  Tweak them to what you need, click OK, finish your sketch and voila! that small sketched area now has a different view range.  End background.

The oddity came in when a user had opened a view with a Plan Region and all of the walls in that region were missing!  First reaction, of course, was that someone had deleted the walls.  Who shall we kill?!  After some quick investigation, turns out the walls were there.  So what was up with them not showing through the Plan Region?

To test, all we did was create a new Plan Region with the same view range.  Yup.  It all showed up.  Walls, tags, everything.  But that original Plan Region was mad.

To fix it?  Selected the region and clicked its EDIT button.  Got back into sketch mode.  Made no changes, and simply finished the sketch again.

Poof.  Everything showed back up.  It just needed a kick in the pants, apparently.

We love our Plan Regions.  I just hope they start behaving better.  Panic attacks are not a good thing when you’re one week to go on a project.

It’s All in the Details

For many new Revit users and folks putting documents together in general, the idea of letting go of certain detail work in larger scale is tough to get.  So tough, in fact, that they sometimes just don’t.  Not ideal, and not very BIM-y, but totally understandable

So you have a wall section, and you have a detail callout of where it joins the roof.  You go into the detail and use some detail lines and detail components and flesh it out and it looks really nice.  Then you look at the wall section again and it looks… empty… and someone above you is angry and wants them to look the same.

This sort of falls in the last 10%.  It’s not exactly Revit not being able to do what we want it to do, it is working just as you would expect it to work – detail work is view specific.  So you would need to duplicate all that detail work in the wall section.  Then if you update one, you need to update the other.  That’s a lot of work and big potential for errors.

There is almost a way around it, though.

Wherever you drew your detail work – select the lines, the detail components, the text, the symbols, everything except model work and dimensions and datum annotation.  Group it.  Give it an appropriate name.  It will become a Detail Group (you see where I’m going with this?)

Once you have your newly created group, select it and copy it.  Then change to the other view.  Simply pasting it will get Revit to want to force it to the same location, or you can do a Paste Aligned – Same Place to drop it where it was.

So, now you have a group, in both places.  Voila!  Need to update the information, just open the group and go for it.  The detail line work will stay up to date in both spots.

Not ideal, but not a bad work around.  It will NOT take Edit Cut Profiles nor will it take dimensions, so avoid those.  Other than that, try it out and hopefully it can save you some time and discrepancies.

Issues With Ceilings and DGNs

This is really bad.  As in the real definition of “bad”.  Try this out…

Create a room with a ceiling (or not even the room) in Revit.

Export the RCP view to a Microstation file.

Open the file in Microstation.

Notice the difference?  And I’m not talking about the black background or other colors.

Yeah.  The GRID IS WRONG.  I’m certainly not the first online to post about this, but it is so annoying and frankly so amazingly dangerous that I wanted to put something up.  I haven’t tested with other model patterns, but I bet they would be screwed up as well.

I have categorize this as a “Gripe” but I feel like I need to make an entirely new category for it.  This is beyond insane.  As designers trying to work with consultants, the basic foundation is that the lines we see will be in the same place when we export that file.  I can deal with fonts, I can manage colors, I can tolerate layers.  But wrong lines?  That opens me up to liability issues. 

That’s actionable.

That’s so bad.

And it needs to be fixed now.

Mysteries of the Unknown!

I have a running list of “REVIT MYSTERIES’ on my desk (I’ve already discussed one of those mysteries).  One day, I would like to take this list with me into a room of the developers and ask “why”.

Until then, I shall whine about it here and maybe someone out there has a good explanation.  Today’s case: The Mystery of the Vanishing Strucutral Column!

Something is happening wiht drawing order and how things are cut.  I cannot find much other folks with this issue, but I can consistently get something weird to happen.  At least I think it’s weird.

Let’s say I place a wall.  Let’s say I place some components (structural columns) in that wall.  Now I do a callout of the area.

If I do a callout and set the type to FLOOR PLAN, things seem to come in how I expect.

If I do a callout and set the type to DETAIL VIEW, then I get some odd results.  Hatches and lines overlap.  Things don’t seem to cut clean.

Why is this?  Is Revit making assumptions about what I want to do with DETAIL VIEWS?  That I plan on slapping detail components everywhere?  How presumptive of Revit.

Detail Views have some very different settings than a “standard” floor plan callout view.  The help file does not explain this graphic difference, however.

I would really love to hear an explanation.  Right now, we just kind of avoid Detail Views, and if someone took the time to make them function differently, I would love to know why.

Revit, Links and Phases – Part 1

When working in Revit, I often find myself quoting Spider-man.  Don’t look at me that way.

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

SO true.  And very true in the world of phasing.  Phasing itself can be quite confusing.  It takes some time to get your head around it.  The best way that I find to explain it to folks (who have a basic understanding of 80’s classic cinema) is that you are getting into a DeLorean and speeding up to 88 miles per hour.  Whatever phase you set for your view, you have travelled through time to get to that spot and that’s where you are.

Then you get to deal with Phase Filters.  That adds another level of fun to the conversation, but the key to remember about the filter is that they are changing the appearance of the model BASED UPON WHERE IN TIME THAT DELOREAN DROPPED YOU.

How stuff is labeled seems to be one of the banes of Revit (How many releases did we wait through until they finally renamed it “Synchronize with Central”?) and the phases vs. phase filters are no different.  The out of the box template has a phase called “New Construction”.  There are also phase filters called “Show Demo + New”, “Show New” and “Show Previous + New”.  When introduced to the concept, most folks make the assumption that the word “New” in the phase filter relates to the “New Construction” phase, and it’s hard to blame them because they are the same word!

You have to keep in mind that the phase filter is in relation to the phase your view is in.  So even though it says “New” in the filter, if you have gone back in time to the existing phase, you will not see new construction stuff.  You will see what was new during the existing phase year.

We have even gone so far to rename the Phase Filters in our template.  Wherever the word “New” was we have replaced it with “Current”.  Not the best word necessarily, but it makes it harder for the brain to connect the phase and the filter incorrectly.

I’ve rambled a lot to get us on the same page with phases here.  In Part 2, I’ll discuss a little bit about the fun when you link another Revit file in and have to deal with someone else’s phases.