Where Is My Constraint Lock?

Just a quickie, and looks like it is not a Revit 2010 thing.  Might seem like a no brainer, but is one of those things that you can spin your wheels on and waste time with.

Let’s say you’ve just aligned something in Revit (say it with me – “destination, traveller”).  You want to click the handy padlock to constrain it, but… oh no!  No constraint lock!  What the deuce is going on?!

It’s there, don’t worry.  Check out your Visibility Graphics (VG).  Look under the Annotation Categories tab for “Constrants”.  Make sure that is checked.  POOF!  There they are!

Like I said, this seems to be OK in 2010.  The constraint lock will show up after you align something even if you have the Constraints category hidden.  What won’t show up are any locks on already constrained objects when you select them.

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.

2010 Halftone Control

One of our Revit “last 10%” complaints was always about the obtuse “halftone” toggle for visibility graphics and appearance settings.  We pretty much assumed that it is literally 50% of whatever the original color is.

The thing is, even when we “ghosted” linework in AutoCrap and called it “halftone”, it was really about 65%, not 50%.  50% is just too darn light.

Apparently, the Revit guys, when they weren’t working on shiny new plastic-like icons, decided to add something practical to 2010.  We can now control the halftone setting on a project basis.

If you go to MANAGE – SETTINGS you will see the new HALFTONE/UNDERLAY control. 

This will bring up a beautiful little slider that lets you control exactly what the “half” in “halftone” means.

Slide up or slide down, whichever way you want to slide now, Revit lets you.

Revit 2010 – To Upgrade or No

So, I guess my NDA is over?  Who knows.  All I know is we have started downloading the 2010 version of our favorite BIM software. 

I have heard this being called the R13 of Revit (ominous drum noises follow) and while the updates aren’t earth shattering, there are some compelling reasons that we see.  Some of the vocal minority are stating that they will be skipping this version due to 1) the Ribbon and 2) the low amount of new features.  We will be upgrading to this version because of 1) the Ribbon and 2) the low amount of new features.

I’m not saying that I hate new features and fixed old ones (stairs!  I’m looking at YOU), but the ENTIRE INTERFACE HAS CHANGED.  This is a learning curve unto itself.  So with this version, instead of having to take the time to teach everyon the GUI and new whiz-bang features, we can just spend the time getting our users to learn the new interface.  So when the NEXT version comes out, we’ll already know the interface and can hit the ground running with new features.  Bam!  Seriously, it’s not like the Ribbon is going away.  It’s here.

And I for one embrace our new Ribbony Masters.

Full disclosure – there are one or two projects that we will NOT be upgrading to 2010, either due to time or concern of the PM or both.  Luckily we have this option of keeping multiple versions on the desktop.

Mansard Roof Madness

We have found ourselves needing to create far more mansard roofs in our Revit model than I think is healthy.  The economic downturn has led a lot of our clients to go down the addition and renovation road more than we are used to.  So we find ourselves in the “happy” position of having to model a lot of existing work of questionable architectural value.

But I am not here to argue the validity of aesthetics from decades ago!  I am confident that sometime in the nearish future some future blogger will be looking back at our work and make the same slightly disgusted face.

We tried really hard to use the built in roof tool in Revit to get a mansard roof, but the extent of the slope is just too extreme in most cases.  We now utilize the create roof by face.

We create a mass that consists of a blend sweep, which very easily lets you create the shape of the roof overall.  Then we create roof by face.  This is done face by face.  So, don’t select all the faces then try to finish.  Sometimes Revit gets mad at this and tells you “no”.  But you can definitely go in and change each face one at a time, then join the geometry when you’re done.

The biggest hurdle is learning the massing tools, but once this is overcome, this is a very easy and effective way of getting these roofs done.

Referencing Sheet and View Issues

So, you’ve added some sections and slapped them on a sheet.  Cool.  Good old Revit gets the detail number and referring sheet populated automatically.  It’s one of those magical things that computers should have been doing for years.

If you have a client that requires the good old 3 part bubble, then you find yourself with having to show the detail number, the sheet it’s on and the referring sheet in the bubble.  Some callouts, being datum elements (section cuts, elevations, levels) can actually show up on more than one sheet.  When you put a view on a sheet, how does Revit determine the “referencing sheet” and “referencing detail”?

Simply put, it looks through your sheets.  The first sheet it finds that has the callout mark is the referencing sheet.  And that’s what gets put into your three part bubble.

Now, let’s suppose… you have an A2.1 sheet that is going to have your floor plan on, but you haven’t put it there yet.  You also have an A9.1 reflected ceiling plan sheet and you haveput a view on.  I have a wall section that I am placing on an A5.1 sheet.  So I drag the view on there, and since the callout shows the “referencing sheet” info, it fills that in with A9.1.  Well, that’s not the view I wanted.  I wanted A2.1.  What is one to do?

Well, sometimes you just drag the view onto the sheet.  Drag the plan onto A2.1 and magically the referencing sheet of the section on A5.1 updates.  POOF!  Your work is done and Revit read your mind!

Sadly, sometimes that doesn’t work, especially if the sheet that you drag the desired plan onto is after the already placed sheet.  Then what do you do?

You jump through some hoops.  But let’s try to understand what appearsto be Revit’s behaviors for the hoops.

• When you place a view on a sheet, Revit looks through your sheets to see what the referencing sheet should be.  It also does this when you adjust the scope of your view.
• Revit will only call a view/sheet  referencing if the callout is actively in a view, i.e. not hidden.

OK, nice simple (theoretical) rules.  I say theoretical, because I have no possible way of knowing that the code works this way.  This is all based on observation.  The following are the hoops:

Find all the views that have a callout to the section (or elevation or whatever that you need to change the bubble)

Hide in view the callout in each view EXCEPT for the one that you want to be the referencing sheet

Activate the section (or elevation or whatever) and change the crop region ever so slightly.  Just drag it a little teeny bit.  You’ll see the bubble update as Revit finds the only view on which you have the callout not hidden

Go back to the views from Hoop 2 and unhide the callouts.  Oddly, this will NOT update the section (or elevation or whatever)

This will keep the referencing sheet set, unless you change the crop region for that view, then you have to repeat.  And if you need to show multiple referencing sheets, pull out some text as the monstrous last 10% rears its ugly head one more time.

Ideally, the referencing sheet parameter would be a drop-down, and you could select what view/sheet you want, and possibly even build tags that can generate from a list of multiple views/sheets.  I’m certainly not the first to hope for such a feature, and I wager I won’t be the last.

Commitees Suck for Deploying Software

I know the drill.  Hey look!  New software!  Let’s set up a committee!  Let’s get everyone’s input!  Let’s hold hands and sing folk songs and this software will magically deploy itself when butterflies flit around and run the installation files on everyone’s PC.

No no no.

As architects, we like design charettes.  We like to get together and hash out unique solutions to design issues.  That’s great.  You can come up with excellent resolutions to some big problems.  And quite often, that’s close to the most social some of us ever get.

That shared workforces mentality can spill over into other facets of our business.  Let me tell you, deploying software isn’t designing a building.

Aside from the charette mentality, to maintain good relationships in a firm, we like to make sure everyone feels like their opinion has been heard and counts.

Deploying software isn’t like ordering pizza, either.

I’ve been through a couple major software deployments now, and each time, the committee gets used less and less.  Why?

Because committees suck for deploying software.

Now, I’m not talking the lone wolf here.  I don’t endorse the idea that one person should be making all these decisions.  Sometimes that works, with Revit, it won’t.  But a committee is the wrong approach.  Get three people, each more opinionated than the next.  That’s your core group of decision makers for a Revit migration.

Why is a smaller group better?

Standards changes– I said in an earlier post that I was using our Revit deployment as a jumping off point for enforcing our standards fresh.  That does not mean that we used Revit as a reason to rewrite our entire standards book.  On the contrary, we used our old standards as a jumping off point.  We were going to be making enough changes with just the software without having to change everything.  Often, our hand would be forced to look at and change the standard because of how Revit functions (leaders at the end of text, I’m looking at you).  Usually the smaller team would be quickly in agreement.  A large committee would require way too much time on conversation and evaluation of the issue.

Education – Some issues are new and hard to understand.  It’s far easier to train three people on a complicated issue to make a good decision than it is to educate a roomful.

Passionate ideas – sometimes an individual in the smaller group would be VERY passionate about an issue.  The others would give way, understanding that their pet issue might come up soon and there would be some mutual back scratching.  With a larger group, there is a lot more heel digging in, just to dig in heels and feel like you have to be forceful on each issue so you’re heard.

You might be right – in some situations, you’re just right.  It doesn’t matter what others say, you know you’re right.  Convincing only two people is a lot easier than a roomful.

You might be wrong – in some situations, you’re just wrong.  You think you’re right, but you’re not.  It’s much easier to get shown the error of your ways by a small personal group than by a large room of people.

Camaraderie– a small group makes it easier to feel like a team.  By the nature of being in your group you will get each other’s back, because it’s just the three of you.  The larger groups can easily break down into smaller factions and then you just have group A arguing with group B, sometimes outside of the meeting and that is just plain bad.

Try to avoid the committee for your Revit deployment.  Find one or two competent and appropriate individuals to work through this important task with.  It will go much faster with a smaller group.

And, if someone complains, you change it.  But in my experience, the amount of complaints and changes to newly deployed software has no correlation to the size of your deployment team.

Media Control During Your Revit Deployment

Several years back, I went through a Microstation (with PArch – yeah to the Intergraphers in the house!) to ADT migration.  I would absolutely categorize major portions of it as a disaster.  At least looking back on it I would call it a disaster.  I was able to build on that experience to coordinate and control our ADT to Revit migration.

The migration is still technically going on, but we are nearing the end of the big push.  I feel confident that this time around things went a lot better, which in some ways is odd since hopping from Microstation to ADT is nothing compared to the hop from ADT to Revit.  For the most part, the first transition was “OK, instead of clicking this button, you click this button, and oh, yeah, you can have infinite layers and you have to save all the time.”  Huh.  When I put it like that I’m sad that I screwed it up so badly.  Anyway, the ADT to Revit transition is more like “OK, instead of clicking this button you need to completely change how you think about putting a job together.”

Wow, I really got lost in that one.

Anyway, one of my tactics for the Revit transition was to control everything that was put out to our firm’s general users about BIM and the software.  If it was about Revit, it was 1984 and I was Big Brother.  There were a couple slips at the beginning, but once I explained to my bosses what needed to be done, a filter was set up where any media, any meetings, any discussions any anything that involved BIM or Revit was put through a filter in our firm.  That filter was me.  I never before invited myself to meetings, but I started to.  Sometimes there were just donuts and the meeting had nothing to do with Revit, but that’s another story…

If you are working on your deplyment, if you are partway through your transition, it is not too late to make this important step.  It might not be you, but someone has to be seen as the BIM Master in your firm.  Not a committee.  You can’t have a hydra BIM Master.  I mean, there has to be a committe to help migrate standards, but there has to be a single face of BIM carrying the flag and mixing the Kool-Aid.

This might seem extreme and archaic, but it is so much easier to maintain control later on down when the deployment really ramps up.  I’ll be sure to take some time later to post some other thoughts on a successful deployment including how to be sneaky and why commitees suck.

It’s March Already! Plus Some Minor DWF Thoughts

So, it’s the beginning of a new month, and those of you playing along will know that that means it’s time for some Revit training at my firm!

This three day crash course finds me on the road to our Virginia Beach office.  I’m blogging from a hotel room.  The schools back home are still closed thanks to the weather, and frankly, it’s REALLY cold down here.

This office’s primary job type is higher education, so that’s nice to get some input on new techniques and practices that we need to bring into the fold of our standards and possibly incorporate into the template.

I’ve found that this Revit deployment has been a good time to do some more standards pushing firm-wide.  No matter how much you try to create and maintain standards with AutoCrap, it always seemed impractical to maintain the level of staff that would be necessary to verify and enforce those standards.  With Revit being so fresh and new to a lot of these folks, we are only teaching them what they need to know to get their job done, and that is always standards specific.

On the flip side, this is forcing us in some cases to reevaluate our standards.  We’ve redesigned our border, amended how we use keynotes, and some other items have gotten the boot or the overhaul.  The funnest part is when everyone thought there was a standard, but it turned out there were about 27 different ways that PMs were doing the same thing (mortar joints in wall sections – I’m looking at you).  It is definitely a task that won’t be done anytime soon, but it is easier to begin the task with Revit.

I’m also using the push as an excuse to endorse greater adoption of DWF use in the firm.  I have never been 100% happy with PDFs and how they handle large format drawings.  I’m always slightly nervous that something is messed up.  So far, DWFs have not let me down.  With each training, I discuss exporting to DWFs and show the markup features and how that can integrate back into Revit sheets.  Really nice stuff.  We’re close to getting some more of our QC guys to work along with us on the DWF front as well.  Really excited about that.

Sketchup Users – The Steep Learning Curve

Change is hard.  I totally understand that.

Sketchup is easy to start using.  Check.

Revit isn’t easy to master.  I get that, too.

Now that we have the baseline set, we can start.

In a previous post, I talked about how evil Sketchup is to the documentation process, and ultimately a disconnect that it creates can impact the design process as well.  As we are moving past our pilot projects, we are introducing the concept of BIM and Revit to the population of the firm at large.  Some of the folks are 100% on board with the concept.  They know there are going to be hiccups and a rough time learning the software, but they are ready to get their hands dirty and come along for the ride.

Now (and here’s where things took me for a loop) on the other side, I have the Sketchup lovers.  They are not ready to move along.  The extreme cases find folks who find multiple excuses to convince themselves that modelling in Revit is bad and completely subpar compared to Sketchup.  Don’t worry about the built-in rendering engine in Revit.  Ignore the fact that you have started your documentation.  Pay no attention to your engineers who can start their analysis based on the Revit model.  You can’t do any of these with vanilla Sketchup.  You can start tacking on add-ons, but they are iffy, thrown together and sometimes expensive.  On the other hand, this is precisely what Revit is made for.

I mentioned that the Sketchup hold-outs threw me for a loop.  I had convinced myself that the 20 year ACAD experts would be my biggest fight.  That hasn’t been the case at all.  In most situations, while they lament losing some key features and functions, they have been on board and are quite excited about making the change.  As one of them put it, “This is what computers should have been doing for the last 10 years.”

So, what to do about our Sketchup folks?

Right now, there isn’t much I’m doing.  I am putting my time and energy into the people who “get it”.  I am whole-heartedly convinced that once the learning curve is crossed, the models created in Revit will be superior in so many ways to the ones in Sketchup.  And the projects will be better coordinated.  And the rainbows and unicorns will return to the golden fields and it will rain chocolate!

Seriously, there isn’t much I can do.  I can’t twist these people’s arms.  That would accomplish nothing.  I am getting the people who are along for the ride better training and support.  We are working hard to prove all these theories.  And then I am hoping peer pressure will do the job of converting the die hards for me.  They need to be willing to take the time to learn the tools, and I cannot push people into willingness.

If that doesn’t work, I get out my BIM Stick.