Walls Have Tops Too

We have settled on never ever ever leaving the top constraint for walls to be “unconnected”.  Even if they are short, like partitions for cubicles or something, we still connect them to the level they are on and then offset them to the proper height.  Why would I be such a wall top constraint fascist?

Engineers.

Isn’t it always that way?

Seriously, they need the tops of the walls to be constrained to something.  For most of the walls.  So, it’s just plain good habit to get into to always pay attention to the tops of the walls.  Or the top of everything for that matter.  Remember, this isn’t CADD anymore.

“Model it right and your documents will follow.”  I think I read that on a fortune cookie once.

Rooms Are In Section – What About View Range?

So, Revit 2009 introduced the wonders of seeing rooms in sections.  Hooray!  That was terribly exciting for a couple minutes.  Now it’s time for something practical.

One item that would be so much easier to control graphically are view ranges.  All plans and RCPs have them.  You can control elevation “ranges” in a plan, why not give us some nice interface to control a plan’s view range in section?

Something like that?  A toggle at the top and bottom for UNLIMITED on TOP and VIEW DEPTH, or a draggable bar, and a draggable bar for the CUT PLANE and the BOTTOM.  How cool would that be?

Wall Jogs and Tough Clean Ups

UPDATE – Please check out Bjorn’s quick and easy technique in the comments.  It’s one of those things that makes you say “no way!”  You still might need to do some “dancing” with some elaborate stacked walls, but the below tip is an excellent first step that should resolve a lot of the issues.

There comes a point in any Revit wall’s life that it just cannot clean up.  It’s not when the wall is too big, Revit LOVES big.

It’s when it gets too small.

Look at the below two wall strings.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

All set?  Great.  Now, they look fine, right?  Clean up nice and pretty.  But look what happens when I scoot that lower wall in both strings up just 1/8″.

What in the world happened to the wall string on the left?!  That jog got all messed up!  But the one on the right is fine!  What’s happened here?

Well, the overall width on the wall on the left is 1′-1 7/8″.  That’s the key.  Once a jog, or clean up length gets less than the overall width of the wall, the wall gets very confused and mad.  The top two “horizontal” walls are overlapping the lower “horizontal” wall, and making cleanup a nightmare.

Is there a solution?  Sort of.

First thing you need to do is think about how it would actually be built… you know… in the real world.  Would it really be jut the wall walking around this gap, or would it be a different wall type, etc?

From this point, there are a couple options, none of which are ideal.  We have tried them with mixed results.

You can make an architectural column and slap it on the wall.  We’ve done that.  Works… OK.

If you want to use walls, there is a very round about way to try and get these things to clean up.

First we need a frame of reference on our walls.

So, walls 1 and 5 are our major horizontals, 3 is the smallish horizontal, and 2 and 4 are our right and left verticals, respectively.  You’ll see from the above image that I have already started my work. 

The first step is to disallow the join between 2 and 3 and 3 and 4.  On the appropriate end for each wall, you need to right-click on the grip and select DISALLOW JOIN.  You’ll do this for the lower grips on 2 and 4, and both gripd on 3.

Then you need to do some aligning, and you will only figure this out with trial and error and a lot of undos.  For this case I ended up aligning and constraining the left face of wall 3 to the left (interior) face of wall 2 and the right face of wall 3 with the right (interior) face of wall 4.  Then I aligned and constrained the lower face of wall 2 to inside the finish material of wall 3.

The final step is to simply JOIN GEOMETRY on each combination of walls: 2 to 3 and 3 to 4.  And here’s the thing – THE ORDER THAT YOU SELECT WHAT WALL FIRST MATTERS.  In this case, I selected the “verticals” first, so I clicked 2 then 3, and then 4 then 3.  It “feels” like the first thing you select when you join geometry “wins”.  I have zero scientific data to back this claim up, but that’s what my gut tells me.

Poof!  Nice and clean.  And if I nudge or straight out move wall 3 up, the clean up stays with it.

This is definitely one of those cases where no one solution fits all problems but if you know the possible solutions, you can hopefully pick an appropriate response.

Getting Your Sheets in Order

Revit is always touted as a modeling application, not a documentation one.  I have even heard an Autodesk folk say that you should do your modeling in Revit and then print from AutoCrap… sorry, AutoCAD.  Well, that’s one horribly insane idea that we’ll file neatly in the “crazy person said it” category.

Still, Revit out of the box leaves a little to be desired on the documentation front.  We like to refer to it as the last 10%.  Revit almost gets you there, it gets you 90% of the way to amazing documents and gorgeous sheets that I would want to frame and hang on the wall, but that last 10% rears its head and bites you.

There are ways to work around the last 10%, thanks to customization and parameters that you can create.  One of the out of the box issues is ordering sheets.  The sheet index is an amazingly wonderful schedule that you can plunk on your index sheet or cover sheet and be done with it… as long as you want to list everything alphabetically.

If your firm is like ours, the A sheets don’t come first (they do in our hearts, but not in the set).  What is a Revit user to do?  Here’s where some parameters come in. 

Make a project parameter and call it Sort Order and apply that parameter to sheets.  Numerically determine what the order for each discipline is (general = 1, architectural = 6, etc) and then fill in the correct value for the sheet.  We also added a parameter called Sort Order Name which contains the discipline’s name.

Now, create a Drawing Index Schedule and add the Sort Order (and Sort Order Name) fields to it.  Hide Sort Order under the Appearance tab.  In the Sorting/Grouping tab, set the first sort by to Sort Order.  And for extra points, set the second one to Sort Order Name and mark it as Header.  The final sorting is done by Sheet Number.

This will organize and group your sheets by the numeric Sort Order and put a nice header of the Sort Order Name above them.

We may never fully make it past the last 10%, but we can get close.

Toilet Partitions

I know, it’s a fun topic.  But it is one that is debatable out there in Revit-land.

The best approach we have found is to simply have a wall type whose construction is 1″ formed plastic.  Then when it’s placed, our Revit modelers need to pay particular attention to the offsets to make sure it’s “hung” right.  We don’t model connectors or hangers, that’s just more junk to bog down our model.

The most complicated wall… EVER

Now, here comes the fun part.  If my cut plane is slicing through the partition, it’s going to show up with a nice fat line, just like any other wall.  We don’t want that.  We want our toilet partition to be a trim slim line.

So comes the beauty of view filters.  I love view filters.  Your view filter lives in the Visibility Graphics for your view (VG).  They can also be saved in view templates (which I am also in love with – don’t tell the view filters!)

On our plans, we add a view filter that looks for any wall type whose name includes the word “toilet” and we dial down the cut lines for it.  Voila.  Slim lines for our partitions.

Adding the filter…

… and applying it to the view

The only potential issue is that we have to make sure we name our wall types properly.  If any non toilet partition wall has the work “toilet” in its name, then it will show up thin.  But, this really really should never happen.  If it does, feel free to pull out your BIM Stick and beat the tar out of the person who did it.

The Need for Organization In Views

I love standards.  Standards let everyone in the firm hop from project to project with ease.  Hopefully this isn’t something I have to sell you on.

Something standards related that a good BIM user needs, is organization.  Back in the days of CADD, individual file management was important, but one could muddle through a directory filled with crap and find what they needed ultimately.

With Revit, we’re mainly talking view management as a replacement for file management.  Setting up an organizational structure and standards and strong guidelines for views is crucial for your team to get the job done efficiently and with fewer headaches.  Below are some tips that we have found beneficial:

• Name views that go on sheets IN ALL CAPS.  This is a quick visual cue that the view is for printing or working.
• For jobs with multiple disciplines, create a parameter in the view that you can sub-organize view by.  We called it ‘View Types’, and fill it with “Architectural Elevations” or “Structural Plans”.  Then we create a View Browser Type that filters and groups by that parameter.  The same can be easily done for projects with multiple wings or buildings, to keep those related views grouped together.
• We have also tweaked our default view type so once a view is on a sheet it no longer shows under the Views list.  We found that at some undetermined point in design development, most people on the team start referring to views by the sheet, and not the view name.

Whatever guidelines you set up, make sure that your people stick to them, so everyone can benefit.

Good Personnel BIM Article

My deployment team has been having a hard time explaining the need for change in hiring and internal personnel as we migrate from CADD to BIM.

I found this article and it does a phenomenal job at pointing out the needs on this issue.  Well worth a read for anyone in this process right now.

Boot Camp and Phases

Second day of training wrapped up.  I always get a bit panicky, looking over my notes and thinking that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that I can cover all the material.  But we always seem to make it through.

Each time I do the class, I find myself adjusting the emphasis on certain sections.  With the economy in its current state (opposite of “awesome”), our firm has a larger percentage of renovation work than we typically have in the past.  In previous classes, day 3 of training has had a 20 minute discussion of the phasing available in Revit: “Hey, look that each element has a phase.  Neat?  Neat.  And, no, that demolish button doesn’t mean delete.  DELETE means delete.”  Tomorrow I intend to spend at least an hour on it.

We have not seen much need to go beyond the standard “Existing” and “New” phases.  Mainly the way the phase filters forces us to display things pretty much exclusively based on chronology, we just weren’t able to produce the documents we had expected.  There are workarounds, but overall, I would love to see a revamp of the phase filter system.  Instead of seeing it as “now” or “prior”, I would like each phase filter to be able to control the different phases and phase states individually.  Basically, the chart would get more columns based on the phases in the project.  Then one could select on, off or some override settings for that phase and state.

Ah, to dream.

And while I’m dreaming, a root beer float would be great right about now.

Time for Teaching

Tomorrow I’m starting three days of training for some of our architects and architectural staff on Revit Architecture.  I’ll be teaching, as I’m doing once a month now.  It’s surprising how exhausted you can get of just standing/sitting and talking for the whole day.  I am pretty much wiped when 5:00 comes around at the end of teaching day.  I know, I know.  Your heart breaks for me.

We are lining folks up to get trained and will start their first project in Revit within two weeks of training.  Most of these folks are coming from CADD, some from Sketchup (ahhh… my anger toward Sketchup in a firm’s design and documentation process will be laid out in a later post).  The shift is so drastic, that we want to make sure they are trained and then POW! jump into a Revit project.  We give plenty of support as they start working, but we have absolutely found that Revit (or our other CADD platforms for that matter) is not like riding a bike.  We will have spent significant resources getting these people trained and if they don’t use the software, they forget it.  And these are smart people.  The process is just so different from what they are used to, you need to nurture the part of their brain that it gets plugged into.

I enjoy getting the feedback and the conversations and ideas from the class.  What I don’t like is halfway through the third day when their eyes are all glazing over and they don’t answer any questions.  I don’t blame them.  I would go groggy too, if I had to sit and listen to me speak for 8 hours straight.

I also enjoy seeing the light-bulb click on for some of them.  Working in a BIM production cycle is a drastic change.  I give most of the folks three weeks of using the software before the light bulb goes on and the realization that “hey, this is cool.”  A few of the folks have the switch thrown during the class.  They’ll be peering into their monitors and a smile will slowly cross their face.

“Welcome to the party,” I think.  “We’re glad to have you along.”

Rotated Views

Sometimes you are going to find yourself in a situation where, darn it, you want that plan rotated.  Maybe you are working on an area of your design where the walls are not orthogonal to the project cardinal points. 

Actually, that’s probably about the only reason for a sane person to rotate a view.

This is not Project North vs. True North.  You can very easily tell a plan view to change orientation to True North in Revit.

That’s easy.  But let’s say my view is set to Project North, and my plan is looking like this…

Please don't check for code

I want to do a callout plan, but I want that view to be “parallel” to the walls.  There are two ways to do this.  First off, I need to drop my callout box on the view.

Not parallel

From here you can select the border of the callout, and simply use the ROTATE tool to rotate it to the angle you want.  And as we know, in Revit the border of the callout is exactly what the border of the called out view will be.

After rotate

That’s a piece of cake.  Nice, intuitive, what you see is what you get kind of thing.  But let’s say the view you want to rotate is NOT in a callout.  This is where the second method comes in. 

The first thing is to make sure your CROP REGION is visible in the view you need to rotate.

Tiny yellow light-bulb? Check

Then, select the crop region border, and use the rotate tool on it.

Now your entire view will be rotated, and you can work “orthogonally” based on the new orientation.

Please note some things:

• This will NOT change your Project North or True North.
• As far as I can tell there is no way to determine if a view has been “rotated” thusly.
• For good model management, including the bullet above, it is recommended that you duplicate any view and rename prior to rotating.  Put a suffix on it like ” – ROTATED”.
• It’s probably my brain, but I always seem to want to rotate the wrong way, when using the rotate crop boundary method.  Have your hand over the CTRL-Z for a quick undo!
• The rotate callout will work with any view type (plan, elevation, section).  The rotate boundary will work on plans and sections, not elevations.  Although you get some WEIRD results when rotating sections.

So, spin away!