It’s All In The Details

There are many misconceptions out there about Revit.  Some of these are holdovers from early versions, some are just bad ideas that people latched onto some time ago that they haven’t let go of.  Like Crocs or calling chicken sandwiches “burgers”.  One of those “Revit Rumors” has been popping up on my radar – Twitter, user comments, etc.  The idea that Revit is bad at details.  I have seen several tweets along the lines of “I like Revit, but it is lousy at doing details” or even worse “Revit is great, but I still do my detailing in ACAD”.

I’m not sure where this misconception about Revit being bad or difficult at detailing started, but it’s just plain false.  And those that claim that it is easier in AutoCrap, I would actually argue the opposite.

Revit has cleaned up and simplified the process of detail work in the computer.  We no longer have to worry about layers.  Or even worse, color, and if that color is going to impact the lineweight (I know some of you are still plotting with CTB, you cannot hide!).  There is a selection of Detail Lines, and what I see is what’s going to print.  It’s like my old empty plastic orange juice concentrate can that held my Koh-I-Noor pens, a black sharpie, and some grey markers.  Easy.  There are also fill regions and a masking region.  And if you happen to use the wrong “pen” or fill, select it and change it.  There is an excellent selection of already created detail components.  Fill patterns and line patterns automatically with scale.

And that’s just the pure detail elements.  Don’t forget that you can constrain detail elements to model elements, so if you’ve detailed a joint on a wall with detail lines, you can constratin it so if that wall moves or changes its thickness, those detail lines will update as well.  On top of that, there is the oft overlooked but VERY powerful Edit Cut Profile tool which allows tweaking the edges of model elements in my view.  So I know and have confidence that cut patterns and fill patterns are consistent and proper.

It’s change and it’s different and I understand that.  Over the last two years as we have been doing our deployment in earnest, a major new part of my job has been therapist.  Change is scary, especially change on such magnitude.  People like the tools they are used to.

But that doesn’t make them good tools.

The people who think AutoCrap is easier to detail in, are simply used to that piece of software.  Revit has taken a little of the software out of detailing.  Don’t let that scare you.  Come along with us.

But first take off those Crocs and put on some real shoes.

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.

Spinning! 3d View Quick Tip

Sometimes it’s the small things that we forget or overlook.  I was surprised to find out that someone who I could consider one of my top Revit users was unaware of the following little nugget.  So I thought I would jot it down here.

Navigating through your 3d view can get a little tricky when your model starts to grow.  Holding down the SHIFT key while center-button dragging will rotate your model around to let you get a better view of another side.  By default, Revit rotates around the center of your model.  This might lead you to rotate-pan-rotate-pan-rotate-pan until you see the angle you want.

Here’s the nugget.  Wanna know a nice trick?  Select an object before you rotate.  The object you select will then become the center of your rotation.  No more rotate-pan-rotate-pan-rotate-pan!

Placing a Tag Outside its Host

Seven times out of ten, you place a tag and you want it to be near that item that you are tagging, be it a door, room, window, whatever.  The tag wants to be near the host, otherwise, what’s the point?  You might as well be placing tags by tossing them in the air and letting them land wherever, like as much confetti.

Two times out of ten, you tag something and there just isn’t enough room for that tag to live there.  So, you enable a leader from that tag.  Excellent.  A nice clean arrow indicating precisely to what item that tag is referring.

Then comes the oddball.  That one time out ten (probably even more rare) that you want a live tag to pull info, AND you don’t want it near the object you’re tagging, AND you don’t want a leader.  The out-of-the-box tags in Revit don’t want you to feel like you can accomdate this.  As soon as you move a tag too far from an item, Revit tells you that you MUST activate leaders and have that connection back to the object in question.

We ran into this situation… and I won’t keep you in suspense, we found a way around it.

Our firm standards for interior elevations indicate that we show the room number JUST BELOW the actual elevation.  We wanted to keep the tag “live” so it was pulling the number from the room, in case the room number changed.  “Dumb” tags are SO un-Revit.  But, every time we dropped the tag down, it asked to turn on the leader, which we didn’t want to do.  How to fix? 

The question really was, how does Revit know if a tag is inside or near the item that’s being tagged anyway?  Opening up the tag itself gave us our first clue.  The only thing in there is lines, text and… some reference planes.  Quickly checking the reference planes indicated that these planes were of the “origin defining” type.  You probably see where I’m going with this.

Turns out, Revit doesn’t care at all where the “graphics” of the tag is at all.  The origin point of the tag is how Revit determines if a tag is inside or near an object.

Solution?  Create a new type that had the graphics droppped down below the origin.  As long as that invisible origin was inside the room, the tag was below the elevation, and it didn’t need a leader line.

This can obviously be applied to any tag type, with even more clever placement being defined by parameters and types.  It doesn’t happen often, but it’s nice to know that you can keep the “automagic” updating and not lose out to the last 10%.

What Makes a Successful Reviteer

I have been doing many levels of training and all kinds of support for Revit Architecture in our firm for the last year plus as we’ve been working, project team by project team, on getting revit to be our primary design and documentation software.

A consistent question from the principals in each office is “which person will be good at Revit?”  A very valid question, but obviously a very difficult one to answer.  You can’t point and say “yes” and “no”.  I mean, you can, but you might be wrong.  And you might get in trouble.

What I have discovered is traits that are usually a good indicator of being successful and, more importantly, traits that usually indicate NOT being successful.

Here’s the big one.  AutoCAD (or as we refer to it here in the BIM Basement, “AutoCrap”) or other CADD experience.  There are two camps here.  The first camp thinks that if someone is good in on CADD software, they will be good in them all.  The other camp recognizes that there are differences with traditional CADD and BIM and have convinced themselves that someone who knows CADD will just have their brain full CADD stuff and won’t be able to empty their brain to learn Revit.  From what I’ve seen, it just doesn’t matter.

Obviously, Revit is a piece of software.  There are people who are just naturally inclined to using software.  Setting that aside, knowledge or the lack of in a CADD package are almost a zero indicator on Revit success.  Someone who is good in software may have a quicker time picking it up, but in the long run successful Revit users come from both a strong CADD background and from very limited CADD background.

The best indicator I have found of someone who has success in Revit is knowledge of how a building goes together.  Time and time again, we have seen incorrect views because the model was put together wrong.  And it was put together wrong because the person working on the model did not understand how part A plugged into part B.  They might have known in the past that they were supposed to draft a thick line and then a dashed line next to it, but they never understood what they were drafting.  The people who understood what was being drafted, or what they were drafting know how to build the model properly, which is key to a successful Revit project.

Luckily, that can be learned, if you have the right person.  The number one indicator that I have found concerning someone NOT being succesful in Revit probably won’t come as a shock.  It is a good indicator for most new tasks.  Attitude.  Attitude is huge.  The desire to learn something new, the willingness to admit that their old methods do not apply anymore, the acceptance that things change.  Using Revit and working on a BIM project is a major shift.  A lot of people hate change.  These two items are totally incompatible.

So, unfortunately, there is no litmus test on who will be great at Revit and who won’t.  It pretty much comes down to common sense.

Not to sound melodramatic, but BIM and Revit represent one of the largest changes in the industry since… well, I’m not really sure.  You know who in your firm is ready and able (and willing) to come along for the ride.

What’s in a Name?

Objects in Revit have parameters.  Everyone knows this.  Some have many many parameters.  I absolutely think it’s impractical and time wasting to fill in every single one.  However, there are many that get overlooked that actually can help us out.

Case in point – the name of reference planes.

Usually, you slap down a reference plane and ignore it.  Well, you don’t ignore it, but it is rare that I see someone checking out the properties of a plane.  It is what it is.  Immensely useful for creating content, in-place families, slicing, dicing and in general making our lives a little easier.

If you check out the parameters for a plane, you have Scope Box and Name.  Not gonna worry about Scope Box now, but absolutely name your plane.  Named planes can be far easier when selecting the working plane, and it’s a good habit to get into to organize things.

The only trick is to plan out your naming early.  If I were making a desk component I might want to name some of my planes the following:

• Desk front
• Desk back
• Desk right
• Desk left
• Legs back
• Legs front
• etc…

As opposed to “Front of desk” and “Back of desk” which might be my first idea.  While a little grammatically awkward, it helps to group the planes in a more category based system when you hit that pulldown to select one.

So a quick two second task can help organize your planes and make it easier to select them in a pinch.

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.

When I’m 64

Just a quick post.  Last week we had our monthly local Revit user group meeting and the discussion came up about 64-bit PCs.

I won’t go into the crazy geeky technical aspects of 32 vs 64, but the question was whether or not it was worth the investment using Revit on a 64-bit machine.

Unquestionably, yes.

If you are using Revit to do residential work, or something under, say 5,000 sf (I just pulled that number out of my… um… void) then you probably won’t see any gain from the different architecture.  With the size of projects we are working on (medium to big) my users who were lucky enough to be in the 64-bit pilot project group would cause me bodily harm if I took their machines away from them.

Less waiting and fewer hiccups with workshared models is the key.  The group with the 64-bit PCs reported zero out of memory type issues when trying to save to central or other memory intensive processes.  The poor 32-bit users… well, we had to gently nudge Revit to save sometimes.

I don’t have hard numbers about am0unt of time saved, but frankly I think that’s not important.  The users felt better about it and a happier model maker is a more productive model maker.

We don’t do much rendering, but doing our renderings on the 64-bit PCs is insanely faster than the others.  Not a huge selling point for us, but it might be for you.

Any new workstations we buy are 64-bit.  Now we just have to get out of this recession so I can buy some more workstations…