Quick Tip – DWG Link Foreground vs Background

The default setting for linking in a DWG file is one of those things that consistently confuses my users for a couple seconds, and I’m with them. It’s a little obtuse.

First of all, you are linking and not importing, RIGHT?!

Secondly, this is also assuming you are linking your DWG to a single view, and not the entire project. This is not as crucial as NEVER IMPORTING, but we do recommend to our users that it is far easier to link a DWG into two or three views rather than linking it into the entire Revit model and then turning it off in the dozes of views where you don’t want to see it.

Many times when you link in your DWG, you just can’t see it. Quite often, it is hiding behind something in your model; a floor, a ceiling, etc. The default setting for that newly linked DWG is to put it behind everything. This can make it a little game of hide-and-go-seek.

Select that DWG, and you will see the “Draw Layer” parameter. Change it from “Background” to “Foreground” and it will lay on top of all your model content. You might want to click the BRING TO FRONT and BRING TO BACK buttons in the palette, but that just doesn’t work.

Or as Grover liked to say “Near……….far”

Quick Tip – LINK vs IMPORT

Every so often, you may still need to get the linework from an AutoCRAPfile to show up in your Revit views.  I know.  It’s sad, but true.

I am fully in the camp of not needing ACAD to do drafting. I know there are a LOT of folks out there who swear by this process, but I don’t buy it. Time to throw off the crutches, I say!

Once in a blue moon, you may need to get access to ACAD linework in your Revit model. Our rule of thumb is that 99.99% you need to make sure that you are LINKING the .dwg file and not IMPORTING it.

Importing will suck all the linework from the .dwg file and put it into your Revit file, adding each layer as a linetype which can cause chaos and confusion.

Linking the file will give you the classic link “onion skin” effect, where the contents of the .dwg can be seen in your Revit model, but not touched.  Changes to the .dwg can be reflected in the link.  And you can control the appearance (linetype, lineweight, color) of different layers from the linked .dwg by going to the view’s Visibilit Graphics.

LINK, do not IMPORT your .dwgs and your Revit file will be much happier for it.

Fun fact: Revit even when you link in a .dwg, Revit “imports” the contents of the file into your model, it just keeps it in a nice “quarantine”. This is why a linked .dwg will still appear in your model, even when Revit warns you that it can’t find the .dwg file. It’s also why linking in a .dwg file causes your Revit model to bloat up like me at a donut store!

Infraworks 360 Initial Thoughts

I’m having a lot of fun with my 30 day trial of Infraworks 360. Being in the arch end of the design world, I never paid much attention to Infraworks Naught, but our friends at Autodesk have been pushing the 360 end of it hard, specifically Model Builder.

“Pushing”. We’ll come back to that in a second.

The Model Builder is easy to get started and get your initial data downloaded. Amazingly easy, actually. I found the importing of AutoCrap and Sketchup models to be a little confusing when trying to place (be sure to tell Infraworks what type of thing your thing it is), and my Revit test model didn’t even load up properly.

But so far, the slickness of the software has impressed me. I might need to get a few copies. And that’s where the fun comes in.

Our Suite subscription allows us to have a handful of Infraworks licenses (sidenote: Infraworks is surprisingly hard to type, and really hard to say). This is NOT Infraworks 360, which is what you need to have the Model Builder awesomeness. Bear with me here. My Infraworks licenses are networked, so I have a nice pool of available seats and can maximize usage, and can leverage expenses and all that business jargon crap. Infraworks 360 requires you to upgrade an Autodesk 360 account to be able to access it, which limits who can use it and totally makes me shrug and say “wha?” BEYOND THAT, the use of 360 is going to require Cloud Credits (don’t get me started on Cloud Credits), but Autodesk can’t tell me how many yet.

Yeah. The pusher. They are going to get us hooked and then tell us how much it costs for the sweet sweet GIS and satellite and infrastructure candy.

So, I am EXTREMELY cautious about buying even a single seat of Infraworks 360. Even if that is not a huge investment, who knows if it will be prohibitively costly to use the portions we want to use. My suggestions: dump the extra license fee for 360. I know how much I spend on my Ultimate Suites. You can have Showcase back. Gimme Infraworks 360, or at least Model Builder. On top of that, let me know how many cloud credits I am going to have to spend. I REALLY want to share this new technology with everyone, but I am REALLY nervous to do so right now.

So, yeah, get the 30 day trial and use the Model Builder, but watch out for when the pusher comes to you with the bill.

You Know What I Would Love?

I would really like to be able to “convert” a view to a drafting view.  I could totally use this with some 3D views we have of mock up panels from one project that we want in another project, but we don’t want the mock up panel itself (because where would it go?  And don’t tell me another phase.  That’s a waste).

We have been exporting to DWG to get it 2D, then reimporting into a new blank project, then spending hours cleaning it up so it doesn’t corrupt the main model, then copying THOSE drafting views into the model.

You know how much easier it would be to just right-click, Duplicate View, Duplicate as Drafting View?  That would be SO easy and SO cool.

And more importantly, it would be one less thing I have to do in Autocrap.  I barely even know how to open that software anymore.  It’s dead to me.  Like Crocs.

God, I hate Crocs.

Revit Keyplans – Can I Make This Any More Difficult?

Keyplans are one of those functions that I hope and hope and hope one day will have an easy way to get working in my project.

Right now, we have an 8 step procedure that we try to teach people how to use.  “8 steps,” I hear you saying, “That’s not bad.”  Except that each steps seems crazier than the last, and it involves multiple pieces of software, and the ability to edit families and understand parameters.  These are not easy Revit tasks, and the more I can keep our typical user away from them, the happier I am, but if I don’t show them how to make keyplans, then I have to make them, and that would mean less napping and looking at cats on the Internet!

Basically, our mess involves exporting the plan to DWG, tracing it to get the simple shapes, importing those shapes into a new Revit family, adding filled regions and text, making parameters to control the visibilty of the filled regions and text, putting THAT family into the border family, making parameters in the border family to talk to the plan family, then re-importing the border back into the project.

Still with me?

There are plenty of stops along that wild ride that you could do something different, but ultimately, to get the flexibility we need, the number of steps stays pretty consistent.

I don’t even know how a better tool would work.  Maybe some kind of Area Plan that can live on multiple sheets.  Maybe a view that has a designated area on the border.  Who knows.  All I know is, whenever someone asks me how to make a keyplan for their project, I hit the MUTE button on the phone, let out a deep sigh, and then tell them how to do it.

Then I get angry because I forgot to UNMUTE the phone first.

If someone has a nice easy way of Keyplans, I would love to hear it.

Wow. A Whole Year. And Patterns

A year since I’ve written anything.  Nuts.  I’m not one for resolutions… so I’ll just leave it at that.

I was struggling trying to make some fill patterns manually today.  Have you ever tried to do those by hand?  Yeah, I think Rainman worked up the syntax for those files.  So, making them by hand is obnoxious.

Quick Google search found a piece of software that I could buy for around $180 to make the pat files.  Come on!  There has to be something free!

Then I came across this post.  The post is old, and it forces you to use ACAD, but it gets the job done very nicely.  I had to remember how to draw a line, but once I did I made some pattern files to pull into good old Revit.  And it was MUCH faster than doing it by hand.

Ideally, I would think that the geniuses at Autodesk Labs would make some online HTML5 application that lets you draw and save a pat file right in your browser, but that’s me dreaming again.

Hey!  I’ve dipped my to into C# and done some coding for Revit!  I’ll try to share that fun soon!

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.

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.