Revit 2013 One Box Deployment Problem

We are working on getting our installation for Revit 2013 ready and have stumbled across an issue that the deployment can have.

Leveraging the power of the “One Box”, we planned on putting the deployment files on the server, and simply tweak the deployment for multiple disciplines.  Save a ton of server space!  High five!

Well, everything looked good, and we had five shortcuts with five different ini files saved in the “CustomSettings” folder.  Things were going smoothly.

Then we went to install.  For some odd reason, only the first deployment we created had the entire set of customizations, the others only got the license file; file location settings were missing, tweaks to options weren’t there.  Basically, the installations were ignoring the custom ini file.

We contacted Autodesk, and they confirmed that this is an issue.

I never know if I’m supposed to feel better or worse when they tell me that.

No fix, of course.  And I’m not holding my breath on there being a fix.

The workaround involves tweaking our install script so it copies the tweaked ini filed from the AdminImage\CustomSettings folder to the application data folder for the user’s PCs.  Keep in mind that this location is not the same in XP and Windows 7 (Vista is dead to me).

For Windows 7, you need to copy here:
C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RVT 2013\UserDataCache\

For XP, copy the ini here
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\RVT 2013\UserDataCache\

In both cases, you need to copy your custom ini file and rename it to Revit.ini, replacing the one that the installer created.

What’s odd is the deployments that weren’t created from One Box work fine.  I have given up expecting any Autodesk deployment to go as advertised.  Every year we fight a new set of problems. My expectation is that the smaller firms just walk from desk to desk to install.  And the really big firms have an IT group and fancy-pants servers whose single job is to install software.  We are very much a middle size firm: WAY too many seats to install one at a time, and not nearly enough in the IT budget to dedicate to software deployment.  So, we make do with what we have.  It would be nice if Autodesk could put a little more effort in their deployment creation tools.

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.

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.

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.