Mysteries of the Unknown!

I have a running list of “REVIT MYSTERIES’ on my desk (I’ve already discussed one of those mysteries).  One day, I would like to take this list with me into a room of the developers and ask “why”.

Until then, I shall whine about it here and maybe someone out there has a good explanation.  Today’s case: The Mystery of the Vanishing Strucutral Column!

Something is happening wiht drawing order and how things are cut.  I cannot find much other folks with this issue, but I can consistently get something weird to happen.  At least I think it’s weird.

Let’s say I place a wall.  Let’s say I place some components (structural columns) in that wall.  Now I do a callout of the area.

If I do a callout and set the type to FLOOR PLAN, things seem to come in how I expect.

If I do a callout and set the type to DETAIL VIEW, then I get some odd results.  Hatches and lines overlap.  Things don’t seem to cut clean.

Why is this?  Is Revit making assumptions about what I want to do with DETAIL VIEWS?  That I plan on slapping detail components everywhere?  How presumptive of Revit.

Detail Views have some very different settings than a “standard” floor plan callout view.  The help file does not explain this graphic difference, however.

I would really love to hear an explanation.  Right now, we just kind of avoid Detail Views, and if someone took the time to make them function differently, I would love to know why.

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.

Warning – Floor May Be Closer Than It Appears

So, I stumbled across an odd one today.  Apparently, floors don’t like to follow the rules when it comes to view ranges.

Let’s say you have a floor at Level 1, offset 0′-0″.  Your view range bottom is set at the same height.  I always assumed that since the range was touching the floor, that’s why I saw it.

Boy, was I wrong.

It turns out that you have to get your view range at least 4′ above the floor for it not to appear in a view.

What the what?!  It’s like there is an invisible cube that is 4′ tall sitting on top of a floor.

I did a quick Google and found one reference to it on another blog.  That write-up states that it is “confusing” and “poorly documented”.  I used some different words, but not any that I will type here, in case my mom is reading this.  Hi, mom!

Looks like this “feature” made its way through to 2010 also, at least in my beta it did.

In my opinion this is insane and an amazingly poor idea that needs to be removed ASAP.  When someone sets their view range, they expect that view range to actually work (gasp – crazy idea).  Not work for some items, but not work except for an arbitrary distance with other items.  Dumb dumb dumb.

So watch out for your floors.  They may show up where you don’t expect them to.

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.

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?

DWF Creation and More NDA Fun!

One of my biggest beefs with the current 3d export of DWFs is that you can only export a single view.  The ideal DWF exporting from Revit would allow you to create “channels” of different 3d views to export into a single DWF file.  You send the DWF to the not-so-Revit-capable folks on your team and they switch from “channel” to “channel” to look over the latest design issues.  Currently, in 2009 (the version, not the year), that is not possible.

I have mentioned already that I am under a nice NDA embargo for the 2010 beta – maybe, I haven’t read the stupid thing entirely because I cannot find a copy of it.  Well, I didn’t mention it outright, but come on…  This isn’t CSI here.  Anyway, I am not at liberty to discuss, since yes, features change blah blah blah, but man wouldn’t it be awesome if in 2010 (the version, not the year) you could export multiple 3d views into one DWF to allow “channels”?

Yes.  That would be awesome.  I do wonder if that might happen.  Hmmm…

It would be unfortunate if while creating those “channels” (or bookmarks, maybe) it would not create some way to maintain a “home” for the view.  So if, hypothetically, you switched to a bookmark view, rotated, but could not then somehow get back to the default view.  Wouldn’t that be a shame?

Yes.  That would be a shame.  In theory, I suppose, one could simply close and re-open the DWF, but that’s no fun.  The HOME button should, hypothetically, be tied to the initial bookmarked view.

It’s nice to have these hypothetical conversations, isn’t it?

I have not fully embraced DWFs in our firm, but I do believe that 2010 (again, version, not the year) might be when I make the switch.  I have always liked the file format, especially when compared to PDFs (which seem to HATE large format docs) but the software for DWF has not been up to snuff.  I think it might be there now.

Need For Better Documentation

So, there is a drop down under View Properties for DISCIPLINE.

Here it is!

I have NEVER been able to find proper and complete documentation about what gets turned on and off in your view when you change this.  We are learning by trial and error, but why oh why is there no list simply indicating what each of these shows.

Do a Google search on it and you’ll find people getting confused why their walls aren’t showing up, or why the hidden lines in ductwork suddenly goes away.

If aynone has a list, please point me to it.  Otherwise I’ll continue mentally documenting things that disappear when we notice them.

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.