Funky Framing

As I'm sure you probably know, you can use a roof or slab as a layout plane for your roof framing. This makes sloped framing a breeze. If the warping is simple, it still works. But what if your roof looks something like this-

Pretty tricky, right. The beams will have to curve and slope, and there's just no easy way to figure it out. Thanks to the Fall 2010 edition of AUGI/AEC Edge, I know how to now.

Step 1 -Define the surface. Hopefully, there's an in-place mass. If not, you need to create one that will match the surface.


Step 2- Host a wall on the curvy surface.


Step 3- Draw vertical walls that intersect the curvy wall. The face of the vertical wall should be aligned with the center of the beam you wish to model. Join the curvy wall to the vertical walls. it Should now look like this (with the roof and mass hidden)-

Step 4- Where the walls have joined, notice that there is a section cut out that has created an intersection face. We'll now use these intersection faces as a guide to frame the girders. Create a beam using the pick lines option (with 3d snapping turned on) by selecting the intersection faces.

Step 5 - Repeat Step 3 and 4 for beams in the opposite direction. Note that you may need to move some of the walls bac and forth to get the intersection faces correct.

Step 6- Add Columns as needed.

It won't always work if the surface is just too complex. This would have to be done with extruded masses along a spline. But this should work for the majority of cases you come across.

Borrowing Licenses

Let me preface this with a warning. I hesitate to tell everyone how to do this, but it's important to know how to do it to avoid catastrophe. Do not abuse this capability. (End of Warning).

Ever had the network crash the day you were supposed to send out a job, leaving you unable to pull a Revit license? The feelings of helplessness and anger at the system are shared by many. This can be avoided with some planning. A day or two before the deadline, copy the project folder onto your desktop. Keep this updated as you continue to save your work onto the server. In the event of a server crash, you're still up and running with your project files. At the same time, open Revit and go to Help-Product and License Information. Click the button that says "Borrow" beside the network license. A calendar will open up asking you to select a date to borrow a license until. Select the day after your project deadline. You now will have a borrowed license on your computer till that day. After that day, the license will automatically return itself to the server.

Let the network die, server crash, whatever. You'll still have your files and be able to work in Revit (though you might have some issues printing and emailing).

Rendered Walkthroughs

Revit 2011 (and 2010) allow you to create walkthroughs that are rendered. No more cartoon-like shaded with edges walkthroughs. Granted, you need a computer with enough juice to output renderings, but still, pretty sweet. To make things easier, here's a few tips on creating walkthroughs.

1. Keep the image small (the videos below are 8"x4").
2. Be sure and clean out the windows temp file (solution here).
3. Render at a reasonable quality (for the smaller images, medium quality is usually fine).
4. To make the rendering a bit quicker, uncheck the lighting movement.
5. Output to jpeg, not avi, and only output a few hundred frames at a time.
6. After all frames have been exported, use VirtualDub or a similar program to reassemble.

Here's a couple of examples (they look much better in real life, not on the small flash video)

LookupTables and RMEP

We came across an interesting situation with Revit MEP yesterday. For no apparent reason, the pipe elbows on all of the 32-bit machines quit working. No matter what size pipes were used, the elbows wouldn't change size. The families weren't custom families, and there wasn't anything apparent that could have been causing the error.

After much discussion, choice language, and failed attempts to fix the problem between the offices, Jason came up with an idea. Remembering a that the Revit.ini file was overwritten when 2010 was installed, he recalled some problems that were tied to the LookupTable. Apparently, all the 32-bit machines had Revit MEP installed over the network, while the 64-bit machines had Revit installed from the disk. The result of this was that the 64-bit machines had the LookupTable installed on the C-drive, while the 32-bit machines had the LookupTable pathed to their office engineering drive. When the server puked out a few weeks ago, the 32-bit machines all lost the LookupTable. Once we realized this, we took a copy of the LookupTable and placed it in the MME Revit Content Library and fixed the .ini file to path to the server for the LookupTable. All was fixed.

What's important here is that when a new machine has Revit MEP installed, the .ini file needs to be modified. Why the pathing of the LookupTable wasn't made more transparent by Autodesk, we'll never know. But it's very important that all machines be pathed to the same place, so that one person's machine doesn't modify the LookupTable and end up doing things differently than others. More info here , here, and here

New Toys!!!

Revit 2011 product previews are out. There's no official release date yet (the April 8th release has been postponed), but you may start drooling now. See the links below for some more in-depth descriptions of what's coming. (Electrical finally gets conduit and cable trays)

Revit Architecture 2011, Revit MEP 2011, Revit Structure 2011


New Feature Lists: Architecture, Structure, MEP

Get Phased

Phases in Revit aren't hard, but they can be a bit confusing. At first glance, they seem easy - Existing and New Construction. The key is understanding that each phase is a moment in time. With just two phases, it's not that big of a deal, but if you were to add more phases, this concept becomes more important. If an element is existing, you set it as Phase Created = Existing, if it's new, you set it as Phase Created = New Construction (Element Properties-Phasing-Phase created). If you're going to demolish something existing, set it as Phase Created = Existing, Phase Demolished = New Construction.

All this is simple enough, but elements won't display differently in views until you set up phase filters and graphic overrides. The Phase Filters require setting up display styles for New, Existing, Demolished, and Temporary. This is where things could get a little confusing. The "Existing" in Phase Filters isn't necessarily the same as the Existing in Project Phases. This is where thinking of the Project Phases as moments in time can be helpful. Therefore, Phase Filter "Existing" is anything that was created before the phase that each particular view is set to (View Properties-Phases). Setting the view to a phase is the equivalent of taking a snapshot of that moment in time. If your view is set to Phase Existing, unless you've created another phase (moment in time) before Existing, the Phase Filter "Existing" will be empty, because there is nothing that could have existed prior to Existing. (Confused yet?) Any element that was created in the current View Phase (Existing) and not demolished in the current View Phase would be read as Phase Filter "New" in this view. Phase Filter "Demolished" applies to elements created prior to the current view phase and demolished in the current view phase. Phase Filter "Temporary" applies to elements created and demolished in the same (and current) view phase.

Ultimately, successfully using phases requires some advance plannning and care. Spending 10 minutes at the onset of a job to plan out the phases and understand what each phase and phase filter should show will result in better experience.

For a more in depth look at phases (and a way better explanation than I could give) look here. (MEP check this out as well.) Interesting thoughts on showing future work here.

Big Grid Issues

Revit is great because you don't have to repeatedly draft things like grid lines. Put 'em in once and you're good to go. That is, until you have to show a keyplan with grids or you have a project so large you have to show it at something like 1/32" scale or 1"=50'-0". Now the grid bubbles appear to be 20' diameter. Because the grid text and bubble maintains the same size regardless of scale, it doesn't work well when you combine large and small scales.

Thankfully, there's a workaround. This one is courtesy of the Revit OpEd blog (see Knowledge Base links on your right and link below).

A solution to show different size grid annotation in large scale views involves using Design Options.

1. Create a Design Option called Grid Management and two options: Normal Size and Reduced Size.
2. Create a Reduced Size Grid type that uses a grid bubble family with smaller text and circle. Rename the normal Grid type: Normal Size.
3. Add all the Normal Size grids to the project and then add them to both Design Options.
4. Edit the Reduced Size view's Design Option and change the grid types to the matching Reduced Size grid type. In the larger scale views set their Design Option (via Visibility/Graphics dialog) to display the Reduced Size Design Option.

Now you have smaller grid bubbles and they "look" better...just keep in mind that they are smaller and now harder to read when printed full size, or half size for that matter.

Caution: Dimensioning to these grids in a design option and to the rest of the model can have unpleasant issues. Such as the dimension getting deleted or at least disappearing when the relationship between the Option"ed" grids are no longer relevant. This can happen if you toggle the assigned option to another and back.

http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2010/02/dept-of-workarounds-smaller-grids-in.html