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

Who Moved My View!!

So you're almost ready to plot your job. You look over your sheets and see that your excellent 3D section or plumbing layout has been "disturbed". Your text and leaders no longer line up with the elements, if they're even in view. Sound's fun, right?

Unfortunately, 3D views cannot be pinned like 2D pictures. Until a few days ago, I'd always figured the best bet is to hope nobody moves your views and label them as such. That's what I told Mike when he came by asking how to do 3D plumbing diagrams that couldn't be messed up.

After a bit of research on the AUGI forums, I came across this gem of a tip.

In a 3D view, right-click the view cube and select "Set Current View as Home" and "Save View". Now mess up your view. Roll it around, turn it upside down, whatever. Right-click the View Cube and select "Go Home". Your view returns right back to where you set it.

Combine this with a view template and you'll always be able to get your view back (provided nobody deleted anything).

Getting Started

Completing a BIM project successfully has just as much to do with how well your team functions and communicates as it does with how well you model. Understanding what each team member's skill level, modeling responsibility (in their mind and in your mind), workflow expectations, and goals will help everyone to come together to produce a better product. To that end, at the onset of a job where more than one discipline will be producing a design model (Revit or otherwise), there needs to be a BIM kick-off meeting.

To help guide that meeting, we've created a BIM kick-off form. It's saved on the server at CADD:\MME Revit Content\MME Library\General\BIM Kick-Off.doc and it's also in the new project subfolders under wordproc\status.

This form isn't the end-all, be-all of BIM guidelines. If you're working with a contractor that will be using the BIM for takeoffs, clash detection, and 4d and 5d simulation, this little form won't begin to cut it. Hopefully, they'll have a more in-depth form that will put everyone on the same page. We've simply created this form as a means to get all the info and expectations up front that we as engineers need to do our jobs with the least amount of headache. There's nothing worse than finding out one week prior to a deadline that the architect or contractor expected all the rebar or duct hangers to be modeled.

Think of this more as a way of getting started on the right foot.

Who, What, When, Where, and Why

BIM is our future as an engineering company. Love it or hate it, Revit is the key tool that is enabling us to move foward into the BIM world, and an unfortunate reality of that is that of proficiency in using this tool has bearing on our future success.

The purpose of this blog is to give the employees in the company who are developing content, learning new ways to use Revit, answering user questions, and in general staying a little ahead of the curve a way to share what we learn to the rest of the company in a manner that can be searched, saved, and referenced in the future.

Some posts may contain a tip or trick we've learned that can help you in your day to day use of Revit. Other posts may simply be informing you of a new steel embed or air handler family that's been created. If a some asks a question or has a problem with Revit that should be shared with everyone, it'll go on here too. We're going to be putting S and MEP info on here, so there should be a little something for everyone. Over time, there will hopefully be a good bit of info on here that you can search through if you have questions.

This won't be a blog that you want or need to read every day. Checking it a couple of times a month or once a week will probably be sufficient to keep you up to date on what's going on.

If you have suggestions of things you feel would be a good topic for a post, please let us know via a comment or company email.