The Revit Clinic

Have you crashed lately?

We have been hearing a lot of reports that Revit 2010 is not very stable.  Many users have been experiencing crashes in the product.  Through some investigation of Customer Error Reports (CER), see a great post about CER here, we are seeing that many users are crashing due to out of date video graphic card drivers.  

In Revit 2010, there were changes made behind the scenes regarding the display of graphics in the application,  a good post of the subject can be found in a post on Inside the Factory called Tuning the Graphics Engine, these changes might cause your old graphics card driver not to work as well before and may be the cause of the instablilty you are seeing.  

Please, make sure that you are using the latest version of the driver for your graphics card.   

This will greatly help the stability of Revit, preventing crashes from occuring.  Also, if you are crashing, make sure you submit those CER reports with your email address and then go ahead and contact Autodesk Support or your Reseller for help. 

Resource string error when attempting to open a project in Revit Structure 2010

When you try to open a project in Revit Structure 2010, you may encounter the following error:

"Cannot find the resource string number xxxx in resource AecBase60" (where xxxx is a unique number)

This error is related to a DLL conflict between Revit Structure 2010 and AutoCAD 2009. There are two approaches you can take to be able to open your file:

The DLL file in question was updated in Service Pack 1 for Revit Structure 2010, which is available at the product website: Revit Structure 2010 Update 1. After installing the update you should no longer receive the error.

If you're not ready to install the update yet, you will be able to open your project by moving any DWGs that are linked to the file to a different location on your system. Revit will be unable to find them when attempting to load the project, which will relieve the conflict. Once the project is open, try reloading the DWGs one by one.

Revit 2010 and Dual-Displays after Update Release 1

In the “Update Enhancement List” for Revit 2010 you may notice the “Application frame size is saved between sessions” note.

There is one additional item along with this for dual-display systems.  Some users have requested that when Revit 2010 is dragged to a secondary display after launching the product it would remember that location.

 

After applying the update this is now the case.  Revit will not only remember the application window size, but it will revert to the physical location if it was dragged to a second monitor as well.  Previously it would launch within the primary display when the user first launched the application.

Update Release 1

I am pleased to say that Update Release 1 for Revit 2010 products is now available for download.

You can download the service packs by going to the following links

Revit Architecture 2010 Update Release 1

Revit Structure 2010 Update Release 1

Revit MEP 2010 Update Release 1

Also, be sure to check out the Update Enhancement lists that are available for each product from these links.  These lists tell you the things fixed or updated in this Service Pack.

Update Enhancements for Revit Architecture 2010 Update Release 1

Update Enhancements for Revit Structure 2010 Update Release 1

Update Enhancements for Revit MEP 2010 Update Release 1

Finally, and probably most important, be sure to read the service pack readme file that is available for reading.

Service Pack Readme

This Service pack includes a number of fixes to the new Ribbon UI as well as some customer requests (like changing the detail level icons so they are more clear).  I encourage you to check out the service pack.  

Changing the File Association of Revit files

If you have multiple versions of Revit on your system and you open files by double-clicking on them in Windows Explorer, you may find that Revit doesn't launch the version you want it to. If you have trouble with this, please try the following:

This example will set .RVT files to open with Revit Structure 2010.

1. Go to the Control Panel > Folder Options.
2. In the Folder Options dialog, click the File Types tab.
3. Scroll down to the RVT file type. In the bottom pane, click the Advanced button (if you've already made changes, click Restore, then the Advanced button will appear).
4. In the Edit File Type dialog, click New.
5. Under Action, type Open with Revit Structure 2010.
6. In the Application used to perform action field, type "C:\Program Files\Autodesk Revit Structure 2010\Program\Revit.exe" "%1".
7. Click OK to exit the dialogs.

Building Skills with Skill Builders

A friend of mine responsible for coming up with Revit Architecture tutorials asked me to announce some new tutorials that are available for everyone to download.  

The User Assistance team for Revit Architecture has recently released the first of the Skill Builders for Revit Architecture 2010.  The first skill builder is a tutorial covering the Conceptual Design Environment (new massing) in Revit 2010.  The tutorial is a series of 6 short animations covering topics of making forms and applying parameters to them and creating panels which can be applied to your conceptual forms.  The Conceptual Design Skill Builder can be downloaded from the flowing location, or accessed from inside of Revit Architecture via the InfoCenter.

Skill Builders: Conceptual Design

The Skill Builders give the User Assistance team the opportunity to deliver updated content on a regular basis.  The traditional tutorials shipped with Revit give users a great foundation to start using Revit as soon as possible while the Skill Builders will expand on that base of knowledge and explore more specific topics in depth.

The User Assistance team is always looking for user feedback so let us know what you think of our first Skill Builder and what topics you might like to see covered in future Skill Builders. So please comment with your feedback and thoughts about other tutorials you would like to see.  

Note Blocks

Note Blocks [or Annotation schedules] list all instances of annotations that you can add using the Symbol tool.  For example you can create a new annotation family, add parameters, and then have these appear in a note block schedule.

 

I’ve included one example workflow for Note Blocks below in the video tutorial.  In this example we can create a new symbol family with a “number” and “description” parameter.  It could be utilized for a simple “general notes” list in a project where you want the numbers to be linked to a note schedule.  Keep in mind they are very flexible and I’m sure others have come across other uses.

Video Example

Feel free to add comments with other approaches you may have taken with Note Blocks!

Walkthrough Frame Count in Revit 2010

I want to point out this change for walkthroughs in the Revit 2010 release.  There is no longer a frame count indicator for the exported video in Revit 2010; this was a change from the 2009 release.  Below is the same walkthrough exported in Revit 2009 and then in 2010:

2009 Walkthrough

 
2010 Walkthrough

Revit 2010 creates an export without the text or frame counter throughout the video.

Rolling Out Revit

Another Product Support Video Solution is available for viewing!  

This time, I am discussing some tips and tricks for moving to the 2010 Revit Platform.  I walkthrough the upgrade process and provide a little bit of information about starting fresh in Revit 2010. 

Just in case you don't have access to Youtube. You can download the entire video from our Knowledge base by viewing the video solution Rolling out Revit.  Let me know what you think.

2010 Families Guide

The 2010 Families Guide is now available  for all flavors of Revit.  They are available for download for each product here:

Revit Architecture 2010

Revit Structure 2010

Revit MEP 2010

The Families Guide is a great resource of information regarding how to create families in Revit products. Each of the products guides focus on differnt families that you can create that are more specific to that product.  For example, the Revit Architecture tutorials for the Families Guide includes tutorials on how to create a complex window, while in the Revit Structure Families Guide, it walks you though creating a Custom Beam Type.  The MEP Families Guide also has a destinct MEP feel, having you create a Elbow pipe fitting family. 

All of the Guides have PDF or Standard CHM files for the documentation and also include Datasets.  I highly recommend that you check out these new editions of the families guide to the Revit products.  Its a great place to start learning about creating families and you experts out there (I am talking to you as well) might just find something useful as well.