The Revit Clinic

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. 

A New Old classic

I'd like to welcome back a blog, well, they never really left, but its been retooled a bit (after taking a npa for a while).

Inside the System has been rebooted and retooled for the MEP products (both Revit MEP and AutoCAD MEP). 

"You can expect regular posts on this blog going forward. However, unlike the past, this blog will now be used to provide information on all Autodesk's MEP solutions including AutoCAD MEP and Revit MEP."

David Pothier will be leading the blogging effort on Inside the System, but the Entire MEP team at Autodesk will be involved as well. 

Check out the first "New" post Welcome to the new MEP blog for the first introduction to the retooled blog. 

I am sure they will have plenty of good information for our MEP users out there that will be helpful. Check it out. 

Product Support video solutions...

Product Support is launching video solutions for a number of key products. Our goal is to deliver you a similar video every month.    I am pleased to annouce my first video solution live on YouTube.

Check out this video on the Revit 2010 User Interface.  It is available in HD as well. Let me know what you think.

Revit 2010 Domed Conceptual Mass

I want to go through an approach for creating a domed conceptual mass in Revit 2010, with parameters attached for height and width. 

I have included a step by step video below on this issue; I hope this approach proves helpful:

Video Example

You could use the same approach to add additional parameters or lines as part of the model.

Missing text in the Application Menu

I just recently worked with a firm that was having issues with the Application Menus in their Autodesk 2010 products (not just the Revit-based ones) - the text was not displaying:

After a bit of troubleshooting, we were able to figure out that it was caused by the Font Smoothing setting in Windows. So if you run into the issue, try the following:

1. Open the Windows Control Panel and choose Display.
2. In the Display Properties dialog, click the Appearance tab.
3. In the Appearance tab, click the Effects button.
4. Clear the checkbox for "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts".
   
   
   
   
   
5.  Click OK to exit the dialogs.

Alternate Use

To me, a very interesting aspect of software is how some tools are used for purposes other than there typical. 

In Support, we often re-purpose a tool in Revit to meet a need.  Maybe that tool was intended for that use, maybe it wasn't, but we use that tool to meet our needs at the time.  Think about using Walls instead of family components to design a kitchen as one example. 

Clearly, this not the intended use the wall tool, but this is a unique way to solve a schematic design problem of laying out a kitchen and getting a rough view of what it might look like simply by creating a new profile for the counter top, applying it as a sweep (same for the toe space) and making the wall shorter (3 feet high in this case).   This could save you some time trying to make all the cabinets fit into the space (when the cabinet guy is going to do that later anyway).  

Another more complex example that I see a lot of is the use of the array tool.  Array is not that complex a tool, but can be used for a lot of different purposes.   You can use the radial array tool to simply array some chairs around a circle table for a furniture layout.

Or you can use the radial Array tool to array Model lines around a Arch.  

Why would you do this though? 

Well, functionality in Revit allows you to modify the rotation angle of a surface pattern (like making your wood floor go in a different direction) but its hard to make a surface pattern revolve around a circle, like bricks would around a arch opening.  

To do this, you need to use the array tool and use it to create the look that you need.  

If you want more information about how to create a Radial Array, the help file is great (insert common Support line here).  Just search for Radial Array to find the information.  

In this case, using Model lines to create the array allows the joint lines of the brick to appear in all view types.  You could model this with component families or do any number of things to make the arch appear correct (drafting with detail lines for example), but in this example you can use a tool commonly used for one purpose to make your life a little easier.  

What are some of the alternative uses of tools in Revit that you have come up with to do what you needed to do a little bit easier?