New Revit Forum

I´m happy to announce that a new Revit Forum is born ! Please have a look at http://www.revitforum.org/

In just 3 weeks, we are now more than 300 members, and still growing fast.

Void visibility with Yes/No ?

This is one of the questions that I get a lot - Most would say that the answer is no, since there´s no build-in "Visible" parameter for Voids, as the case is for solids.

But if you follow a few simple steps, the answer is actually YES - It CAN be done :-)

1. Create two extra ref. planes to control the void height (or depth, or whatever you´re after)
2. Lock one of those to a given distance from the solid (in this case 500 mm´s)
3. Dimension and label the distance between those two ref. planes (Length parameter names "Void Height"
4 Create the Void, and lock the top and bottom to the two ref. planes.
5. Create a new "Yes/No" parameter named "Void Visible" and assign this formula > if(Void Visible, Solid Height + 500 mm, 500 mm)

In the above example, I´m assuming that you need to cut all the way thru a solid with the height parameter "Solid Height"

Actually, a Revit family speaks more than a thousand words - so just grab this example.rfa , and make of it what you can.

Incremental Values

When building Revit families, it´s quite useful to be somewhat in control of the user inputs... for instance, doors come at certain width´s, it could be 810, 910 ,1010 mm´s or 3-0"´, 3-6", 4´-0" etc.

You´ll need a few parameters:

User Dim (Length) - What the end user is gonna use
Increment (Length) - 100 mm/6" - Not neccecary, it could be a fixed value in the comming parameters
Integer (Integer) Formula = User Dim / Increment
True Dim (Length) Formula = Integer * Increment

Now, just dimension your geometry/ref. planes with the True Dim parameter

Note 1: If needing the scandinavian standards of 810, 910 mm etc. ? just add + 10 to the True Dim parameter: = (Integer * Increment) + 10
Note 2: If you want to control how User Dim gets rounded up, or down just add either +0.49 or -0.49 to the True Dim parameter: (Integer * Increment) + 0.49 or (Integer * Increment) - 0.49

Childs cutting their Parrents...

Not really a nice topic, but quite usefull when speaking of Revit Families.
I´m repeating myself, from a post at the AUGI forums - But if you want a child/nested Revit family to cut a hole in the parrent/main family, like when placing a sink in a countertop, you´ll need to follow these instructions:

A: Sink family
1. New family, using the Generic FaceBased template....
2. Change the new family to the Plumbing Fixtures Category, (and share it)
3. Model the sink, and create a void, to representate the hole in the countertop.
4. Use "Cut Geometry" to cut the "Face" from the template, with the new void.
5. Save to library as desired.

B: Countertop family.
1. New family, using the Casework template...
2. Model the countertop as needed.
3. Load the above sink family, and place it on your new countertop face
4. Save again, and have fun :-)

And then again - we could take it one step further... when the sink is placed in the countertop family, pick it, and add a label to it, now you´ll be able to switch the sink famlily and/or type from within the countertop family, even when loaded into a project.

Rudolf the Revitdeer

Let´s just get it out in the open... I have way to much sparetime on my hands :-)

Was just playing around with rendering and lightfixtures - so why not make a Revitdeer ?

I´m of to Qatar in a few days, where I´ll be spending the holidays with my family - So Merry Xmas to everyone, AND a happy New Year !

"Low" walls vs. Cutplanes

When working with low walls (Shorter than 6´-0" or 1828,8 mm) Revit will NOT display it as cut, despite having the cutplane set below that height... To my surprise, this is actually documentet in the help files - so i might as well admit to never have read the help files :-)

"Walls shorter than 6 feet (approximately 1.83 meters) are not cut, even if they intersect the cut plane.

The 6 feet are measured from the top of the bounding box to the bottom of the primary view range. For example, if you create a wall with a sloped top face, when the top of the wall is 6 feet away from the bottom of the primary view range, the wall is cut at the cut plane. When the top of the wall is less than 6 feet, the entire wall shows as projection even where it intersects the cut plane. This behavior always occurs when the Top Constraint property for the wall is specified as Unconnected."

The below image (from the help files), is doing a great job explaining the functions of the view range, and the cutplane bahavior:

Hotfix - Crash when modifying walls update 2 & subscription advantage pack release

This hotfix addresses issues related to deleting or modifying walls, a crash may occur.


Applies to WU2 (Update 2 Build 20090917_1515 ) and WU3 (Update 3 Subscription Advantage Build 20090925_1815 ) of:
Autodesk® Revit® Architecture 2010
Autodesk® Revit® MEP 2010
Autodesk® Revit® Structure 2010

Download the Hotfix at: Autodesk

Placed components override wall lineweights

Had a question today, regarding components which would override the lineweight of the walls they where placed up against.

The solution:
1. Open the component (family) in the family editor
2. Locate the build in masking region
3. In the element properties of the masing region, uncheck the "Draw in Foreground" box
4. Hit "OK"
5. Create a new Ref. Plane, just above the Ref. Level, and name it "Mask"
6. Select the masking region, and set it´s work plane to the new "Mask" Ref. Plane
7. Load the component into your project.

Formula to return the highest value

For the family builders, here´s a quick trick to return the highest of three values (user inputs)

We need something like the following parameters:

Length A (User input)
Length B (User input)
Length C (User input)
Calc (Only used to get our final result)
Return Length (Returns the greatest of the three length parameters)

The formulas needed goes like this:

Calc = if(Length A > Length B, Length A, Length B)

Return Length = if(Calc > Length C, Calc, Length C)


Download the sample family from HERE

Edit:

While talking about this topic at the Augi Forums, Joe Zhou came up with this genius formula (The result is the same, but you won´t need the "Calc" parameter...

Return Length = if(and(or(Length A > Length B, Length A = Length B), or(Length A > Length C, Length A = Length C)), Length A, if(and(or(Length B > Length A, Length B = Length A), or(Length B > Length C, Length B = Length C)), Length B, if(and(or(Length C > Length A, Length C = Length A), or(Length C > Length B, Length C = Length B)), Length C, 0 mm)))

OK... the formula itself is a nightmare, but it WORKS !

Design Options - Elevation Bug

Yesterday, I was explaining Design Options to a client, and went thru the setting of different views for the options - It turned out to a bit of a nightmare. First I startet with setting up the View Properties for a plan view, then a Section View

But when I went to set up the Elevation Views, something was missing:

So I went looking for it in other elevation views, but still no luck... so I told the Client not to do Design Options which would affect Elevevation Views.... Not really.... i´m sure it´s a BUG, but the under Visibility/Graphics, it´s possible to set the desired Design Option:

Hope "The Factory" is gonna fix this before 2020 :-)