Un-Masking Your Furniture

Check out this new video on my YouTube Channel. (Yes! I started my YouTube channel a while back!)

I covered this everyday common issue when it comes to using 3rd party manufacturer furniture content on projects. The "masking region" issue with furniture families has been around for many years now. They can be commonly found in the free Revit content from the furniture manufacturer's website.

Go check out this video to learn how to clean up this annoying graphic issue!

Also, subscribe to my channel if you want to see more content in the future. 😉

Finding (Material) Neverland

Have you ever experienced your Material Browser taking forever to open the second you click that icon? 

One of the known issues I come across is if the project has a custom image map used for material Appearance but they are nowhere to be found, Revit is trying to find them through the path originated in its location. It will try to find them until it times out. In other words, the more missing material you have in the project, the longer for Revit to try to find them (i.e. the stalling). 

An Autodesk Knowledge Base post offers a similar explanation. 

This has become a serious headache for the user when:

• The Revit file was upgraded many versions ago and the material referenced location does not exist.
• The Revit file has material borrowed (or transferred) from other projects. 
• Custom material assigned to family content from other sources (e.g. manufacturer content)

How do you resolve an issue like this?

While I haven't found an easy solution, the only way is to identify which material via Material Browser has the missing image, and replace (or repath) with the image that Revit can access. Once that is done, the material browser can operate normally. 

This can be a daunting task if the project has hundreds if not thousands of material. Can I use Purge Unused to get rid of those materials? The short answer is yes but it is only possible to purge out material that is not assigned to any Revit system or component families. Even with purge unused, there could still be a lot of missing images referenced with the rest of the material. 

There have been some postings using Dynamo to help find these images. The process still has its shortcoming. 

I came across a tweet the other day when someone mentioned using a Revit add-in Ideate BIMLink tool. I started researching that solution. 

What's interesting is this tool and its feature has been around for years. While BIMLink is a licensed Revit tool, I haven't had the chance to use it until recently. What's more, the original intent of using a BIMLink feature is to swap material assignments for custom families to aid in a quick iteration of rendered design options for casework, furniture, and lighting.

Using BIMLink

Start Ideate BIMLink (I am using the 2022 version)

Click New

Then select \06 Project Standards > Project_Stds-Materials > Next

Under the Properties tab, you can add any additional properties to the right. You can also include materials from the linked Revit model by choosing Include linked elements.
Click Done to go back to the setting. 

Once you are back to the setting, click Export

This will generate the entire inventory of the materials list from a single (or multiple) Revit files whether the material is in use or not. 

Choose a destination location to save the excel spreadsheet. 

Open the exported file in Excel. 
The image path is under Appearance: Image

This is where you can see if there are any invalid paths that are no longer accessible by the Revit file. 

Another interesting fact, I was able to identify the material pathing if these custom materials from manufacturer content are ever loaded into the file. 

This example shows the content creator from the furniture company Steelcase placed the custom image map under the person's desktop?? Seriously!?

This is another reason why I have a trusting issue with third-party content downloaded from the internet even if they are from well-known companies. 

I wrote this post years ago that explains why it is important to have a vetting process in place if your office decides to use content generated by a third party. 

https://phil-osophyinbim.blogspot.com/2017/02/vetting-bim-content-for-your-office.html

In Closing

I hope this helps to resolve the issue with Material Browser which is slow to open. While the process is still tedious, it offers a more manageable way to track down a specific material with this issue. 

Quick Way to Identify BIM360 Local File

I stumped on this the other day and thought it is interesting to share. If you have ever worked on any BIM360 (C4R) project, you should know by now that your local file resides on a hidden location other than your default Revit location.

From time to time, if you have sync issue between your local file with the central, you can run into issue where your local file gets corrupted. Autodesk has a KB article to walk you through the process of clearing out the local file. In this hidden location, your local C4R file does not resemble your actual file name; instead, it is named after some GUID number. In other words, you can't just find your corrupted local file and get rid of it. It takes some trial by error to clear out this folder when I first encounter this issue. From the KB, it tells you to open the journal file to determine the filepath of the damage model. I can tell you if you have never understand how to read a journal, this is going to be a tedious process. **You can however always clear everything inside the local cache but sometimes you can't afford to do so if you have a few projects working concurrently.**

The following tip might offer a quicker way to get to the damage model without opening the journal.
Reminder: You are doing this at your own risk!

In the event you have a corrupted local file. Go to Open --> file --> BIM 360, select your project hub folder and hit ENTER on your keyboard. Revit will prompt you with an error "BIM 360://your project hub name/......... File not found. Please verify the correct file name was given."

The one that starts with "{" and ends with "}" is the local file folder of your model.

Next, go to your window explorer and locate your user local data folder such as this:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 20##\CollaborationCache

*Make sure you locate the correct Revit version.*

From there, your will see the same folder with the exact name ......

Go ahead to either move this folder out of this location or I normally just rename to a different name. Revit will then generate a "New" local file when you try to open the model again.

Hope this helps.
Happy syncing!

Getting Rid of Stubborn System Family Using Revit Lookup

It all started with a tweet posted few days ago. Kieren Porter (@snowyweston) posted an image about some nasty system family type in the project.

It got my attention simply because I was in the middle of dealing with the exact same issue from one of my projects. I have been told this is a known issue by Autodesk and it is fixable. However, it was going on for weeks to try to have their support team to resolve the issue. 

So, what's the big deal, you might ask!? For some unknown reasons, these "rogue" family types starting to come up from nowhere and it created many types of tick mark, dimension style and text style on its own. All of a sudden, you have these non-company standard styles in your file, it really becomes an annoying issue. 

There is a number of ways to get around these issues, you can rename these dim style with "z" "Do no use" so user will avoid using them. Some dim styles can be purged using "Purge Unused". To get rid of them once and for all, it is not as straightforward. The reason being is that they are system family buried deep down in the Revit file, you can find the instance of the elements but its type will stay within the file.

From the same thread, people have responded with a few solution. Some said to use #dynamoBIM like John Pierson or using a 3rd party solution like Ideate explorer. **(For the record, I have not tried these yet as of the published post)

Out of my curiosity, I thought this could also be done using Revit Lookup.

I was introduced to Revit Lookup by my previous colleague like a year ago. Initially it was for me to understand how Revit organizes each group/type of elements under the hood.

To troubleshoot the issue, I first place a "rogue" type of dimension in a view (it can be any view including drafting view). Select the dimension (or the element), go to Revit lookup and choose Snoop Current Selection.

It reported a list of information associated with this element, it looks something like this...

2 items are important to know:

Id - which is the Revit element ID   (Instance)

GetTypeId - which is the Revit family type element   (Type)

Usually, it is the type ID that is "under the hood" so user would not normally get to it.
Now that I identify the type ID for this rogue dim style, I can use Select elements by ID from Manager tab

Type the type ID number in the field, once it is selected, hit Delete! It prompts me with a warning, hit OK. 

That's it! It is gone for good. (Hopefully)

Like I mentioned above, there are more than one way to resolve this issue, I thought this might offer a different approach.

You can learn more about Revit Lookup from this site to download the tool for yourself and it is free.

From Github

Revit Lookup Builds from 2015 -2019

Mind Your CAD File

This is the second time I have come across with this weird issue. It was puzzling at first and I thought that it was a glitch from Revit.

In the elevation view, some of the families (in this case, furniture and specialty equipment family) show up in the elevation as if the wall is set to be transparent.

From the image above, the view is set to hidden line mode, so everything behind the wall should not be shown.

You can see from plan view where the TV and stand is right behind the window system.

I checked all the VG settings as well as workset and nothing stands out at all to explain this "graphic" issue.

Then I stumble this "Import Categories" and start un-checking the dwg link...
All of the sudden, the graphic returns "normal".

Not sure why the dwg (CAD) link file got in the way in the first place, but since all the referenced dwg file are for plan use, so turning off the link file via VG in elevation view is not an issue at all.

Hope you find this useful in case you run into this in your project. 

Can't Create Local File

I have run into this issue a lot in the past few months and I think it deserves a post.

Here's the scenario:

A user who tries to create a local file and encounters this error. They cancel it and re-try it again and still generate the same error. Immediately, they think it is a network issue because that's what the warning is saying "This could be due to a network problem. You can try again or contact technical support."

I got the call from the user and I tried to resolve this issue remotely (or in person sometimes). I asked them to reproduce the issue and notice they already have a local file previously created in the local drive and therefore Revit asked if you want to "Overwrite existing file" or "Append timestamp to existing filename" like the image below. They chose the latter. This is where they got the same warning again.

There is a known issue that if someone has made a new central file and replace the old one. The user who attempted to make a new local file but choose "append timestamp" will fail. Basically, the file in the central location is not the same as the one from the user's local drive even though the filenames are the same. All you need to do is to overwrite existing file and Revit will make a new local file and you can continue to work from there. 

Keep in mind that the local file is a place where a team member can perform the task on their end and then synchronize their work back to the centralized location. The central file should have the most up-to-date changes regardless.

In case you are still wondering what these 2 options do:

Overwrite existing file: 

All the existing local file as well as the backup files will be deleted and replaced by a new one. 

Append timestamp:

A backup of the (pre)-existing local file to be renamed with timestamp that allows you to develop an archive copy of the project locally.

I do think Autodesk can do a better job by alerting the user that the central model is replaced by a new one so they need to make new local file before continuing to work.

Revit Build Number

This might not be obvious. For those of you who needs to manage Revit (UR) updates would agree with me that Revit 2015 was/has been a pain to keep up with. There are as many as 11 updates in the 2015 version as of today.

How about other versions? Today I was in need to verify some updates on one computer that has Revit 2012 (yes version 2012) and came across with this website from Autodesk. It has all the build numbers from Revit 2012 to the latest 2016 version. This for sure will come in handy when you need to check all the build numbers in a glimpse.

Click here to see the site.

I hope Autodesk will keep the same site from here in now.

Printing Bug

I came across with this issue from one user the other day. They have some interior elevations on the sheet that didn't come out as expected.

After printing it as PDF file, one of the interior views just showed up blank! What's interesting is the texts and grid lines showed but everything else disappeared.

I ended up reaching out to Autodesk and they suggested to try Raster Processing; and sure it did the trick. Using Raster Processing mode in the Print Setup was able to fix this issue. Usually raster mode is not needed unless you are printing with shadows, decal images or have render view as part of the document. This is one of the situations that this sheet had no such thing but will need raster mode to address the issue. 

You can learn more about Vector Processing vs. Raster Processing from Autodesk HERE.

Mind Those Reference Planes!

It has been a few months since my last post about some quirkiness on adaptive components. I have this project using adaptive component to populate the building facade which posed some challenge not only with divide path direction; I stumped upon another unusual behavior with adaptive component and thought to write about this as part 2 on my blog.

For this building facade, we are using adaptive component to set up the window wall system module for number of reasons. One particular reason is that this facade has a sloping wall plane. As you might know, traditional curtain wall system doesn't work on non-vertical wall surface at all. One can try to use curtain system but it just doesn't work. Therefore, adaptive component with conceptual massing seems to be the answer for this question.

From the above image, each unit is composed by an adaptive component, there are a few different types of configuration in the facade. As we have modeled the whole facade, I notice something strange happening. Whenever I am trying to use dimension or align tool, these random "axis" started to show up. There are just so many of these axis no matter how many times you hit "tab" key to try to cycle through to something orthogonal to snap to.

I had no clue at first and thought Revit was going crazy on me. Then, I started examining the adaptive panel family and the answer was there.

Adaptive component (AC), just like any traditional family has two default reference planes, called Center (Front/Back) and Center (Left/Right). And by default, they are considered as "Strong reference" once the family is loaded to a project. However, reference planes in AC family do not serve any real purpose since "adaptive points" are taking their place on driving the geometry behavior. Unfortunately, those little reference planes are still pretty "snappy" in the project; and obviously, those reference planes become selectable more often than you expect and they appear at different angles depend on how they interact with the adaptive points as well as the massing.

Well, all you need to do is open the family (in my case, I have a handful of different type of families), select the Center (Front/Back) reference plane, and set it to "Not a Reference". Select the other one "Center (Left/Right)" ref plane and do the same, then you are good to go. Load it back to project and they are not snappy anymore! 

Divide Path Direction

I have questioned myself the logic when it comes to divide path in conceptual massing environment in the past. Recently I am working on an adaptive component for a panel where it requires a louver as part of the panel. I start with a 2 point adaptive family as a louver blade and nest it to the next family. The next family makes out of a set of reference lines and a frame, I have two edges that I use "Divide" to set up my "array".

I then place the blade family and try to use "Repeat" and lay out a series of blade.

 

It turns out the blade is going wild! At first I thought I have snapped my AC to the wrong node so it behaved unexpectedly.

After some trial and errors, I learn there is something I didn't realize before. For some reasons, when choosing an edge to divide path, one side of the edge has the node sequence backward; thus it results to an unpredictable array.

There is a hidden setting under the path properties. Select the path, check the "Show Node Numbers" and I am able to see the numbers on the path. Obviously they are going different direction.

The fix is quite easy. Check the box "Flip Direction" under the properties, it will set the path to the correct direction.

Try it again with Repeat and this time it works like a charm.

Solving the Mystery - Revit Linked File Disappearing

Our office use linked file to link the site topo surface as a separated model from the building. This process has served us with an advantage when we constantly move the building on site during the design process. However, I have come across a few projects that the topo stops showing up in certain views with no logic.

When cutting through a section view (or sometimes elevation views), the topo from the linked file disappeared.

However, the topo showed perfectly fine in other views

I checked all the possible causes like VG (Visibility Graphic) setting, workset or even element hide. Nothing seems to be the culprit of this issue. I ended up stumbling a very subtle setting that caused this issue. It had to do with the Far Clipping setting from the view properties. Turns out if the Far Clipping was to set to "Clip with line", the linked file would disappear.

Switching it to "Clip without line" or "No clip" will return to normal. What bothers me is this is totally random. The best way is to set all the views to "Clip without line" and have the setting included in View Template.

If you are not sure what this setting does to your view, Autodesk Help page (see below) has a good image to show the differences between these "Far Clipping" settings:

Quirkiness with Revit Titleblock Family

I recently ran into a very strange issue with printing sheets in one project. A user reported the sheet views have been blocked by some very large object stretch a mile or so while he was trying to print.

I look into the issue and it appears to be that giant thing or whatever it maybe comes from the titleblock family. After opening the family and it looks perfectly normal at first. However, I notice something quite unusual from the project browser.

There are wall types, curtain panel and mullions listed on the browser. Typically, the only thing that can be nested within titleblock family are 2D families like annotations. If you try to load/nest other 3D families and Revit would simply reject that. In this case, walls, curtain panel and mullion, which are system families, are impossible to come in to the titleblock anyway. They could only exist and be created in the project environment.

What I find it even harder to believe is Revit was able to show those elements that are in use by using "Select All Instance" from the type.

The thing is I can't even see these elements as the titleblock doesn't have a 3D view nor you can create one. All I could do is to delete them.

After I got rid of all the possible 3D elements, I was hoping to purge them out for good. I got another warning again about "Last type in system family cannot be deleted".

I have no choice but to leave the types in the titleblock and load it back to the project. This is definitely the first time I came across with this bug in titleblock family but at least it works now. All the sheets are back to "normal" and they print just fine.

I have no idea how the curtain wall and its sub component got into the family in the first place, but sure I will look out to this behavior in the future.