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.

Shortcut to Your Project Template

The startup (aka Recent Files) page in Revit always have the default shortcut to the project template. In the past, Revit can only assign one project template at the time for using as a default template. Suppose your office has company standard project template when starting a new project, you can change the default path to access those templates. However, you could only set one template file only.

My office currently went through a process of updating the office standard templates, which consists of 3 major templates for different purposes. Since Revit 2013, you can add more than one template now and have direct access to those templates from the startup page.

Typical Project Template page

Here's what you have to do:
The first step is go to Revit "R" icon -> Options

Under Options -> File Locations, you can add more template by clicking the + icon, then browse through your network and find your company templates.

Once you have the template chosen, you can further arrange the order the template:

When all the setup is complete, you will now be able to find all your custom template from the startup page in Revit.

4 Easy Steps to Better Organize Your Face Based Family Thumbnail

Steve Stafford had a post recently about improving a Family Thumbnail view in Revit. I also read Chris Price's post about why using Face Based family to replace the wall or ceiling hosted families. I love face based family and they are much better and more flexible than other hosted families in Revit. However, the windows thumbnail preview from face based family always have a common issue when your family is meant to host on the vertical surface, like wall. They will always lay flat on the floor level/reference level.

Wall Mounted Bathroom Faucet Family

In this post, I'd like to share this tip on fixing the thumbnail with face based family.
Your normal thumbnail preview in face based family should look something like this:

In order for the end user to understand this family to know what it is, it could be difficult sometimes especially they are small in window explorer or the loading window in Revit.

The following steps will show you how to best manage face based family and get the desired preview.

The first thing is to hide/get rid of the "face" (extrusion) in the template. Select the extrusion geometry, under the properties and assign it to the "Hidden Lines" sub-category.

Go to Visibility Graphic (VG) and un-check the check-box of the Hidden Lines.

And you should get something like this:

Next is the tricky part, in the same 3D view, click the down arrow next to the viewcube and select options. (You could also access options from the Revit "R" icon) From the options setting, under ViewCube, un-check the check-box "Keep scene upright"

Once this is done, you should be able to twist/rotate your 3D view and turn the view sideway (Tips: it will take a few times to get used to do this) and you should get something like this:

Make sure you use the "save view" from the viewcube setting so Revit will remember this view. I usually have this as a duplicate view called "Preview" or something just to use it for my thumbnail.

The last step is to save the family. During the "save as" window, go to options and make sure you choose the thumbnail preview source as the default view.

Having done so will generate a nice and clean preview in both window explorer and your third party Family Browser (We also use KiwiCodes Family Browser for our office) There is no need to take extra time to create your own preview using this trick. 

Preview in Family Browser

As Steve said in his blog, "it's the little things in life,every little bit helps the end user experience."

Purging and Managing View Template

I recently came across a project where there are way too many view template settings in the project. I recognized some are the default setting and some are created by the team. Not knowing how the team got to this mess with so many different types, my goal is to try to get rid of the ones we don't need. As you might know there is no "purge unused" when it comes to view template, you just don't know which ones are in use and which ones you don't want.
Actually, there is a simple way now (since Revit v2013) where you can check to see if the view template is in use. Just go to View tab --> View Templates --> Manage View Templates. Once you are in the View Templates dialog box, select the one in questions. Notice on the upper right hand side of view properties, Revit tells you how many views have been assigned with that particular view template. In this case, if the one in questions is listed as 0 view, then you are in the clear and free to delete the type out of your model.
Although this may seem pretty labor intensive, it is really not a bad workflow to go through the list one after another. As a wish list item, I am hoping this is something that can be addressed by the factory or via API; maybe I will hear from Harry over the Boost Your BIM in the near future about his latest tool?

What if you did that and Revit tells you a number of views have been assigned to this unwanted view template? Well, you have another option. Go ahead and create a "View List", which is a type of schedule. View tab --> Schedules --> View List...

Again, since Revit v2013, a new field (parameter) called View Template was introduced into this schedule. By adding this field to the View List, Revit will list out the views (usually sort of family type) to show whether any View Template assigned to the views.

You can quickly see I have several interior elevations that have "none" view template associated with it. The good news is you can just click on the "cell" in this schedule and assign the appropriate view template to it. That way, managing the views with your company standard view templates made a lot easier to handle now.
There are so many good uses of the scheduling power in Revit, View List has become one of my favorites recently.

More on Love/Hate Relationship with Worksharing Monitor

We recently update our office suite product to new Office 365. While I am enjoying and learning all the new features from this latest version, I notice something was acting up with my Revit (version 2014) at the same time. Without trying too hard to find out why my worksharing monitor (WSM) isn't working again (also see previous post) this time, it is Lync from the office suite.

Lync, in a nutshell, is another web conference, web based collaboration tool. I haven't fully known the potential of using it yet but I will definitely plan on exploring it more down the road. It seems like it is very easy to use.

Back to the issue, the "fix" isn't hard. Just "exit" your Lync, re-run your WSM and you are back in business.

You can log in back to Lync afterwards. What bothers me now is it seems like there are more of these web based tools that are conflicting each other. Steve Stafford just wrote one today about a file opening issue in Revit with i-Tunes. My wish is having the WSM as part of Revit standard tool just like anything else would fix many of these issues.