A Walk Down Memorial Lane

During the time at RTC North America a few weeks ago, the organization have set up an area called "Playground" in the exhibition hall with many of the previous Revit versions. They managed to get many of the older versions including version 1.0 installed on several computers.

This is the first time I got to play with Revit 1.0. Of course it displayed with the classic UI (pre 2010 interface). I used to work with the classic UI for a few versions before I had to re-learn the current interface. As a matter of fact, I don't quite miss the classic UI ever since I re-gain my efficiency after Autodesk improved it in v2011. However, when I saw 1.0 for the first time so up close and personal, it appeared to me like a foreign program.  

Revit 1.0 already came with many of the basic tools like wall, floor, door, window, column, roof and ceiling, etc; It wasn't as user friendly as it is now (although some tools are still clumsy). The railing tool in particular was very different than the later version (see properties dialog box at the above image). I was able to model something very quick but the tool was still very limited. Family editor was somewhat similar; I opened the "Out of the box" window family and the basic structure was already existed. Seeing how Revit 1.0 transitions to the current Revit version has definitely made me appreciate what we have as a design and documentation tool.

Last week I was cleaning up my bookshelf with some old Architecture magazines; some of them were dated back to 2001. I found one "Architectural Record" magazine with an ad that had the original Revit Technology company logo. I didn't know anything about Revit back in 2001 and the ad itself said very little about what it was; but it sure was very interesting to see Revit came a long way to become a mainstream in our industry.

Seriously, an image of a heater!? They could definitely use some help on marketing...

Dynamo Blog to Watch Out!

Dynamo is still a new kid on the block; and it sure has made a lot of buzz lately at RTC as well as AIA convention. However, there is really not a lot of resource out there where you can learn at your own pace. I just came across lately and found two that is worth posting here. So go ahead and check it out now if you want to learn Dynamo!

http://dynamobim.org/blog/ (By Autodesk)

http://simplydynamo.blogspot.com/ (By Marcello Sgambelluri)

RTC NA is Near!

Revit Technology Conference (RTC) North American is next week. This is the fourth year in North America and it will take place in Chicago (Schaumburg) this year. I will be presenting a lab class called "Profiling - Power Up Your Revit Family with Nested Profile". If you have followed my blog before, you might have some ideas about the class already.

Every year there is always something exciting to learn; and this year is no exception. I am looking forward to check out some classes with Dynamo and adaptive component. If you are going to be at RTC this year, please come and say hi. I would definitely like to meet you and chat with you in person.

See you!

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.