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Friday, February 17, 2012

Don't be so attached!

When creating/modifying a horizontal element (floor, ceiling, roof, etc) and you are asked if you want the walls to attach to the bottom - click NO.



Why you ask?  If you try to edit the height of those walls later, they will not budge and you (plus more importantly the rest of your team) will not know why they will not change, which in turn will cause fits of rage.  If you do find that the walls were attached, simply select "Detach Top/Base" from the Wall Context Tab and DETACH ALL.


Don't get me wrong.  There are times when you may want a wall to attach to the underside of a horizontal object which in most cases would be a sloping roof.  But these attachments should be done on a wall by wall basis and not all at once.  If you want your walls to come to the underside of a flat horizontal element, then a better method is to set the walls Top Constraint to the level that hosts the horizontal element.  Then use Top Offset to get the wall where it needs to be.

Since we are denying Revit, might as well say NO to it's request to cut volumes out of any walls that the horizontal element may intersect - again this should be done on an individual basis.  

Monday, February 6, 2012

Small careful moves gets you big gains in Revit & Football


Here is this week’s round of tips and tricks.  Most of these are things I came across while cleaning up the model.   Not all of them are big moves like a hail mary pass.  But more like the Giants yesterday – a lot of small steps to win big!  Sorry I couldn’t resist – my family and I are big Giants fans.  Hmmmm was that like saying BIM Model?

WORKSETS – Just like checking your mirrors before driving – check that you are in proper workset.  Even better is to setup workset “open with” option so that you must select the workset(s) you wish to work in.  While Revit does not have layers, worksets can act in the same way affecting graphics.  More importantly, you can divide the model into subsets, allowing you to open what you need and save on CPU & RAM usage

SYNCHRONIZE – Always synchronize before leaving your desk for the night, lunch, bathroom breaks, more coffee, or any other reason you expect to be away from your desk.  This will relinquish your ownership of any object that you may have touched and others may need to work with.  Your teammates will thank you for it!! If (and yes it happens at times) Revit crashes – save the recovery file.  Open up the recovery file and synchronize as you still had ownership of objects.

ROOMS – If you delete a room from the model – it’s still in the project.  Don’t use a NEW room in its place.  Look through the list of room names in the drop down window in the options bar.  They are all the unplaced rooms that were deleted.  You can simply put the room back where it belongs without creating another one.  If you wish to delete them permanently, make a room schedule and select “isolate” to see all your unplaced rooms. You can delete them from here.

WALLS – Make sure that exterior shell, shaft, and shear walls that are multi-stories high are a single wall multi-stories high as much as possible.   It is easier to manage changes as well as better reflects construction methods.

SHEETS – If you are setting up sheets for uses other than the drawing set, group them separately using a shared parameter.  Make sure that you uncheck the “show in index” box so that they do not show up on your sheet index.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Stumbling into tips and tricks for the new year



2012 is well underway and crazy busy. I’ve been lax in blogging lately with the holidays and new job. Keeping up with social media is much easier when you work for yourself! I do think I just may have what you need for the coming year. I’ve been lucky enough to work on a project leading some talented people in working with Revit (the first time for a few). Whenever any of us works with a new tool or process, we stumble and learn from those stumbles. And when you stumble and don’t know it, do you learn? In order to keep my team aware of best practices and uses of Revit, I’ve compiled a list of tips and tricks for our weekly BIM meeting. Think of it as a stumble list of sorts that I hope both my team and you (by posting it here) will learn from. Cheers.

GENERAL

  • WORKSETS – Make sure you are in the correct workset before you start working.
  • DO NOT DELETE an object unless it really is to be removed. Objects should be moved, changed or adjusted but never deleted and replaced. 
  • Slow down. Take a moment to review basic parameters before placing objects. 
  • Think in 3D. Objects you are placing in plan may have other implications to the rest of the model. 
  • Work in multiple views. It will give you better visual clues to objects being modeled. 
  • Use model or symbolic lines as little as possible. It is better to place the actual object OR a temporary placeholder object. 
  • PICK WALL. When placing boundary lines – whenever possible use pick wall tool. It allows horizontal objects to lock onto walls and adjust with changes in walls. 
  • Make sure that components are hosted by LEVELS and not floors. 

ROOMS

  • Room are the only objects that if deleted STILL REMAIN in the project 
  • When rearranging walls, move rooms and their tags outside the building, make all your adjustments and move them back. 
  • Turn ROOM Reference & Interior Fill on in Visibility Graphics to show you where rooms are located and make it easier to move them. 
  • When placing rooms & adjusting spaces, locate the room crosshair in the center of the space – tag all tags are placed at the crosshair. 

WALLS

  • All walls should have a top and bottom constraint – use offsets to set the height if it is more or less than the level to level heights. 
  • When using temporary walls, place location line along the wall that cannot move - wall thickness increases or decreases away from that line. 

SHAFTS

  • Shafts should be one per object. Multiple shafts are problematic because if one is moved or deleted, they all are. 
  • Use symbolic lines WITHIN the shaft tool to show shaft X.