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.  

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.