Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Revit Technology Conference is upon us...Sign up today!

The Revit Technology Conference for North America is fast approaching, and Washington, DC will never be the same. RTC is a mini "AU" conference that focuses strictly Revit and its associated programs. This really helps the user get focused on the tasks we need to improve on, and gain more efficiency when using the tools.

The event, scheduled for July 23nd-25th at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, and includes some awesome speakers, including Paul Aubin, Jim Balding, Jason Boehning (one of my co-authors at CADLearning), Don Bokmiller, Matt Murphy, Brian and Desiree Mackey, Kate Morrical, Marcello Sgambelluri, Beau Turner and a whole lot more...that I'm humbled to be a part of.

So here's what I'll be covering, in a lab on Friday morning. We're going to review some advanced Revit family editing tips, focusing on the MEP side of things, but are also applicable to other disciplines as well. We'll spend time reviewing nested families on a rotational basis, as well as 2D annotations. We'll also cover key shared parameters and how to edit vendor content to clean this data up, and manage it as well. Time permitting, we'll show a few tools you can use to help you manage your content more effectively, and cut down on project production time.

There's a lot of great classes that I'm really excited to be attending, and hope you'll be able to join us. sign up early and often, and we'll see you there!

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Updating a Revit Family, and you don't get a dialog...Head Scratcher time!

Had a user that had loaded a family with a lot of types in it. He purged his project, but then discovered he needed one of the types he had purged. So, he opens the original family, and tries to use the Load Family tool on the ribbon, but he doesn't get the normal overwrite  dialog (which allows you to either load just the family or load and overwrite the parameters). He also didn't get the original types reloaded into the file. His first thought was to just delete the part(s) and reload the family, but that added a lot of work.

At first I thought it was a bug, but the big man upstairs (my boss, Norb Howell) reminded me of a behavior in Revit. You only get the overwrite dialog if the original model has been changed or saved, since it's the date stamp that kicks this dialog off.

So how do you fix it? Easy - just open the original part and save it. You might have to edit a parameter, or make a minor change (better yet, fix something that's actually broken). Reload the file and you'll get all the types back.

Better yet, add the Smart Browser tool from AGA CAD (Tools4Revit) at http://t4r.aga-cad.com/Smart-Browser-download-page/. We love this app, it's a real time saver.

This add-on, which has free and pro versions, allows you to locate a family, and then load just the types you need, in the event a type catalog (.txt) doesn't accompany the file. You can pick and choose the types you want, and only load what's required. The same rule applies, but if you're thinking ahead and know you'll need more than one type in a family, it's a better way to load these to your project.

Check it out - happy BIM'ing!

David B.