Material Dialog Will Not Open + Rendering Features are Disabled

If the Revit Materials Dialog will not open, it likely means the Autodesk material library did not install correctly, or has somehow become corrupt. In this case, you should also be getting a warning like this one shown below (unless you checked the box!).

If you search the Autodesk Knowledge Network (AKN) you will find...

Teaching Conceptual Massing, Adaptive Space Frames and more Enscape

On Thursday I did a presentation, for graduate architecture students as NDSU,  which started from scratch and resulted in the images shown below. This involved Revit's Conceptual Mass environment, Curtain Panel Pattern Based family template and Enscape to for some instant visual gratification!

Back in 2013, Zach Kron, from Autodesk, and...

Avoid Using Worksets to Control Visibility

In my previous post, Opening a Revit Project Detached From Central; What You Need To Know, I touched on how Worksets are sometimes used to control visibility. I also mentioned I would write about why this is not a best practice... well, that is what this post is about.

History

It may be helpful to start the discussion talking about what Worksets were created for. Back in the day, when we only had 32-bit computers (or operating systems) which could only use 4GB of RAM and Revit could not link other Revit models, there needed to be a way to manage how much of the model was loaded into memory. FYI: We still need this today, but only on extremely large projects.

This is where Worksets come in. They are used to...

Opening a Revit Project Detached From Central; What You Need To Know

Following yesterday's post, Create a New Local File Daily, the other Open dialog box option related to Worksharing is Detach from Central. Today I will talk about when you might want to use this and what to watch out for.

If you need to simply review a Revit model or are...

Create a New Local File Daily

When working in a worksharing-enabled Revit project, with a team of designers, I recommend everyone create a new local file every day. In this post I will explain why this should be done and mention one potential problem to keep in mind.

When you create a new local file you are starting with an update to date project file. Perhaps multiple people where working on the file last night... in this case, if you open your old local file, it is out of date and requires a Sync with Central (SWC) right away. Doing a SWC right away is easy to forget until you run into a rights issues and are forced to SWC.

However, whats worse than the rights issue,,,

Win A Copy of My Revit Book at Autodesk University 2017

My friend Nauman Mysorewala, who is an architect, BIM manager, Autodesk Export Elite, and educator, will be giving away two of my books in his class at Autodesk University this year.

His class is: BLD125158 - Code Blue, Dr. Revit!—How to Resuscitate Corrupt Revit Models

Course description:

Electrical Focused Intro of MEPPP - Demo Video

The new MEP Productivity Pack (MEPPP) has a ton of new features to support MEP design and documentation. I created a demo video which provides an overview of this new package from the electrical point of view in the YouTube video linked below. 

I recently wrote about the mechanical-focused video here: Mechanical Focused Intro of MEPPP Demo with Blake Guither.

There is so much introductory material, this is nearly a one hour presentation! This is in addition to all the short, bite-sized videos, I mentioned previously by CTC's Shawn Zirbes; MEPPP Intro Videos.

Just a few highlights highlights:

The Challenges with Referencing a Website in a Book

In my Revit textbooks, I sometimes reference manufacture content on websites to help develop a more realistic and interesting project. Of course, the challenge is that websites change. This happened again recently, which created a number of questions from instructors and students.

Here are the details,

Sign Up for My NVIDIA Webinar on Intensive VR Workflows - November 2017

If you are interested in learning more about practical applications of VR in the AEC market, and how the right graphic card can make the difference between success and failure, be sure to sign up for this free webinar hosted by NVIDIA. I will be presenting on the various software and project types we use for VR for internal design review, client presentations, potential-tenant engagement for developers and on-site logistics for things like ribbon cutting, ground breaking and public meeting events.

Details:

• Title: Why High-Performance GPUs for Intensive VR Workflows
• When: Wednesday Nov. 8, 2017 from 9:00am - 10:00am PT
• Register: Click here to register for this free webinar hosted by NVIDIA

Additionally...

Revit 2018.2 Released

The next incremental update of Revit is out... Revit 2018.2.

Seeing as I am still traveling following the BILT-EUR conference in Aarhus Denmark, I will just point you to the official Revit blog post by Harlan Brumm, which lists all the new features; http://blogs.autodesk.com/revit/2017/10/11/revit-2018-2-update/

The one new feature I am happy to see is the ability to scale a custom fill pattern after it has been loaded. The new controls for the Section Box sounds cool... that, I have not tried yet.

Speaking of traveling... here are some of the beautiful things my family saw in Oslo Norway this week... Munch, Rodin, Green Roofs and Viking ships!

Revit 2018 Family Constraints Validation

Revit 2018 has a new feature I mentioned on my "What's New in Revit 2018" article over at AECbytes, which is verification of family constraints: Constraints are now checked when opening a family.

From the Autodesk Knowledge Network:Verification of family constraints: To help ensure the reliability of families within your models, Revit now checks the status of constraints when you open a family in the Family Editor. If Revit detects potential issues, a dialog offers further information. See Constrain Family Geometry.

On a related note, below is an example message I received the other day when opening a project. This is more helpful and better than Revit just not opening a project or deleting the family instances. However, I still have a number of old projects I cannot open due to a corrupt family. Hopefully that specific problem will be sorted out in the near future.

Type Selector Bug - Not All Content Listed

A quick post from the beautiful city of Aarhus Denmark, where I will be speaking at the BILT-EUR conference this week.

There is a strange bug in Revit that causes the Type Selector to remember the scope of the list from a previous action. For example, you open a project, look at the Type Selector list, and the open another project and when the Type Selector list is opened, the list space is either too long or truncated.

This appears to be related to Windows 10 or 4k monitors, as it does not happen on the few Windows 8 computers with normal resolution monitors. This issue occurs in multiple versions of Revit, not just 2018.

Notice, in the image below, that the list of casework content is truncated.

In this example, the list has waaaay too much extra space.

When the list is truncated, the workaround would be to click the Edit Type button and pick from the Family/Type drop-down lists at the top (see image below).

I know Autodesk is aware of this... I am sure it will be resolved in the near future.