Revit 2019.1 Supports Repositioning Painted Model Patterns on Wall Edges

Previous to Revit 2019.1, when we painted a material on the edge or top of a wall we could not "Tab in," select it and move it. Well, not without a hack I previously wrote about here: Revit Materials: Model Pattern Position.

This new improvement works on all sides of a wall; top, bottom and edges. In the iamge below I re positioned the model pattern on the top and one side of the wall. Note, that only 'model patterns' can be manually repositioned like this, not 'drafting patterns'.

A simple but helpful tip!

Here is a YouTube video, which Autodesk...

BILT-Eur 2018 - Save with my Special Discount Code!

Although it is coming up soon, about 6 weeks in fact, there is still time to join in on the fun, learning and networking BILT-Eur is known for! This year the conference is in Ljubljana, Slovenia from 11-13 October.

If you think you can make it, use this link and code to save 10% on the 3 Day Delegate rate (excluding accommodation):  click here to get started.

The discount code is DANIELS10 which can be inputted during the registration process.

Just so you know, I do not get any kickbacks for this, it is just a final push by the committee, and the speakers by request, to extend this offer and include more delegates in the magic!

A couple related links you may find interesting:

• RTC Family Vacation – An Attendee’s Letter
• BILT Europe Speaker Spotlight: Dan Stine

I hope to see you there... and if I do, I will give you a sticker:) I may even give away some Revit books in my sessions;)

For BIM Chapters updates, follow @DanStine_MN on Twitter

Updating Your Graphics Driver - A How To Post For Students

With fall semester starting I want to share some tips which will hopefully help architecture and engineering students get off to a smooth start. However, I am sure there are many others who will benefit from this information as well.

Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Fuzor and Enscape, to name a few, all use the graphics card in your computer to display what you see on the monitor. I find that ensuring the driver is up-to-date for your graphics card makes for a more stable and robust experience while using these sophisticated tools. Here are the basics on making sure you have the latest and greatest driver installed.

Note that GPU, Graphics Processing Unit and Graphics Card mean the same thing and are used interchangeably.

Verify Your Graphics Card

There are a few ways to verify which graphics card your computer has. If you have an NVIDIA card, simply right-click on the desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel.

The graphics card is listed right away. In this example, it is an...

NDSU - First Week of School - Fall 2018

The first week of the Building Information Modeling (BIM) seminar I teach at NDSU in Fargo, North Dakota is already past. It was a good week, with another full class of great architecture and landscape architecture students - pictured here!

We did not waste any time and have already covered some Revit content creation and an...

Revit 2019.1 - Site Collaboration with Civil 3D

With Revit 2019.1, which came out last week (August 2018,) we have a new way to represent topography provided by Civil engineers who use AutoCAD Civil 3D 2019.1. This new workflow involves publishing a surface to BIM 360 Docs and then linking that cloud-based surface into Revit.

With this new workflow we can get a nearly 100% accurate representation of the existing and/or proposed surface(s) from Civil 3D. In most cases sub-regions and building pads can be added within Revit. And, because this workfow uses a link, when the surface changes the sub-regions and building pads are maintained!

Although not perfect, it is super cool and easy to use.

Read on to learn more...

Revit 2019.1 - New Feature - Align Sections

A cool new feature in Revit 2019.1 is the ability to use the Align common on a section. Now you can make that section align perfectly with an angled wing of a building and not worry about symbolic lines in Revit families not showing up because they are not perfectly perpendicular to the view!

We can even use snaps while placing the section... and, other elements can even snap to the section line itself. The section, in the image below, is perfectly aligned with the angled grid line.

Although a long overdue feature, a big thanks goes out to Autodesk for this one.

For BIM Chapters updates, follow @DanStine_MN on Twitter

Revit 2019.1 - The New Home Screen

Revit 2019.1 has a new Home page/screen when the application is opened. At first blush you may just think it is a UI refresh... and while that is partially true, it also has a couple of interesting new features.

First, the previews only show Central models (and non-workshared models). No locals files will ever be shown here! Not only that, but when you click on a preview for a central file, it creates a local file!!! In the past, I have always recommenced you never ever touch the previews. Not anymore!

Notice the Central files have a little icon in the lower left....

Additionally...

Enscape Blog Post: BEST PRACTICES: ALBEDO IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Quick post:

I had the good fortune to write another Enscape blog post which went live today! If you have ever heard the term "Albedo" and are not sure what it is... this is the post for you.

Here is a link to the post:
BEST PRACTICES: ALBEDO IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

I hope you like it!

For BIM Chapters updates, follow @DanStine_MN on Twitter

Revit 2019.1 Released Today

The Revit 2019.1 Update showed up today  in the Autodesk Desktop App...

Here are the listed improvements in the release notes:

• Added the ability to link topography published from Civil 3D.
• Added the ability to support units defined in Civil 3D for topography links.
• Added the ability to manage linked topography in manage links dialog.
• Added the ability to browse topography in BIM360 document management.
• Added the ability to link a topography from BIM 360 Document Management.
• Added the ability to use geo-location information defined in Civil 3D when linking a topography.
• Added the ability to locate to the last path which you have been after opening link topography dialog.
• Added the ability to keep hosting elements after topography link is reloaded.
• Added the ability to copy building pads and subregions on a linked topography.
• Added the ability to reload linked topography when opening a Revit project.
• Help links now use https instead of http and support single sign-on functionality.
• Improved the user experience to handle different error cases for topography links.

Lots of Civil-related items. See the link  for a list of 'resolved issues' as well.

Update: Turns out the "release notes" section is missing a lot of new stuff. Check out Harlan Brumm's post here: http://blogs.autodesk.com/revit/2018/08/15/revit-2019-1-new-features-in-the-latest-release/ 

A new 'Revit Home' only shows Central files and only creates new local files if the review is clicked (of course, it will still show non-workshared files). Also, the ability to align Sections to other elements has been added. Plus a few other things I will post about soon.

Given all the civil improvements, I guess it is no surprise that the AutoCAD Civil 3D 2019.1 update come out today as well.

For BIM Chapters updates, follow @DanStine_MN on Twitter

Design Options - Delete Sheets and Drafting Views via Accept Primary

I was talking with my friend and former co-worker, Jon Rose, who is the BIM Manager at Devenney Group in Phoenix Arizona. He asked about something I was not aware of, so of course that means it requires a new post here!

The issue: Drafting Views were going to be deleted when accepting a Design Option in Revit.

Turns out Drafting Views and Sheets can be associated with Design Options. I knew schedules and all other views could do that as the content presented then changes based on the option selected. I will even be spending some time presenting on this topic in my MEP lab for remodels and alternates later this year at BILT-Eur 2018 in Slovenia. But Drafting Views and Sheets  do not change relative to a Design Option.

This post will cover the 'how and why' as I understand it!

As you can see in the image below (click to enlarge) that both Drafting Views and Sheets can be assigned to a Design Option (via VG or VV).

Then...

Exciting News for AEC from NVIDIA at SIGGRAPH 2018 - Quadro RTX Series

At SIGGRAPH 2018, NVIDIA's fearless leader and entertaining guy, Jensen Huang, announces a new and improved line of Quadro graphics cards; Quadro RTX 8000, Quadro RTX 6000 and Quadro RTX 5000 due to ship later this year!

These cards bring to market, the new VirtualLink, single USB-C connector, to simplify and improve Virtual Reality (VR) and Samsung DDR6 memory. The new line also boasts direct support for real-time ray-tracing via new RT Cores and accelerated AI via new Turing Tensor Cores.

"First implementation of ultra-fast Samsung 16Gb GDDR6 memory to support more complex designs, massive architectural datasets, 8K movie content and more."

Image courtesy of NVIDIA

Our friends at Autodesk are working with NVIDIA to leverage this new technology. I am guessing...

Revit 2019 Installation Error - You cannot install this product on the current operating system

Pending Windows Updates often causes issues with installing new software. A lack of updates can be an issue as well. Yesterday we had an issue with a person trying to install Revit 2019 -   getting the error shown below.

Turns out there was an error in...

Modeling a Historic Stone Building

Modeling existing buildings can be tricky. I have a couple of techniques to share about modeling this existing public park building. As you will see, this is a work in progress.

To represent the stone walls, there are two basic options. Make a repeatable texture from a photo of the wall, or just use a photo of the wall. Check it out...

Product Review: Hypar

I had a recent web-based meeting with Anthony Hauck, and Ian Keough, both of the newly formed Hypar. Before I talk about Hypar, I want to make sure you know who these two guys are...

Anthony Hauck was with Autodesk for 10 years and at one point was head of all Revit product line development and in his most recent role headed the development of generative design among other things. I've crossed paths with him many times over the years, at AU and RTC/BILT. As well as most recently when LHB hired him, post-Autodesk, to give a web-based pretension on generative design. He is a great and passionate guy!

Ian Keough is, well, the father of Dynamo. For the past 5.5 years he was also with Autodesk. He was also involved in some interesting BIM360 Field development. Here is a 2014 interview on the origin's of Dynamo you may find interesting: Meet Ian Keough, Dynamo’s Papa. I still find it interesting how things have evolved from what the Revit founders thought regarding user programming in Revit, as I previously wrote about here: Revit User Programming - Not Originally in the Cards. Clearly Ian had a different vision, and it has been widely embraced!

Much more could be said about these two I am sure... but suffice it to say this is truly a dynamic-duo from which great things will emerge! See what I did there:)

So what is Hypar? Here is the concise description from their...

Thermal Resistance in Revit plus Related ArchDaily Article

I read an article the other day from ArchDaily on calculating the thermal transmittance of a wall (see link below). It occurred to me to write a post on how Revit can calculate thermal resistance - R-value - of materials and assemblies... here it is.

ArchDaily article:
How to Calculate the Thermal Transmittance (U-Value) in the Envelope of a Building

By way of comparison, let's look at the table "Calculating Assembly Wall R-Value" from ColoradoEnergy.Org found here: http://www.coloradoenergy.org/procorner/stuff/r-values.htm

*This image is posted by permission from Randy L. Martin

The referenced graph has a column calculating the stud-only condition and another for insulation-only, filling the 3.5" space in the wall. Let's look at each condition in Revit:

Stud-Only Calc

If we open the residential template that ships with Revit, we see the R-value listed for the wall type Exterior - Wood Siding on Wood Studs. R = 8.30

However, the chart is dealing with a 2x4 (3 1/2") stud, not a 2x6 (5 1/2") so let's change that in...

Revit for Interior Designers Presentation by Ceilidh Higgins

Ceilidh Higgins is a a talented and prolific Australian interior designer, blogger and BILT-ANZ committee member. She recently did a presentation at the BILT-ANZ (2018) conference called: Inside Out – Implementing Revit for Interior Design Teams.

I've known Ceilidh for a few years now, and while I was not at the conference I heard the presentation went well. I had a chance to review the slide deck before the conference, I reached out and offered, and was happy/honored to see a slide recommending my Revit book for interior design! I love it when my peers review my presentation materials and manuscripts, so I try to do the same occasionally. I did not have too much to offer/comment on as the presentation was solid:)

I wanted to share a link to her post about the presentation, which includes her slide deck:
http://themidnightlunch.com/implementing-revit-interior-design-teams/

Be sure to follow her blog, The Midnight Lunch, which covers "Collaboration on the practice of interior design, architecture and multi disciplinary consulting."

For BIM Chapters updates, follow @DanStine_MN on Twitter

Invisible Parameters in Revit

Simple tip to share today... but use it with caution:)

It is possible to hide certain family parameters within the project environment. For example, if you have several intermediate calculations - you know, the ones you've seen in manufacturer's content - which are not needed by the end user and just clutter the properties dialog.

The 'use with caution' comment stems from the fact that this has the potential of leading to confusion when trying to troubleshoot or modify the family later on.

Here is how it works...

First, this only works with Shared Parameters, so create one.

Next, use that Shared Parameter in a family (see image below).