Revit Structural Enhancements in the 2019.2 Update

I wrote about the Structural Precast Extension when it came out for Revit 2018, you can read that here: Autodesk Structural Precast Extension for Revit 2018

Revit 2019.2 lists some additional precast families in the features list: "Added new precast hollow core slab families".

Update: I found out this was a mistake in the Revit 2019.2 new features list. These do only come with the extension update discussed in this post.

Read on to learn more...

Revit MEP Enhancements in the 2019.2 Update

With the installation of the Revit 2019.2 Update, we get some helpful new functionality for MEP engineers, designers. and contractors.

The highlight here is the added Top and Bottom Offset parameters to more efficiently control the vertical position of duct, cable tray and conduit.

Read on to learn more...

Off Topic - My New Urban Chicken Coop

This past summer (July 2018) I built a new chicken coop in my backyard. Although it does not look like it from these photos, I live in a city... its just that our block does not have an alley so that area is filled in with vegetation and trees. Now that it is winter, and the leaves have dropped, you can easily see the houses behind ours.

Read on...

Revit 2019.2 Update - Manage Images Improvements

The Revit 2019.2 Update was released last week, as I wrote about here; Revit 2019.2 Update is out - Zoom in Schedules is the best!. Today I will share a couple small improvements not mentioned in the initial media announcements... it has to do with managing images.

Read on learn more...

Room Gap at Open Wall Ends in Revit

Autodesk Revit has a gap tolerance when looking for the boundary of a Room element... but there are rules imposed to maintain model/system performance. As you can see in the first image below, the gap can be quite large; 1'-8" (508 mm) in this example. This post talks about those rules...

Read on to learn more...

Podcasts I have Been a Guest on

Over the last couple years I have had the privilege of being a guest on a few podcasts. I thought I would share the full list here... and to be honest, by posting it here, it will help me find this full list in the future!

Read on...

ACEC-MN Design Technology Forum - VR Presentation Recap

Today I had the opportunity to talk about LHB's work with Virtual Reality (VR) at the Minnesota ACEC Design Technology Forum, hosted by AET in St. Paul, Minnesota. It went really well, with a good turnout and lots of great questions.

Additionally...

Enscape Blog Post: CONVEY MECHANICAL, ELECTRICAL AND PLUMBING (MEP) DESIGN WITH ENSCAPE

I have another Enscape blog post out this week... showing a little love for MEP.

With just a few simple adjustments to your Revit MEP model (or, better, your template) your architects will love you. But, hey... there are plenty of opportunists to leverage this tool within the MEP firm as well. Including architectural construction and space exploration as well as impressing clients directly.

Additionally...

Revit 2019.2 Update is out - Zoom in Schedules is the best!

The Revit 2019.2 Update has just been released into the wild!

Here is a quick rundown on the new features and enhancements that jumped out at me...

Demystifying Generative Design - a Free eBook by Autodesk

Senior Product Manager at Autodesk, Zach Kron, tweeted that they just published an free eBook called Demystifying Generative Design. This 9-page PDF covers three main topics:

• What is generative design?
• The power of computation 
• A look at productivity, time and cost savings, and waste

Additionally...

Revit eBooks for Professionals and Students

I wanted to write a post highlighting the fact that my books are available as eBooks, and by several popular providers. And, for fun, to share how a few of them rank!

Read on to learn more...

Managing Opening Infills for Doors and Windows

I recently wrote a post about the challenges representing demo'ed openings in an existing floor element in Autodesk Revit; Revit Challenge: Demo Hole in Existing Floor.

As a follow up to that, this article was inspired by my friend Pieter Schiettecatte, who wrote:

"Related to this theme: if you’re ever thinking of doing an article on infills, I have a great suggestion for those 😊 

There’s a popular Revit Idea to make them ‘optional’, but I would vote for getting rid of them completely. 

1. The infill is a confusing feature for a lot of users
2. Even in the case we want to infill the resulting opening, it is almost never with the same wall type as the original wall so the automatic infill is useless for that
3. So as far as I’m concerned, the only use for it is to be able to host a new window in the opening of where an old window used to be.

A much cleaner workflow would be: get rid of infill elements completely and enable us to host elements in openings in the host. So we could pop in a new door in the entire ‘extent’ of the wall, which includes its openings. This would also reduce the ‘element has lost host’ errors." 

Here is an overview on how automatic infills work within a demo'ed opening...

The Case of the Missing Section in Plan View

There are many ways in which a section may not appear in a plan view while working in Autodesk Revit. This post will cover a few of the basics...

Read on to learn more...

Show hidden fields in Schedules - A 'Revit Idea' Worth Voting For

In the world of Revit schedules, we often have the main version that goes on the sheets and are part of the official construction documents, and then we have a working version of many of those schedules. This later, utilitarian, schedule affords the designer quick access to intermediate calculations or sorting information as shown in the following image.

Additionally...

Energy Analysis Inputs in Revit - Insight EUI versus EnergyPlus Loads

Revit HVAC Zone Settings for Cooling & Heating set point (see image to right) are exported to the gbXML file and are used by DOE2 to calculate the supply air flow rate required to meet design-day heating and cooling loads for the zone. These settings impact the Insight Energy Cost Ratio and the EUI for Insight.

However, these settings are not exported to Energy Plus when calculating the Insight loads calculations. And, they are ignored by Insight loads calculations. The Energy Plus default values can be found in the Insight Loads Report and are: Cooling Setpoint 75F; and Heating Setpoint 65F.

Additionally...

Enscape Blog Post: TECHNOLOGY TRENDS THAT WILL SHAPE THE AEC INDUSTRY IN 2019

I was able to write a fun blog post for Enscape, recently. I barely mentioned Enscape and much of it did not relate to anything they do. But they are an active member of the AEC community and this article, I think, lets you know, that they know, whats going on:)

This post covers the following six topics...

How to Find and Reposition Large DWG Site Drawings in Revit

There are a lot of issues that come into play when dealing with geo-referenced DWG site drawings linked into Revit. However, the following two images can add a lot of clarity to the issues around a DWG file linked in center-to-center.

Additionally...