Autodesk Support is Great

Today started out fun. A large Revit project with an impending deadline could be opened but not saved. This is were I get involved.

I usually start by opening the central file directly, Detached, and with Audit checked. Turns out, when Audit was checked the model would not open at all. In this case, the following error was provided.

This is the link listed at the bottom of the dialog: Revit Help; Missing Elements error

• FYI: I recently posted a Revit Idea suggesting it would be helpful if Audit told us if it did anything or not. Well, in this case it does provide some feedback. Here is the Revit idea: Tell me if audit had to do anything. Feel free to vote for it!

So, as many know, when a central file is corrupt you start looking for a good local file. None could be found, they all had the "too many elements missing" error when opening with Audit. Same for all of the Previous Versions backup files and even the IT nightly backup. Even files from the day before had this corruption. So this issue had crept into the model a few days ago.

Given this is clearly some sort of corruption, I sent the model directly to Autodesk Support. If you have Autodesk products on subscription, you have access to Autodesk email-based support (I think that is how it works). This ticket was submitted at 9:31 am today.

Autodesk to the rescue... at 10:40 am I get an email from Andrea Johnston, our new favorite person at Autodesk, with a link to a repaired model. As one would expect, Autodesk has special tools (not available to resellers, who also provide support) to repair corruption within a Revit model.

With the newly repaired model in hand, we were able to get the project team back to work. Without this critical support we would have lost a LOT of staff time.

Andrea also provided this help bit of info related to the problem:

• This "too many elements missing" issue is hard to pin down. Basically Revit is just telling you that there are more elements missing from the model than it can safely ignore and continue opening. This can happen with a bad sync or a corrupt family, or something entirely different, and tracking down the cause is difficult. In the future, if you see that one user is getting this error, and someone else with the model has it open and is not seeing the error, that person can sync and compact the model to clear the issue for the other user. Otherwise, feel free to send us the model again if you run into the problem.
  

Another great thing about support, is this is one of the primary ways required software changes for existing features gets into the system (i.e. bug fixes); support staff can send issues to development if they are not already "known issues". Another way is the "send crash log" prompt you get when Revit crashes. I always add my email address and type something about that just happened. They are indeed watching this. In fact, I once received a phone call about 30 minutes after a crash asking if i could send the file for analysis by Autodesk!

THANKS AUTODESK SUPPORT!

Duplicating a Material and its Assets

This is a page out of my Interior Design book, which I am updating right now for a future version of Revit... and a related Revit Idea, which I wrote about yesterday.

Duplicating a Material and its assets:

It is important to know how to properly duplicate a Material in your model so you do not unintentionally affect another Material.

If you Duplicate a Material in your model, the Appearance Asset will be associated to the new Material AND the Material you copied it from! For example, in Figure 4-2.18, we will right-click on Carpet (1) and duplicate it. Before we duplicate it, notice the Appearance Asset named “RED” is not shared (arrow #3 Figure 4-2.18).

Figure 4-2.18 Duplicating a material

Once you have duplicated a Material, notice the two carpet materials, in this example, now indicate they both share the same Appearance Asset. Changing one will affect the other. Click the Duplicate this asset icon in the upper right (Figure 4-2.19).

Figure 4-2.19 Duplicating an asset

Finally, when the Appearance Asset has been duplicated (Figure 4-2.20), you can expand the information section and rename the asset. You can now make changes to this material without affecting other materials. This applies to all assets in a Material.

Figure 4-2.20 Renaming an asset

Related Revit Idea submission:

It would be helpful if Revit offered multiple 'Duplicate' options, similar to the options presented when duplicating a view via a right-click in the Project Browser. For example, Duplicate Material and Appearance Asset. Check out this Revit Idea here: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/duplicate-material-and-assets/idi-p/6721594.

Revit Ideas

In an effort to streamline how customer's can share ideas with Autodesk on improvements and new features in their software, they came up with Autodesk Ideas. Here, they have a specific area for Revit Ideas.

You can check it out via this link: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/idb-p/302/tab/most-recent

As you type your new idea in, the screen is searching for previous ideas that might be the same. If you find your idea has already been submitted, you should just vote for it rather than creating a new idea. Ideas that get a lot of traction, i.e. votes, will get Autodesk's attention and be more likely to make it into a future update.

Typing in a new Revit Idea

Also, when typing an idea, in addition to searching other ideas for the same words, it also searches the Autodesk forums. Lets face it, sometimes the software already does what we wished it would do! We just don't know how. This reminds me of a comment Phil Read used to say, when he worked for Autodesk, and someone would say in one of his presentations ten years ago... Revit can't do something... he would quickly reply in his lovable sarcastic way "your right, you can't do that in Revit".

In addition to posting and voting for new ideas you can comment on other's ideas. If you think it is not a valuable use of Autodesk's time to make Revit backwards compatible, you can voice your opinion. Or, if you think it is a great idea to print and zoom in on a schedule you can....

Vote for one of my ideas: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/print-and-zoom-in-schedule-views/idi-p/6721704

Update: My "Idea" was consolidated with another - read about it here: Revit Ideas Archived Due to Low Support

Here you can see a good discussion in the comments.