Opening and closing your Revit Projects

For any of you that have ever attended Autodesk University I have noticed that each year there seems to an issue that many of the presenters talk about. These like issues are never a major part of the presentation but usually just a side note. Back in 2008 when I attended Autodesk University the item I kept on seeing over and over again was to always close your project on a simple drafting view. By doing this it actually speeds up the time it takes to open your Revit project. Oh course I brought this notion back to the office and we used it on our largest Revit Project at the time Spaceport America. It took an effort to do this. Luckily the next release of Revit Autodesk saw that every one was doing this and gave the BIM Manager the ability to set a view to always open the project with.

Back at AU every one did a drafting view, I thought I would be different and decided to do it as an 8 ½” X 11 sheet that can be easily be printed. In the last five years i have seen different version of this concept from the different firms I've worked with. Some have used this opening view as list of everyone in the company who has had anything to do with the project template. Others have used to convey project team information. and others have used to show company standards. Since it is the opening view my firm tend to put project information on this page to inform the team of important information. Like coming up deadlines.

Uninstalling Autodesk Suites

Well one big thing in 2014 for Autodesk software managers especially those on one of Autodesk's design suites is that they have given us the ability to uninstall the whole suite easily. The only problem right now is that the new uninstall feature is only for the 2014 version so for the 2013 suite I still have to spend 4-6 hours of watching the machine to uninstall the 2013 versions, but next year when 2015 comes out the 2014 versions will be easier to uninstall.

One other interesting fact with the new suite is that there is not a new version of the Design Review program. Hmm I wonder what Autodesk is thinking about that program. I wonder if the program has hit it's plateau  and it just can't get any better. Are they trying to push the program up onto the cloud? if they do that they need to have an app that stare the data offline because there are still some areas of the world that don't have internet access, heck I don't have internet access in parts of my office. Or they trying to push it into other programs like NavisWorks

Audit your Revit file

Back in 2009 when i was working heavily on the spaceport project I talked about Auditing and compacting the Revit file. AS I've been preparing for the Revit Technology Conference I was extending the thoughts I had back in 2009.

 Auditing and Compacting a model is just standard file maintenance.

During the course of a project objects move and get deleted. This causes gaps in the database of the Revit model. These gaps cause two things, the first it begins to blowup the file size, and second it slows down how you move through the model. When there are gaps in any database when you access the information the program still has to maneuver through the gap to get to the pertinent information. To eliminate these gaps you should perform Audits and Compactions to the Revit file periodically.

When should you audit or compact?
It’s different for different file sizes, but first it should only be the Model Manager that audit or compacts a model.

Large project (200 mb)  5 or more modelers

• Audit once a day
• Compacts twice a day

Medium Project (100mb) 3 or more modelers

• Audit once a week
• Compact once a week

Small Projects (50 mb) 1 or more modeler

• Audit once a Month
• Compact once a week

Coordination Rant

Last week I attended the April 505 BIM Users Group meeting. Ron Balmer the BIM manager at Bridgers and Paxton presented Coordinating with MEP. He had some interesting facts to say. In someways it was very insightful. I think some of the things he said will help the Architects in the room work better with the Mechanical, Electrical and plumbing engineers. Well work better with their firm anyway.

Almost a week later and something he said hit me this morning. He said something about now with BIM MEP engineers have to do more work, so that their stuff shows up spatially correct in the Architects model. Yes that is true, to a degree, when you look back at when the industry switched from a hand drafting work flow to a CAD work flow the amount of drawing the engineers did was cut by a half if not more. The Architect provided the engineers the background of the plans that the engineers didn't have to redraw (oh and their fees went up). Now as we enter the BIM era where we need show things spatially correct it is the engineers turn to draw something that the architect doesn't have to.

Well while I'm ranting about the engineers. The engineers need to be more flexible, especially when they want to be involved earlier in the project. Earlier involvement mean change. Change means things are not worked out. If things are not worked out that means change.

Revit 2014 Double Click

Today I was clicking on a tag in Revit 2013 and every other time I clicked I went into the family editor to edit the family even though that was the last thing I wanted to do. In the 2014 version of Revit Autodesk fixes this. In the next version of Revit they give us the ability to control how families react when we double click on them. I personally have it set to do nothing. This is one of the new double clicking functions Autodesk has given us. Besides for being able to control how double clicking reacts another really useful double clicking function is the ability to double click on a view on a sheet and it activates the view much like Autocad has been able to do for at least a decade.

Consistent Sheet Layouts

In Autocad if we had a plan that we wanted to duplicate and show different information all we use to do is save the Autocad file as a new name and we had the layout exactly the same between the different sheets. With Revit we can't do that. When placing a view on a sheet it's an artists eye that says the views are in the same place. Or can we actually go back to the hero of Revit and ask him to place the views in the same place. Yes we can ask the hero of Revit (Scopeboxes) to do this and he will deliver.

Lets use plans to do this,

• on several plan views assign a scope to the views
• create your sheets
• place the first plan view on a sheet 
• draw two detail lines at the corner of the scopebox
• copy detail lines to other sheets
• place plan views on sheets
• move view by corner of the scopebox to corner of detail lines. view with scopebox will snap to detail lines

Building suite 2014

With the announcement of the new features of the 2014 Autodesk products also comes the announcement of the 2014 suites. Check out this site it list most of the products that will be in the new Building Design Suite.

For the most part it is the same products that is within the 2013 design suite except for two additional product to the Standard BDS, Autocad Raster Design and Autodesk ReCap. Both programs look interesting and could have potential in a project workflow especially on a remodeling project. Now all we have to do is wait patiently for the actual release of the 2014 BDS to try these programs out.

Oh if you haven't seen it yet Autodesk has a new logo.

Of course Autodesk can re-brand their logo but can't give Revit a text editor as good as the one as they have in Autocad.