Revit OpEd: Project Vasari - Revit Conceptual Modeling Tools

Revit OpEd: Project Vasari - Revit Conceptual Modeling Tools: "This video showed up at the AutodeskBuilding You Tube channel. The Inside the Factory blog mentioned it as well as David Light and Robert Ma..."

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Echo - Autodesk Office Gets Measured with...

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Echo - Autodesk Office Gets Measured with...: "As a follow up to an earlier post Jim Foster (BIM and the Built Environment blog) recently did a site survey of the existing building using ..."

Revit ArchCenter: Working with Revit and Vault

Revit ArchCenter: Working with Revit and Vault: "Yes, you read that title correct…Revit and Vault working together. The below link is a post from Brian Schanen (Autodesk) that shows how Re..."

Solibri v6.1 Deficiency Detection

Solibri Introduces "Deficiency Detection" in Design Analysis, Reducing Risks in its Latest Release - Solibri Model Checker v6.1

Helsinki, Finland, and Scottsdale, USA, November 1st, 2010
Solibri, Inc., the innovative global leader of Model Checking for BIM Quality Assurance and analysis, announces the release and availability of Solibri Model Checker v6.1. Offering greatly enhanced checking rules and advanced exploitation of design information, Solibri Model Checker v6.1 introduces rulesets for “Deficiency Detection”, as well as powerful hyperlink management capabilities.

Deficiency Detection: Applying Logic to Model Checking

Solibri has been the pioneer and industry leader in checking the quality of building information models for suitability, or of consistent quality, for various usages such as Spatial Coordination, Information Takeoff, or Energy Analysis. With the introduction of Solibri Model Checker v6.1, these features have been elevated to a new level. Solibri has taken a major leap forward making it possible to detect missing components and non-existing or incorrect information.
Solibri Model Checker v6.1 is able to detect faults in models which cause the model to be incomplete – or of bad quality. Checking results may yield for example, illogically or incorrectly modeled components, or altogether missing spaces or components.
Heikki Kulusjärvi CEO of Solibri, Inc., states “We are very excited to introduce this set of rules. Solibri has established its leading position in the Model Checking market with excellent rulesets for Quality Assurance. Spatial Coordination or Design Version Management (Model Comparison) are just two examples of many rules which have been widely accepted for their high value and tangible benefits. Previously, rules could show mainly what is not fitting, is incorrectly located or does not belong in the models. The bigger problems typically surface when something is totally missing from the models. This is much more challenging and Solibri Model Checker is the only solution available with dedicated rules able to detect what is missing from the design. This ability greatly reduces risks in exploiting BIM information for uses such as area calculations and quantity takeoff.

Hyperlink Manager: Enriching and Expanding the QA/QC Process

Solibri, Inc. introduces an extremely powerful, flexible and highly practical implementation of hyperlinks for quality assurance. The Solibri Hyperlink Manager will enable the use of BIM as a centralized user interface to coordination activities, specifications, building code and BIM requirements, construction phase documents, etc.
Links can be added at any level within Solibri Model Checker and to almost any element, including rulesets, models, types, components, issues and slides.
“The introduction of Hyperlinks is great. More importantly though is the very elegant and logical implementation of this functionality. In many cases there could be multiple hyperlinks associated with a specific model component. In most applications the result is a very crowded viewing environment with all hyperlinks impacted by a global on/off choice. In Solibri Model Checker v6.1, we have delivered hyperlink management and flexibility. Any component in the model can have multiple associated hyperlinks, all at the users fingertips and without overpopulating the model view. The Hyperlink Manager creates powerful links between model-resident information and external related information.” Says Jonathan Widney, CEO of Solibri LLC (US HQ).

About Solibri

Solibri, Inc. is the global leader in BIM quality assurance and quality control, providing out of the box tools for BIM validation, compliance control, design process coordination, design review, analysis, and code checking. Solibri’s corporate mission is to develop and market quality assurance solutions that improve the quality of BIM files and make the entire design process more productive and the construction process more cost effective.
Solibri’s customers include major building owners, construction companies, architects and engineering firms in more than 60 countries.

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Off Topic - Introducing Pins Mastering in...

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Off Topic - Introducing Pins Mastering in...: "In sports news this morning: Despite the difference in their weight classes Introducing Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 managed to pin Mas..."

Revit OpEd: IDEATE BIM Link - Sneak Peek

Revit OpEd: IDEATE BIM Link - Sneak Peek: "I spoke with a couple folks at IDEATE the other day and they let me know about something they've been working hard on. It will become availa..."

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Events - New Books at BUGIE Next Week

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Events - New Books at BUGIE Next Week: "I will be making two copies of the new book available for the BIM User Group of Inland Empire (BUGIE) meeting next week, October 26, 2010. ..."

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Events - New Books at SCRUG Next Week

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Events - New Books at SCRUG Next Week: "I will be making two copies of the new book available for the South Coast Revit User Group (SCRUG) meeting next week, October 28, 2010. Ju..."

Revit OpEd: Call for Abstracts - RTC Gold Coast Australia

Revit OpEd: Call for Abstracts - RTC Gold Coast Australia: "The Australian Revit Technology Conference will be held at Jupiters Gold Coast, Queensland, between the 26th and 28th of May, 2011.The onlin..."

Thumbnail previews for RVT/RFA files

For one reason or another, several of our Revit 2011 installs cause Windows not to display the thumbnail preview of Revit project (.rvt) and Families (.rfa). After speaking with Adsk support, they determined the problem to be with Windows and not Revit. The fix is pretty easy.

You first need to open a DOS Window in Windows. From the Windows Start menu, click Run and then type "cmd" in the Run dialog. This will open a DOS Window. In the command line then type:

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\ Revit Architecture 2011\Program\Revit.FilePreview.dll"

The Revit.FilePreview.dll will register the DLL library for previews. If everything registered successfully, a successful registration of the DLL module should appear and the thumbnail previews will appear.

Workset Visibility in Revit 2011 - Inside the System

Workset Visibility in Revit 2011

From Inside the System

Has this ever happened to you?

"Frankly, I’m annoyed by having to turn on my workset every time I create a new view. "

When a workset is created, there is an option to make it not visible by default. If you've run into the scenario above, this box was unchecked when the workset was created.

One work-around is to create a new workset that is 'Visible in all views', and then delete the original workset. When you delete a workset that contains elements, you have to option to move those elements to another workset, so you can move them to the newly created workset. However, be aware that when you do this, those elements may be visible in views where they weren't previously visible (assuming their category is visible in those views). So, you may need to 'clean up' after yourself, to turn off the worksets where they're not needed.

New in 2011 is the ability to change your mind about the workset visibility default. In the worksets dialow, there is a new column titled 'Visible in all views' where you can toggle this setting.

This setting is then tied to the 'Use Global Setting' option in a view's visibility graphic overrides settings. The Global Setting will indicate Visible or Not Visible as appropriate. You also have the options of Show and Hide as in previous releases.

I have advised against unchecking the 'Visible in all views' option prior to 2011, because if a file had worksets marked as such, there was no way to turn on the worksets when linked into a host model. However, now with 2011, you have the ability to control the visiblity of worksets in linked files.

However, I would still advise to exercise judgement when making something not visible by default. Consider a scenario where roof drains are on a workset marked not visible in all views in the architectural model. The plumbing designer, not knowing any better, doesn't go looking for roof drains in toggled off worksets.. he just expects to see them if they exist in the project. IMO, it is better to have things visible, then turned off by the 'view owner' if/when not needed.

Better control of workset visibility, especially for linked files, is a great enhancement in Revit 2011.