CAD Shack: Top 20 Revit Tips, Tricks, and Handy Tools

CAD Shack: Top 20 Revit Tips, Tricks, and Handy Tools: Here are some of my favorite Revit Tips and Tricks. 1)   Previous Selection Set Ctrl + the left arrow key on your keyboard will re-sele...

Revit OpEd: IF Formulas and Notepad

Revit OpEd: IF Formulas and Notepad: A good tip was shared (by Josephpeel) at RFO the other day. If you use a Tab or Line Break in Notepad to make it easier to understand a len...

Revit OpEd: Saving Backward

Revit OpEd: Saving Backward: It is a common question and the answer is no, Revit does not save backward, to an older version.  People often regard saving a file from on...

Autodesk Revit Model Review - Migrating 2014 check files to 2015

If you are a Autodesk Revit Model Review user and you try to migrate a 2014 check file to 2015, you will get the following error:

I have not found any workarounds other than creating the rules again for 2015 from scratch.

Revit OpEd: Import CAD - Orient to View

Revit OpEd: Import CAD - Orient to View: This is what the Autodesk Help documentation says about this feature at the moment. Orient to View - This option is useful if True North a...

3D Room Names with Dynamo

I have been working with a couple of clients that have requested that Room / Space names are visible in 360 Glue and Navisworks. The primary reason being easy identification of rooms and spaces. This will ultimately be expanded to zones as well.

The way that I have accomplished this (with the assistance of Daniel Hurtubise of Revitit!) is to use Dynamo to create 3D Text for the Room Names.

3D Room Text in Revit

3D Room Text in Glue

First a disclaimer. By no means am I a Dynamo expert, not even sure I meet the standard to be a Dynamo novice. There are some really good blogs and instruction material on Dynamo and having a really smart friend like Daniel is a huge help as well.

The process to create the 3D Room Names is fairly straightforward. First you need to have Dynamo installed on your workstation. Second download the support files which consists of a Revit family and the Dynamo code.

The Revit family needs to be loaded into your project file that you want to generate the 3D Room Text. Open Dynamo and open the 3D Room Name.dyn file. Before running the code against the model, make sure that you add the LunchBox for Dynamo package into the project. This needs to be added in order for the code to run.

You can then run the code to generate the 3D Room Text.

Revit OpEd: Copy Monitor - What Elements are in a Relationship...

Revit OpEd: Copy Monitor - What Elements are in a Relationship...: A friend recently asked if there is an easy way to find out what elements are currently involved in a Copy/Monitor relationship. Good quest...

Revit OpEd: Starting View

Revit OpEd: Starting View: I was reviewing old posts for something I thought I wrote about Starting Views. I was befuddled when I didn't find anything. I guess tha...

Revit OpEd: Schedule Text and Width Factor Fidelity

Revit OpEd: Schedule Text and Width Factor Fidelity: Schedules in Revit 2015 are able to use any of the text styles defined for a project. Text styles have supported the use of a Width Factor ...

Free Autodesk File Viewer

Autodesk has released a new free file viewer that reads about 50 file formats. This is a online/cloud based viewer with a very simple user interface. The file formats supported are:

• 3DM
• 3DS
• ASM
• CAM360
• CATPART
• CATPRODUCT
• CGR
• DAE
• DLV3
• DWF
• DWFX
• DWG*
• DWT
• EXP
• F3D
• FBX
• G
• GBXML
• IFC
• IGE
• IGES
• IGS
• IPT
• JT
• MODEL
• NEU
• NWC
• NWD
• OBJ
• PRT
• RCP
• RVT**
• SAB
• SAT
• SESSION
• SIM
• SIM360
• SKP
• SLDASM
• SLDPRT
• SMB
• SMT
• STE
• STEP
• STL
• STLA
• STLB
• STP
• WIRE
• X_B
• X_T
• XAS
• XPR

Opening a file is as simple as dragging or selecting a file to open.

Once the file has been opened, you have some basic navigation and query tools.

The one feature that I think makes this viewer stand out of the collaboration functionality. It allows multiple users to view a model simultaneously as well providing a chat window. A link to share the models can be sent via email. 

Revit OpEd: Text Formatting with Bold and Underline

Revit OpEd: Text Formatting with Bold and Underline: Text is a common source of frustration in Revit. Replacing, improving the text editor remains a top rated wishlist item. Jean-Marc wrote to ...