Revit OpEd: Room Renumbering - Autodesk Labs Plug-in of the Mo...

Revit OpEd: Room Renumbering - Autodesk Labs Plug-in of the Mo...: "For those of you that have downloaded this plug-in and starting to use 2012 in production, there is now a version for 2012 too. Poking a..."

Converting an .exe into a .msp - Repost

Noce post from Revitit.com

You are doing an install and you want to convert the .exe SP into a .mps.

See the video here

Should the Unemployed be buying new Apple Computers - The Onion

In The Know: Should The Nation's Unemployed Be Buying New Apple Computers?

BIMForum Summer 2011 New Dates: Call For Presentations

When Does Design End and Construction Begin?
New Dates: July 19-21, 2011   |   Chicago, IL

A consensus is emerging about the benefits of tapping the expertise of consultants, contractors, and facility managers during the early phases of a BIM-enabled project. The intent is to achieve design decisions that are both early and well informed to avoid costly later revisions. But does this necessarily imply that all design effort should be concentrated exclusively at the start of a project? Are late design decisions necessarily detrimental to budget, schedule, and quality? Are changing client requirements and construction volatility such that early decisions are not only impractical but also to be avoided?

If you have direct experience related to the impact of early or late design decisions, we are very much interested in hearing from you. To provide additional clarity, submitted presentations should consider addressing some of the following design related topics:

• Is the idea of good early decisions pragmatically an oxymoron and not possible?
• Is a good decision once made always a good decision?
• Is it reasonable to expect a fixed functional program from a client?
• Can all factors that affect design and cost be known early in a project?
• Do late design decisions always adversely affect a project budget and schedule?
• How does BIM technology affect the cost and schedule implications of late decisions?
• Can design realistically progress in an efficient and linear way without iteratively searching for an optimum solution?
• Are legacy project phases applicable in integrated design and construction?
• What are valid contractual relationships related to consultant, contractor, subcontractor, and facility manager design input?
• How can consultants, contractors, subcontractors, and fabricators be engaged in evaluating multiple designs when they have monetary incentives to consider the fewest schemes possible?
• Are clients willing to pay for additional early design effort by “non-designers”?
• Are consultants and contractors assuming more the role of the designer in early phases while simultaneously ceding much of their legacy documentation and management roles to subcontractors and fabricators?
• Where does traditional design leave off and spatial coordination begin?
• When does spatial coordination morph into design?
• How can contractors and designers find common ground for design and coordination?

Submissions are due by Friday, May 6, 2011. To submit a proposal, click here.

Autodesk User Research - Call for Participation

We are looking for Architects, Drafters, Designers and CAD Managers who use Revit Architecture or other products to design stairs or railings, to participate in a usability study of some Autodesk software concepts. The sessions are approximately 90 minutes long. If you are interested in participating, please take a few minutes to fill in this short questionnaire. Participants who are a good match for our study will be contacted within a few days.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/stairs_railings

Your involvement helps make our products better.

Thanks,

The Autodesk User Experience Team

Howayda Affan
UX Recruiter
User Research
AEC Industry Group           


 

BIM Apps - Repost

Ran across this post on the blog BIM Apps that as the name suggests details BIM Apps and related topics.

Ashrae Viewer - Plugin of the Month on Labs

Hi folks, I was just notified of a new Revit MEP add-in that works with both Revit 2011 and the upcoming Revit 2012. You can find details on Scott's blog and you can download it from the bottom of this page. Take a stab at it and tell us what you think.
Also what are your thoughts on other Plugin of the Month that we should look into for Revit, Navisworks or any other BIM products?

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Subtle - Illegal Characters

Revit OpEd: Dept. of Subtle - Illegal Characters: "I'm not referring to characters in a play, novel or movie but the characters we use in filenames. Revit will complain if you attempt to use ..."

Real-Time web based rendering for Revit

Have not used the product, but I received a call from a colleague mentioning the RevUp Rendering application.

Revit OpEd: Tip - List of All Levels via Grid Generator Extens...

Revit OpEd: Tip - List of All Levels via Grid Generator Extens...: "This tip is courtesy of Daniel Stine, author of several Revit books (listed in previous post). If you are familiar with the Grid Generator e..."

MEP-BIM-Guru: Pipe Volume Schedule

MEP-BIM-Guru: Pipe Volume Schedule: "I will go over how I set up a pipe volume schedule in Revit MEP. Pipe Types: For this example I have the pipe types set up with one pipe ..."

Revit 2012 Network Deployment Issues

With the release of the Revit 2012 platform, the first issue I found was with network deployments. The issues I found were that there is no method to define the Default Project Template. After installing the Deploy, the New Project Template it points to is 'Default.rte'. There is also not a method for altering the various library locations.

A few emails to the factory and I was provided with the following information. This is procedure is definitely a work-around and hopefully the actual network deployment is corrected soon.

Customizing Revit.ini

Rick Foster 4.22.2011

The Document

Revit.ini is created at install time using data from an xml document. By modifying that document you can distribute customizations with your deployment.

Identical copies of this document are potentially located in four places in your admin image:

\x86\RAC2013\inifile.xml

\x86\RAC2013\Program Files\Autodesk\Root\Program\Setup\Cache\inifile.xml

\x64\RAC2013\inifile.xml

\x64\RAC2013\Program Files\Autodesk\Root\Program\Setup\Cache\inifile.xml

You probably only have two of the copies in your admin image, either x86 or x64. That is fine.

Copy one of these locally and open it up. You'll notice that inifile.xml updates more than just revit.ini. Ignore the other ini files - those are mine.

It should be apparent what's going on. The elements are structured File->Section->Data. Knowing this you are ready to do some easy tasks. You can:

·       Change a value by updating an existing Data element

·       Add a key to a section by creating a Data element

·       Add a section to an ini file by creating a Section element

Example - Pointing to a custom Family Templates path

1.     Locate this Data element:

File Name="Revit.ini"

  Section Name="Directories"

    Data Key="FamilyTemplatePath"

2.     Set the text of that element to your custom Family Templates location.

(An important note about editing XML)

Ok, I sense a few of you have already started searching for DefaultTemplate and encountered some oddities, like Product attributes and Condition elements, and that the values are set to bracketed properties. Not to mention that there’s a bunch of DefaultTemplate elements. Well, it’s about to get interesting.

Product	Ties a setting to a specific product
Condition	Evaluated as a Window Installer condition – beyond the scope of this document
[PROPERTY]	Windows Installer property. These properties are the internal state of the install

The Short Story:

You can delete all of those DefaultTemplate elements except for one. Remove the Product attribute and Condition element and set the value to wherever your template resides.

The Long Story:

Inifile.xml serves all Revit products, which the Product attributes reflect. Additionally, each product serves multiple disciplines. In order to point the DefaultTemplate to the correct file we created multiple DefaultTemplate elements tied to specific products, each with a condition that further binds it to the discipline selected at install time.

Whether you find that confusing or empowering will be determined by how well I communicate the next topic.

Using Properties in Revit.ini

Properties are the variables passed around in the install. Inifile.xml uses them to respond to user selections. Content Packs use them as well, and even have the ability to set them. Additionally, there is syntax for reading environment variables. Here is how you can leverage both.

Environment Variables

You can use environment variables in inifile.xml by using the syntax [%ENVVAR]. Danny, please test: The practical upshot: You can create a script to call setup.exe. If you set environment variable before doing so then those variables can be used in inifile.xml.

This is quite powerful, and may be all that you need for your customizations. But wait, there’s more…

Custom Content Packs

Revit distributes content using the Content Pack framework. Check out the sample below. Content Packs have an ApplicationDefaults section for setting properties. You can create your own Content Pack and add it to a deployment (or install). The install will process it and set the properties for you. The sample will set YOURCUSTOMPROPERTY to Your Custom Value. You can now use that in inifile.xml by referring to [YOURCUSTOMPROPERTY].

Add this custom Content Pack to your deployment by clicking the Add Content button in the Revit panel on the Select Products page. Then ensure that your Content Pack is selected in the Default Content combobox.

Is that useful? It may be if you have one admin image supporting multiple deployments. Each deployment can integrate a different custom Content Pack to set unique properties for inifile.xml to use. Or you could even use the stock inifile.xml and just create a Content Pack to manipulate the properties that you are interested in.

The End

That’s it. The power to greatly complicate a deployment is now yours. Enjoy!

Supplemental information

Editing XML documents

XML documents are highly structured. If you goof this one up then none of the ini files it defines will be created. Fortunately inifile.xml has a DTD, which is a formatting definition that instructs validation tools on how to check the consistency of a document. To operate on inifile.xml with confidence do one of two things.

·       Use an XML editor. Google up a free one. It will highlight your mistakes. (witticism placeholder)

·       If you don’t use an xml editor, but prefer Notepad or some such, validate your efforts here.

Custom Content Pack sample

Cut and paste the following into a blank xml file. Be sure to change Identification->ContentPackId and Identification->Name. The document.xsd referred to in the second line is a schema that will help you edit and validate this xml document. You can find it on the disk in Content/Revit/en.

xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>

<DocumentRoot xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="document.xsd">

  <Identification>

    <ContentPackId>TemplateCPContentPackId>

    <Name>Content Pack template for custom settingsName>

  Identification>

  <ApplicationDefaults>

    <Property Name="RVT_PATH_LIBRARIES" Value="\\Server\Share\Custom Libraries"/>

    <Property Name="RVT_DEFAULTTEMPLATE_ARCHITECTURAL" Value="[C_TEMPLATES]\Custom Templates\default.rte" />

    <Property Name="RVT_DEFAULTTEMPLATE_CONSTRUCTION" Value="[C_TEMPLATES]\Custom Templates\Construction-Default.rte" />

    <Property Name="RVT_FAMILYTEMPLATEPATH" Value="[C_FAMTEM]" />

    <Property Name="YOURCUSTOMPROPERTY" Value="Your Custom Value" />

  ApplicationDefaults>

DocumentRoot>