EXISTING ROOM NAMES ON DEMO VIEWS

This is another quick little trick for putting existing room names onto a demolition plan.  Because of how the Phase Filters work in Revit, you can’t get existing room names to show up on a demolition plan… it automatically defaults to show the new construction rooms.  So here’s what we’ve done:

1. Duplicate the Existing Floor Plan view for each floor plan and call it “FIRST FLOOR PLAN – ROOM NAMES” as an example…
2. Set the PHASE FILTER for the view to SHOW ALL and the Phase to EXISTING.
3. Under VISIBILITY GRAPHICS, turn everything off except for ROOMS (under Model Categories) and ROOM TAGS (under Annotation Categories).
4. This will create a view that has just the room names as seen below:

Now… here’s the trick.  You are going to put this view “on top” of your normal demolition plan view on your plan sheet.  You may have to do a little bit of aligning before you turn everything off in visibility graphics to make sure that the correct room is in the right space.  This is what you end up with.  The image below is a "demolition plan" view with a "room names" view on top of it on the sheet.  The draw back is that if you want to move a room tag... you need to do it in the sheet view to make sure it doesn't overlap any keynote, dimension, etc.

WARNING!!!    When you’re all done with this and you want to edit your view from the sheet… make sure to click on the correct view.  Since these 2 views are essentially on top of each other, you may click one and not realize it.  Also, make sure you duplicate your view when doing this… otherwise you’ll end up with views where you want the walls and floors and doors on and all you’ve got is room names.

MAKE IT EASIER TO SEE DEMO WORK

 

This is a little trick that I've used when I have a lot of demolition keyed notes to put on a drawing.  It's hard sometimes to differentiate between the new walls and the existing walls.  After a while it all starts to look like the same mess of black walls/toilets/doors/etc.  Here's a quick way to help you get thru that.  Turn all of the demo items to RED.  

 

 

 

 

It's easy to do...

1. Go to the MANAGE TAB and click on PHASES at the far right.
2. On the menu that opens up, click on the GRAPHIC OVERIDES TAB.
3. Then for both Demolished Projection/Surface Lines and Cut Lines... click on the little box that has the dashed line in it.
4. CHANGE THE COLOR TO RED FOR BOTH LINE TYPES. 
5. This will make all the demolished items in your plans red and easier to see.

 

WARNING!!!  Make sure to go back and change these BACK TO BLACK BEFORE YOU PRINT.  These red lines don't print to pdf well and wouldn't show up on printed sets very well.

Autodesk Cloud Rendering : Revit Rendering made simple and fast!

To start, download the Autodesk Cloud Rendering Add-In for Revit 2012 which can be accessed upon logging in at Autodesk's Cloud Rendering webpage:

http://rendering.cloud.autodesk.com

Once installed, open the project you would like to render out of, and click the Online ribbon button. From there, you will find the option to "Render in Cloud," select this.

Find the view you would like to render and modify the limited selection of options as necessary.

The upload, surprisingly, takes less than a minute before Autodesk's cloud computers get to work. You can monitor the progress by going back to the Autodesk's Cloud Rendering Webpage.

http://rendering.cloud.autodesk.com/mygallery.aspx

After what had initially taken 36 hours on our dedicated rendering computer was done in less than 2 hours.

Self illuminated materials will not render nor will RPC objects that were not part of the Revit release.

From what I understand, Cloud Rendering is only available to Autodesk Design Suite Subscription based customers and there may, or may not, be a limit on how many renderings each license is good for.

I should also note that I had turned on all of the lights in the project for the cloud rendering, alternatively, for the internal rendering I did, I only had a limited selection of lights on. Crazy.

There is also an option to do a panoramic rendering which I am looking forward to trying out next..

For all you i-padders and i-phoners out there...

 

Autodesk Design Review is now available for the i-phone, i-pad and i-pod touch.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/design-review-mobile/id459112753?mt=8&ls=1

Self Sizing Sundshade

Enhancing Your Sky

From Inside the Factory:

Link

Wall Paint Glossy, Wall Paint Matte, and Paint Render Appearances

From Revit Clinic:

Link

Worksets, Links & Filters in Revit 2011

From Revit Clinic:

Link

10 Revit Family Tips

From Revit Clinic:

Link

Doors in Schedule Not Listing From Room or To Room Fields

From Revit Clinic:

Link

Floors and Plan Regions and View Range

From Revit Clinic:

Link

What makes a good architect?

Wanted to pass this along from the Build Blog, I find it to be very true:

 

http://blog.buildllc.com/2011/06/the-most-important-characteristic-of-an-architect/

elevatorarchitect

 

Just wanted to pass on a new add-in for Revit that I found.  It's elevatorarchitect:

http://www.digipara.com/ElevatorArchitect.aspx

Here's a video as well:

This is a pretty slick tool that allows you to create elevators that have editable properties within the pop-up editor.

There's a 64 bit and 32 bit version, and it's free!

SketchUp in the Classroom

This is a great example of how SketchUp is making it's way into the classroom for the next generation. In the architecture business, we use SketchUp as a tool to create new buildings... but there is a whole other community out there of people creating existing buildings (and not just for context). Being able to add a real-life location, model a building from Google Street View and showing the surrounding terrain are just a few ways that the earth is being modeled one building at a time.

In Hartford, VT, they are using it as a teaching aid in a history class. What better way to understand the history of your town, then to visit it's buildings, take pictures, research the history and draw what you see. Google Earth is allowing geography and history students the opportunity to "travel" to any place on the glove to view the history and the landscape of other countries. What was only seen before in picture, can now be seen in 3 dimensions.

Students are also using it in their Integrated Technology class. SketchUp lets them model components and items in 3D that before would have been impossible.

YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4FMGJQ4zfc

Creating Hartford Web Page:

http://creatinghartfordvt.com/

Revit 2012

Is here! Here's a link to Autodesks website: http://usa.autodesk.com/products/

What's New??

1. Construction Modeling Tools
2. Point Cloud Tools
3. Conceptual Energy Analysis Tools
4. Revit Server
5. Enhanced Worksharing
6. Performance Enhancements
7. Model Linking Enhancements
8. Citrix Ready
9. Material Appearance Library
10. Improved DWG Export
11. Visualization Display Option
12. Dimension Customization
13. Enhanced Families

Showcase 2012

Project Newport is a program that has just graduated from the Autodesk Lab. No... I didn't make up "graduated from the lab," that's an Autodesk saying. Anyway, this software has some great presentation potential. It has been incorporated into Autodesk Showcase 2012! Here's a quick video about what Showcase can do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ioP0CVRJvUI#at=541

This would allow anyone in a design development meeting or early CD meeting to review materials, plan changes, spacial relationships, etc. with the owner. It looks to be a grate 3D presentation tool and could bridge the gap as far as post-SketchUp/pre-finished Revit model renderings!

Default template location in Revit

It's very east to forget to change your template to the correct one. I got a new computer and installed Revit 2011 and forgot to do it myself. All of the standard notes, symbols and other things that you may never notice are in the template so if you need to verify it, here's the procedure below.

Go to the big "R" in the upper left hand corner of the screen and click options from the drop down.

Click on the "File Locations" tab that pops up. From there make sure that your "Default template file" is J:\Revit\Template\BLDD default-2011.rte.

Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012

Click on the link to see what's coming with Revit 2012

http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com/2011/03/autodesk-revit-architecture-2012.html

Shaderlight

I thought this was a great rendering software for Sketchup. Watch the video tutorials, it updates the rendering real time as you update your model!

http://artvps.com/content/shaderlight/sketchup/what-is-shaderlight