Missing Revit MEP Family Templates in 2012???

May 1, 2012 by Leave a comment

Yesterday I read a couple of blog posts that I must share with my fellow Revit users…

First and foremost, as the MEP guy here at Microsol Resources, I was focusing on MEP-related content and found this MEP Connectors and Revit Architecture post by Doug Bowers last November.  I started reading it, but before I could finish the first paragraph, something caught my eye…”A previous blog post lists each of the family templates installed with the various Revit packages,” so I clicked through and am so glad I did!  The post from October 2011 is entitled Templates Provided with Revit 2012 and contains a link to a PDF that I feel is a very valuable reference for any Revit 2012 user.

As the MEP guy, I was shocked to learn that Revit MEP 2012 does not include many MEP-specific family templates that a MEP user might expect to find in his/her product.  You can review the PDF for a complete comparison matrix, but the following is worth mentioning: Electrical Equipment, Electrical Fixture, Lighting Fixture, Linear Lighting Fixture, Mechanical Equipment, Plumbing Fixture, Specialty Equipment, and Spot Lighting Fixture.

Once I reviewed Doug’s list, I decided to compare the content of all Revit 2011, 2012, and 2013 products.  What I found, and what makes this even more interesting, is that the family templates listed above were included with 2011!  So, what happened in 2012?  I can’t answer that question, but the good news is the templates are back in 2013.  See below for a list of total family templates in each product, at least by my count.  Note that this list does not include Annotation, Conceptual Mass, Titleblock, or Project templates:

  • Revit Architecture 2011 – 64
  • Revit Architecture 2012 – 62
  • Revit Architecture 2013 – 65
  • Revit MEP 2011 – 78
  • Revit MEP 2012 – 43
  • Revit MEP 2013 – 76
  • Revit Structure 2011 – 34
  • Revit Structure 2012 – 35
  • Revit Structure 2013 – 68

If you are a 2012 user and still have 2011 loaded, you can basically copy the 2011 family RFT files from the C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RME 2011\Imperial Templates folder and paste them into the C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RME 2012\Family Templates\English_I folder for your 2012 product.  Granted the 2011 templates will need to be upgraded in 2012 when you elect to use them, but that’s no biggie and something that can be done as needed!

Filed under Architecture Solutions, Autodesk, BIM Solutions, Civil & Structural Engineering Solutions, MEP Engineering Solutions, Solutions Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Revit Server 2013 – Revit model collaboration across LAN / WAN

April 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

First with 2011, Revit Server is now in it’s third year and I’m here again showing you how to set it up in your office. Understand the concepts, and then get the servers ready by installing any prerequisites. When you’re planned out and ready to go,  installing Revit Server 2013 in your network and configure your workstations! True Revit model collaboration across a LAN / WAN. Yes, it’s awesome 

Filed under Autodesk, BIM Solutions

Let Paul try it!

April 18, 2012 by Leave a comment

So some of you may have heard of Paul Aubin. He is an author, consultant, frequent speaker at AU, and a pretty nice guy as well! He writes a great blog, and he sadly suffered through a Building Design Suite install from HELLLL!!!!! Read all about it on his blog at http://paulaubin.com/blog/installing-the-building-design-suite/

I just want to pass along some advice having to do with file folder names and lengths, as this seemed to cause Paul several hours if not days of wasted time.  Paul downloaded and unzipped the Ultimate Suite which created a folded called Autodesk_Building_Design_Suite_Ultimate_2013_English_Win_32-64bit. Apparently after all of the other subfolders get created under this, some of them actually are TOO LONG for the Windows OS to use, and the entire install process fails.

The truly fun part Paul had was when he Canceled the install. Not only does it stop the install process at that point, it also UNINSTALLS EVERYTHING that had successfully installed. Seriously? Yah, that is what he wrote. Bang. Head. Here.

Ok, so hopefully Paul’s sacrifice is your gain. Here is his advice:

  • Download the archives.
  • Run the installer and accept the default location (you can change drives if you like)
  • When the actual installer appears, cancel it.
  • Browse to the location of the installed folder and rename it to something shorter (like BDS).
  • Double-click the Setup.exe file in the now shortened folder.
  • Sit back and wait for it to finish.

Ok? Thanks Paul! We owe you one. Next time you’re in Philly, the drinks are on my boss, er make that me.

Disclaimer: I have not attempted the Suite install myself, but seriously, doing what Paul suggested is like chicken soup. It couldn’t hurt, right, and it might actually help!

Filed under BIM Solutions

‘Scuse me, while I kiss the sky!

April 16, 2012 by Leave a comment

I have been using Revit for a few years now on my Macbook Pro in a virtual environment (Parallels 6) with no issues. (Showcase – well that is a DIFFERENT blog item!). I recently installed the Revit 2013 products and started kicking the tires, so to speak.

Stairs are super fun. That 30 minutes I spend teaching stairs has now expanded to more like 90 minutes. There are a huge number of amazingly wonderful new tools. Then it was time to play with the new Background Graphic Display Options feature. The one thing I like to brag about with my Macbook is that “it just works”, er, except when it doesn’t, which is what happened here.

So, from the Properties palette I set up a “fluffy cloud” image background. We have been missing fluffy clouds ever since Accurender vanished from the products. I found a great image and set it up from here:

And then…..I held my breath and waited for the screen to refresh…and….NOTHING! Just a white background. So, I changed to Sky and yep, same results. Strangely, Gradient did work. So, I checked with my fellow techs here who all have much less cool Lenovos, and WHAT??? It worked on their laptops. It even works on our Dell training stations. So, my sleek, sexy, extra cool Macbook was NOT going to do this? Bummer!

The issue is with virtual machines and graphic card emulation. While the Macbook has this hot little Nvidia card, the virtual machine creates some rinky dink vga driver and no you can’t change that. After exhausting the web, it was time to turn to the experts at Autodesk.  So to keep the 60′s music analogies going here, the Mighty Quinn in tech support there found this bit of info:

“Hardware acceleration is not available in the Parallels 7 environment, and Revit will revert to a DirectX 9 based software graphics mode, which will not render materials, sky, artificial lights, and other features when the Realistic visual style is in effect.

Workaround 1: When you first start Revit and see the Graphics Options – Cannot Use Hardware Acceleration dialog, select the Save Hardware Acceleration Setting option, and then close and restart Revit. Upon restart, DirectX 11 software mode will be used and features will display correctly in Realistic visual style.

Workaround 2: Manually add the following to the [Graphics] section of the Revit.ini file before startup: UseGraphicsHardware=0″

Workaround 1 did not present itself to me, but workaround 2 was pretty easy to achieve:

[Graphics]
TempDimFontSizeInPoints=12
InvertBackground=0
Antialiasing=0
SemiTransparent=1
UseGraphicsHardware=0

I added the last line above to the 2013 Revit.ini file, restarted RAC 2013, and….

As they say these days: “SWEET!!”

Now if this purple haze will just lift……

Filed under BIM Solutions, Uncategorized

EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT THE CLOUD, BUT WHAT IS IT, AND WHERE?

March 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

The cloud is many things to many people. Personally, it’s a place for me and my family to keep photos, emails, contacts (phone numbers and addresses) and documents (homework). Professionally it can be so much more. For our clients; architects, engineer’s construction managers, etc, the cloud offers many tools and resources.

The Autodesk Cloud, now called “Autodesk 360”, provides great value by enabling you to extend your desktop with secure and ubiquitous cloud computing capacity and capabilities, helping you rapidly design, visualize, simulate, optimize, and share your ideas. 

This idea of extending your desktop is not an easy concept for everyone to grasp, however having someone else do your work sounds pretty simple to me. If you could delegate a task that normally would take time away from other tasks wouldn’t that be great? Not only does Autodesk 360 have tools that enable advanced processes to be done somewhere else it is a place to store share and collaborate with others.

Do you have an Autodesk subscription? If yes, then you have the cloud already.

CLOUD CAPACITY: All Subscribers have access to: Storage, Sharing, and Viewing, DWG Editing and Mobile Viewing. Your available tools include; Autodesk® Cloud Documents, AutoCAD® WS, and the Autodesk® Design Review Mobile App.

CLOUD CAPABILITIES: If you subscribe to select products or suites, you have an even greater advantage. You can harness the power of Autodesk 360 to perform more compute-intensive tasks, such as rendering, energy analysis, optimization, and collaboration. These offers are; Autodesk 360 Cloud rendering, Autodesk Inventor optimization, Autodesk Revit Conceptual Energy Analysis, Autodesk Green Building Studio, and Autodesk Buzzsaw

Let’s explore and elaborate on this from a few different perspectives.

“I’m not sure if the cloud is for me” or “I have a dedicated machine for rendering or specialists in-house, so I don’t need these cloud services.” Your in-house specialists may find these services useful at times to augment their current process. There may be times when a fast iteration or the ability to run multiple simulations and analysis is useful. Your in-house specialists may choose to use a combination of their current tools and Autodesk Cloud services.

“I don’t know if the service will provide accurate results.” The Inventor optimization service is validated against benchmarks published by respected industry organizations such as NAFEMS (National Agency for Finite Element Methods and Standards).

“I’m not sure that my data will be safe from unauthorized access and available when I want it.” Users of Autodesk Cloud documents have the security controls to define who is authorized to access, view and update the files they have uploaded. These controls allow users to store design documents in the cloud so they can access them anytime, anywhere (when connected to the internet) and securely share them with designated colleagues, clients, and other users. The subscription contract administrator can define who in their organization have access to the cloud services. Autodesk 360 uploads and downloads are securely encrypted using SSL certificates. To ensure the security and availability of Autodesk 360 services, Autodesk strategically chooses stable and reliable hosting providers and locations with the following key concerns in mind; Availability, Replication, Connectivity, Environment Security, Power/HVAC, Hardware redundancy. Please contact us for more detail if necessary.

If any of this sounds interesting or confusing please give us a call or email Support@MicrosolResources.com and we will be happy to explain further or answer any question you may have. Welcome to the cloud.

ROGER LIUCCI | AEC BIM / 3DP SPECIALIST 

Filed under Architecture Solutions, AutoCAD Solutions, Autodesk, BIM Solutions, Civil & Structural Engineering Solutions, MEP Engineering Solutions, Miscellaneous Solutions, Solutions Tagged with

Test: Cloud Rendering in Revit 2012

January 7, 2012 by Leave a comment

In a time when ‘to the cloud’ is a common refrain in the techroom, Cloud Rendering is an obvious ‘Duh…!’

Well, it is a reality (finally!) with Revit and other Autodesk Products such as 3D Max Design and AutoCAD. My primary interest being Revit, I was more excited to avoid the drudgery of waiting forever for getting something rendered in Revit.

I’ve made a comparison between renderings produced natively in Revit and those produced in the Cloud – and the results are comparable. The interface is simple and the options are limited, but hey the reason you render anything in Revit is to really understand how the space appears and as a consequence impress the buyer of the space. I love rendering in Revit because it is a WYSIWYG (what you see…is what you get) impression of the model and hence there is hardly any ‘faking it’ unless you are intentionally mis-representing objects.

The interface is pretty straight-forward. You do need to be on subscription to be able to access it (and recently, I am told, you should also own the Building Design Suite Premium or Ultimate). Once you sign in, you get a very simple screen that looks like this:


Read more of this post

Filed under Architecture Solutions, Autodesk, BIM Solutions Tagged with , , ,

Revit: Automatically create Catalog files for Families

October 12, 2011 by Leave a comment

How come when I want to place a 2D section of a Steel Beam or Column in my project I get the following catalog to choose from:

However, when I want to put a put a Brick or CMU section into my project Revit inserts EVERY brick shape known to mankind and now I have to sort through them in the Type drop down list in the Properties palette:

The reason is there is a Catalog Text file (.txt) with the same name as the Family file (.rfa).

The structure of the file looks as follows:

The first line sets the parameters for the types, followed by a list with these parameters filled in.

These are what appear in the Catalog dialog box when you go to add one of these detail components. But hey, I am SUPER lazy. There is NO way I’m doing this for those brick sections, so I guess I’m stuck, right?

NO!!! Let’s review the lazy person’s way to create this catalog file. I’ll begin by opening the Bricks-Section.rfa file. Now, from the Application pulldown menu (the big “R”), choose Export, then at the bottom of the fly-out menu, Family Types.  In the Export As dialog box, keep the default name Bricks-Section.txt for this file, then pick the Save button.

Opening this file, it will look like the following:

Yah, there was no way I was typing all of THAT stuff out. Ok, let’s test it. With both the RFA and the TXT file for Bricks-Section now in the same folder, I’ll open the Bricks-Section.rfa file using the Annotate tab, Detail panel, Detail Component tool.  Picking the Load Family tool from the Place Detail Component tab, Mode panel, instead of all of the types automatically loading into my project, I now get the Specify Types dialog box, and a list of the types to choose from:

Wow. That was easy. Hey, I think I get to go home early. Don’t tell my boss how quickly I did that!

Filed under BIM Solutions

Revit Architecture Viewer 2012

October 6, 2011 by 1 Comment

So, you have just had a request from the Project Manager, or worse, the “Boss”, that they want to open a copy of Revit and look around in the model and maybe print some sheets.  Now, several thoughts pop into your head:

  1. Oh my God, these guys are going to screw up the model and delay the project!
  2. If they open a copy of Revit, then I lose a usable license for production work

Have I got a solution for you! It is called Revit Architecture Viewer 2012 and is found in the Start menu:

Revit Architecture Viewer 2012 (RAV 2012) installs when you install Revit Architecture (RAC).  It modifies the startup code with a “viewer switch” : “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit Architecture 2012\Program\Revit.exe” /viewer.

RAC starts with the normal splash screen, but when the Recent Files page is displayed, you are presented with the following dialog box:

While elements may be edited in the file, none of the changes may be saved. In addition, RAC 2012 does not pull a network license, thus preserving them for staff that needs editing capabilities.

Filed under BIM Solutions

Save space & time when applying Revit updates to deployments

October 4, 2011 by Leave a comment

Within a few months, Autodesk has released a second update for the Revit family of products. Download them from the Autodesk website (here). Being a “on the ball” IT guy, I went to update my deployment images for Revit Architecture, Structure, and MEP.

Since I have both standalone and network versions, I don’t want to download the updates twice. The automated method actually downloads the MSP from Autodesk and puts it into the file location \\company.com\deployments\RevitArchitecture2012-64bit\AdminImage\x64\RAC2012, under the file name rac2012ur2.msp. Knowing this, I moved the .MSP file over the the root of the deployment image for the Revit product and modified the deployment to apply that .MSP. One MSP can then be used for both standalone and network deployment. Save server space. Save time. WOOT WOOT! 

Filed under Autodesk, BIM Solutions, Miscellaneous Solutions Tagged with , ,

Revit Architecture 2012 Update 2 is out!

September 23, 2011 by Leave a comment

Revit Architecture 2012 has an update! We’re now at Update 2 and there’s a pretty big enhancement list to this update, from improving stability to fixing API issues. The Autodesk page to download the update is here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=16841348

If you have any existing deployment images, you can go to deployment image location where you’ll find a folder called TOOLS. Open that folder and click on the shortcut to CREATE & MODIFY… to add the service pack to your image. As for those workstations with Revit already installed, the only way is to manually install them… unless you have SCCM, which is another beast in itself.

Filed under Autodesk, BIM Solutions Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 82 other followers