Revit Stair Wall Joins in Section

Following on from an earlier post about joining stairs and floors, I just wanted to clarify what happens when you try to join Stairs and Walls in section . . . .

We saw previously that Revit does have some limited capability to join stairs and floors at the base of a stair - but it has many limitations.

Joining a Wall and a Floor

All good Revit users would know that if a floor and a wall are of the same material, and they have coincident or overlapping edges, they can be "joined" in the model.  This is not just a graphic tool that is done per view - it affects the model in potentially all views, including material quantity schedules.  If an overlapping wall and floor are joined, the volume of material that was previously counted twice is corrected after the join so it is counted once.

Join Geometry

Select floor and wall to join

Floor and wall are joined

Providing that the elements are of the same material, the line between the floor and wall disappears.  In this example, the 'Level' line is revealed, as it happens to align with the top of the floor.

Joining a Wall and a Stair Landing

 

Try the same thing with a wall and a stair landing . . .

What happens?  Absolutely nothing.  After selecting the wall, Revit will not even highlight the stair landing (or vice versa if you select the landing first).

Well, that is just plain ridiculous!  You might argue that the wall and landing would be cast separately on site, so there should always be a joint line between them - but the graphic convention is to not show a line, or at least show a thinner line between them in section.

 

What to Do?

There is no good workaround to this problem - each method is clunky and not robust.

Linework Tool

Linework Tool

If you try the linework took, you immediately discover that it will not do the job for you, as it affects the whole wall.

That isn't very helpful, as you only want a small segment of the wall edge line to be invisible (or thin line).

Another strange Revit quirk with the linework tool is that when you select a line in elevation (or projection in plan) it gives you blue dots at each end , which can be dragged so that only part of the line has its style overridden.  That is a very useful capability - but infuriatingly, it does not work on cut lines.

Yet another quirk is that the underside of a run is treated as one line when cut (section), but in elevation, each step is a separate line segment.  Why, or why?

Filled Region

Filled Region

A common method of hiding a multitude-of-sins in Revit is to use Filled Regions.  These have pros and cons:

• They are quick and easy to understand for most users

• Their edge lines can be of different styles, including "invisible" as part of the sketch - so they hide model lines underneath 

• They will merge with underlying element hatching , providing the material hatch style matches the filled region hatching

• They are view-based, so any patching up on one view will not show on other views

• Line edges/junctions can be messy when viewd close-up

• If the model is changed, the filled region will not change with it (unless you constrain the sketch lines, which is not generally advisable - as your model very quickly becomes over-constrained and unworkable)
  

Cut Profile

Cut Profile (View Menu)

You could try the 'Cut Profile' command - this allows you to modify how an element looks in a particular view.  Once initiated, it takes you into sketch mode - so you can draw a shape to add to an element (or cut from it).

The end result is not very promising in this situation

• The added shape does not obscure the wall line in the way that a filled region does
• The sketch lines cannot have a line style (unlike Filled Regions)
  

The worst thing about this idea is that the Linework tool does not work at all on cut-profile shapes - thus making this tool almost useless!

Conclusion

Sadly there is no clever workaround.  The conclusion is that it is not worth fighting Revit on this one - just accept the joint line between wall and landing.  In many cases it is not an issue, but when the stair and wall are both cast in place concrete, it is very annoying.

Room Bounding Structural Column Materials in Revit

I recently discovered yet another obscure, hidden away setting in Revit - when I was investigating the "Room Bounding" property of different elements.

It seems that some structural columns have a "Room Bounding" property - but not all.
This has to be one of the weirdest, arbitrary decisions made by the Revit programmers:

Material for Model Behaviour

Structural columns have a weird property - so obscure and arcane, not to mention hidden away.
'Material for Model Behavior'

This property that can only be set in the Family Editor – in ‘Family Category and Parameters’: ‘Material for Model Behaviour’.

It can be one of 5 settings, each of which enables different properties and behaviour in the model:

• Steel
• Concrete
• Precast Concrete
• Wood
• Other

Depending on which one you choose, it will enable properties in the family.

• Steel has Connection properties

• Concrete & Other have Rebar properties

 

These settings are hidden away behind the 'Family Category and Parameters' settings - in the project there is no way to tell which setting the family has, apart from the specific properties displayed.

You would have thought that this only affects structural engineers?

But wait.  It affects architects too . . . . .

• Concrete has ‘Room Bounding’ properties (it is the only one that does)

Why, oh why are wood and precast concrete not room-bounding?  There are a huge number of timber structures around the world that provide perfectly good enclosures.
Wouldn't it just have been easier to make all columns potentially enclose rooms, instead of hard-coding someone's bizarre ideas about how a building might work?

Room-Bounding

When working in a project, and you discover that a 'Room' is not enclosed when you expect it to be, this is one of many things to check.
There are some other quirky Room-Bounding behaviours in Revit, to be detailed later  . . .

• Room Computation Height

Revit 2019 Installation

Notes on  installing Revit 2019:

I learnt a couple of versions ago that it is vastly better to change your install options for Revit to one of the two 'Download' methods, instead of the default 'Install Now'.   This gives you so much better control.  In fact you can change your Autodesk profile settings to default to Download instead of Install Now.  Despite this, the 'Content' is not included in that, and still gets downloaded during the install - but once you have the content from your first install you can uncheck that option for any future installs.

Once you have downloaded the software, you can run the install from your own network or C drive when it suits you, not as part of the initial download process.

The Install

The Autodesk install Help Files section on 'Changes to Installation' states the following:

If you are responsible for installing or upgrading the Revit or Revit LT software to a new release, learn about recent changes to the installation process.

• Advanced material library: In addition to the standard material library, an advanced material library installs with Revit. This library provides new appearance assets that use physically-based definitions, optimised for use with the Autodesk rendering engine.
• Microsoft® Windows® 10 must support .NET Framework 4.7: Older versions of the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system (Version 1507/Build 10240 and Version 1511/Build 10586) do not support .NET Framework 4.7, which is required for Revit 2019 and Revit LT 2019. Before installing the software on a computer that uses one of these versions of Windows 10, upgrade to a newer version of the operating system. 

Advance Materials Library

This is one of the new features of Revit 2019 - you may not use it yet, but it is sensible to install it anyway.  The default setting is to install it, but with no explanation of what or why - see the Autodesk help files for an explanation of 'Physically based appearance Assets'.

Windows 7

I guess that means that Autodesk does not support Windows 7.  Many large companies have not yet switched to Windows 10 (thankfully - I am not a fan at all, for many reasons, not to be discussed here) - but it should not be a problem.  We hope!

 .NET Framework 4.7  was released for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 10 in May 2017, so if you have updated your copy of Windows 7 since that date, you should be OK?

Install Settings

The first thing to do (after confirming the install language, which apparently I could not change), is to configure the install settings - particularly the first section below 'Autodesk Revit 2019'

Discipline

The word 'Discipline' has many meanings in the English language.  There are two relevant meanings here:
1.  Which sector(s) of the construction industry do you work in?  The default setting is 'All'.  As an architect, I'd like to be more specific, so that I only install stuff relevant to me, so I choose 'Architectural'.  Therefore I am not remotely interested in MEP Fabrication.  A structural engineer might feel the same way, as might a landscape architect or urban designer, or interior designer (oops, they don't even get an option here).  For the third year running, MEP Fabrication has two install options - metric and imperial - both are ticked by default, which means that I have to be on my toes and manually untick the options (unless I happen to be an architect who designs/fabricates duct or pipe installations in both the USA and almost any other country you care to name).

2.  Discipline can also mean adherence to defined standards and procedures; or following through to make sure that your work is neat and tidy, and does not adversely affect others.  When I choose a construction industry discipline, I do not expect to have to manually follow through to prevent getting redundant stuff installed on my computer.   Who knows what else is being installed that I don't want?  Clearly whoever has been managing the installation software at Autodesk for the last three years does not understand the second meaning of discipline.  Perhaps they need to be administered a severe dose of the third meaning of discipline (which I won't elaborate on here!).

Talking of 'Neat and Tidy' I like my local files to go somewhere other than 'My Documents' - so this is a good chance to set that rather than messing about with Revit.ini files.

Content

By default, you should get your own country content.  We used to get a choice but now the installer is obviously burrowing into your computer to figure it out for you.  However, you can change that.  In fact you can choose more than one set of content.  Last time I did that, I found an amazing wealth of component libraries in some other country contents - but you need a lot of time to sort through that stuff, so I would only recommend doing it once during your BIM manager career!

Shared Components

Shared with other Autodesk products like Inventor & 3DS Max, I guess?  The 'Medium Image Library' now has an advanced version for 'Physically based appearance Assets', which is a new feature in Revit 2019.

Pretty Pictures

Autodesk obviously expect us to sit and watch the install process so they have kindly provided a series of pretty pictures of things that bear almost no relevance to the construction industry, with only one exception - you figure it out.  None of them could possibly have been created in Revit, that is for sure.  Yes, I know that this part of the installer is not controlled by the Revit team, but it says something about Autodesk as a company.

Autodesk Desktop App

This pretty picture is a special treat - because it happened to pop up while installing a piece of software that I absolutely do not want, and was not given a choice about!  Autodesk Desktop App.

Autodesk describes it as: "A powerful cloud-centric software delivery solution that helps you discover and manage updates for Autodesk products".  That says it all as far as I'm concerned - "Out damned software".  In the last few years the general consensus has been that it doesn't work well, so I shall leave it to others to test it out, while I remove it.  I find that social media is a more reliable way to find out about Autodesk updates anyway.  As a BIM Manager in a multi-license office you almost certainly don't want this software on all computers, as you'll want to control when updates are pushed out rather than allowing a free for all in the office.

Installation Complete

On completion, all the things I selected were successfully installed, along with one item I did not select (as described above).

Launch Now

 I clicked on the 'Launch Now' button, and it asked me to select a license type (fair enough), then prompted me to log in.  Why?  I don't want to log in when I start up Revit - not unless I'm using BIM360 or whatever it is now called (it will most likely be renamed by the time you read this).   So I cancelled the log in and launched it from the desktop icon.  No log in prompt this time, thank goodness - just the license dialog.  Activation went smoothly, using my license number & key.

Dynamo - Warning

Unlike the Revit 2018 installation, the latest build of Dynamo was automatically installed:  1.3.3
Refer to DynamoBIM blog

Be warned:  this version of Dynamo will not work with Revit 2016.  When I fired up Revit 2016, I could not find Dynamo.  Could the Revit 2019/Dynamo 1.3.3 installer have uninstalled it automatically?  Yes, it could, and it did.

If you still need 2016, you need to protect your older Dynamo install for Revit 2016 before you do the Revit 2019 install.  I tried this rather dodgy workaround - from what I read on the DynamoBIM forums:
Make copies of the relevant files - I think it needs to be these files (assuming Dynamo 1.2):

• Dynamo.addin file in the C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2016 folder
• These two folders:
  C:Program Files\Dynamo\Dynamo Core\1.2
  C:Program Files\Dynamo\Dynamo Revit\1.2\Revit_2016

Then replace those files after the 2019 install has stripped them out.  Of course it means that the uninstaller won't work for that version of Dynamo, so you'll have to remember to remove them manually later.

Just to make your life even more complicated, Dynamo 1.3.2 does not support Revit 2019.  That means there is no version that supports both 2016 and 2019 - not even a brief overlap while you are updating packages and code.  So if you are still running Revit 2016, don't even think of installing Revit 2019 until all your projects are upgraded to some intermediate version - or you go straight to 2019 and spend 24 hours fixing all your Dynamo stuff!  That doesn't sound like a recipe for a peaceful life to me.

Addins

It looks like we have the same Addins automatically installed as in v2018:

• Batch Print
• eTransmit
• Model Review
• Worksharing Monitor
• Dynamo
• Formit Converter (Optional)

Summary

All in all, this was a relatively painless installation process now that I know the tricks and pitfalls (apart from Dynamo pain).  It did not vary greatly compared to the 2018 install, which is nice for once.

Global Parameters Enhancement Wishlist - Revit Ideas

All my recent research work on Global Parameters has created a list of enhancement requests.  Although a lot of new global parameter features were released with Revit 2017, we only had one enhancement and one bug fix in v2018:

• Associate global parameters to Radius and Diameter dimensions (2018)
• Global parameters vs Equals dimension conflict removed (bugfix 2018)

Here is my list of enhancement requests, plus a few other ideas from other people already on the wishlist - please vote for them if you'd like these to be fixed:



Enable global parameters to associate to Array Numbers

Enable creation of an Area Reporting Parameter for use in Global Parameters

Enable global parameters to associate to Floor ‘Height Offset from Level’ system property

Allow association of global parameters to material properties of system families 

Allow access to Global parameter of linked model

Allow the use of Shared Parameters in Global Parameters

While we are on the subject of shared parameters, I really really wish we could use them in Key Schedules so please vote that up too.

Ability to "Paint" using a Global [material] Parameter

Please note that requests to enable us to associate global parameters to ALL system parameters will probably not get far because each and every one has to be programmed separately, so it is better to create a wishlist item for each parameter that you want access to (frustrating, I know).

Applying colours and Materials in Rhino for Revit Import

Following on from my previous post about importing Rhino materials in Revit 2017.1   here is a brief description on how to set up the colours/materials in Rhino:

I am new to using Rhino, so my understanding of the UI and functions is pretty basic but I managed to figure out how to apply colours and materials to objects without reading any manuals.  I am happy to be corrected if there are better ways to do this.

Once you have created an object (or multiple objects), you can select the object and view its properties.  Unless you tell it otherwise, it will be on the 'Default' layer, with Color, Linetype etc set to 'By Layer', which means that it will behave according to the layer settings.  During the new import process, Revit 2017.1 considers the default layer & colour not to be a material.

 

You can change the layer of the object from the Layer drop-down list, providing you have created new layers

By default, your file most likely will have no layers, so you need to create them, using the 'Edit Layer' function, available from the Edit menu.

Once the layers menu has been opened, it will be available under a Layers tab.  It has typical columns showing the name, show/hide, lock, display colour (just a box) and material properties for each layer.  New layers will have default settings (no colour or material defined), but these can be changed by clicking on the colour box or adjacent space under the material column.

If you are creating layers just to manage export to Revit, the names are irrelevant to Revit, but the colour and material are important - you don't need to get the colour/material right for its end use in Revit, as long as each object has a different colour, it will become a different material when imported to Revit.  The materials can then be edited in Revit.

If you expand the width of the menu it shows the material name (if defined), linetype and print width/colour - the print colour does not seem to be relevant for Revit imports.

Materials

You can define a material for use in Rhino, but the only thing that Revit takes note of is the material colour.

Rhino Material Properties

Object Properties

Normally, objects will display according the the 'By Layer' settings, which means that all objects on a given layer can have their properties changed together easily.

Object properties By Layer

You can override individual 'Display Color' for any selected object

Object properties By Object

If you choose a non-standard colour, it will show the colour name as 'Other'

SAT files

I tried exporting a coloured Rhino file to SAT format, then importing it to Revit, but sadly it did not bring the colours in as materials - so I am not sure what the trick is to assigning colours to objects in a SAT file.  I tested various ACIS versions of SAT format, to no avail.

Rhino Export SAT options

Does anyone know how to define colours for objects in a SAT file from Rhino?  Or from any other 3D modelling software?

Import Colours to Revit

For details on how these colours are imported to Revit, refer to importing Rhino materials in Revit 2017.1

• It seems that Revit uses the display colours set in Rhino, not the print colours.
• If you import two different Rhino files that have identical colour definitions, it treats them as different materials
• If you import the same Rhino file twice, it seems that Revit assigns the same materials to objects in both instances
• However, if you rename a material, or change its definition before importing the second instance, Revit will create new materials with a suffix of (2) added to the original name.  You could use this to your advantage if you want multiple instances of the same object but with different materials.

Revit 2017.1 Import Rhino Materials

Following on from my post about the new Revit 2017.1 feature 'Import 3D Shapes', I have done some more testing on how to import Rhino files with materials (colours) into a Revit family.

If you import a Rhino file that has no colours or materials defined in it, you just get a dumb object in Revit that has no capability for controlling materials.

However, one of the subtleties of the new import shape feature is that it will recognise assigned colours in the Rhino file.  It will then create a new material in Revit for each colour.

To assign a material or colour in Rhino, you can either select an object and choose a colour/material;  or else you can create layers and assign a colour/material to the to the layer, then put the object on that layer and leave its object properties set to 'By Layer'.
Once you import the Rhino file to Revit, it will take just the RGB value of the defined colour or material and use that to create a new material in Revit - any other material properties will be ignored, so don't expect textures, reflectivity or anything else.
If you do not assign a colour/material to any object by either method, it will not be given a material in Revit (not even 'Default') - so you cannot subsequently change it.  Hopefully this will change in future versions of Revit.

The materials in Revit are given names such as 'Material 2' etc.  This is a big improvement over the confusing naming of imported Autocad materials (eg. Render Material 255-255-255).

The only property that the new materials have is a 'Graphics' colour definition.

It has default 'Appearance' settings (grey), meaning that realistic or rendered views will show grey objects.

You can of course change the material definition and give it 'Appearance' colours, tints, bump maps etc. 

This will only affect the part of the imported Rhino file that had that original colour (and now Revit material).

Realistic view with only one material Appearance edited

It would make sense to rename the materials so that they refer specifically to the individual objects within the imported file.  I like to set the 'Appearance' colour to match the Graphics colour, so that not only do the material previews show in colour but also any realistic views will display the colours rather than default grey.

I have not yet succeeded in testing this functionality with an imported SAT file (as I can't figure out how to apply colours in a SAT file), but hopefully it will work as a viable alternative workflow to the old method of importing/linking SAT files, as described in an earlier post.

For details on how to apply colours/materials to objects in Rhino, click here