BILT Speaker

BILT Speaker
RevitCat - Revit Consultant

Sunday, 20 May 2018

Revit Ideas Wishlist Voting

Autodesk created the 'Revit Ideas Wishlist' a while back - yes I know it is flawed and has a lot of rubbish on it.  However, I know that the Revit Product Managers do actually look at it and monitor the votes.  It is not the only thing that decides what goes into future Revit upgrades but it contributes to the discussion - so I like to support it, in particular the sensible ideas that are posted on it.

I do believe that we should mainly be voting for things to be done to the core software that cannot be done by API, Dynamo or Add-ins - as those things can be done quickly by others (or yourselves).

Here are some of the better ones that I think should be voted up (including some that I have posted):

Please go to the Revit Ideas forum and vote for any of these ideas that you agree with:

Model Stability (& Pins)


Allow us to change 2D extents of pinned sections - just like we can for grids and levels.  Then we could leave those sections pinned all the time and not risk losing attached annotation.

Persistent Pins - pins that reinstate themselves after you have modified the element once

Parameters


#1 wish regarding parameters is to allow Shared Parameters in Key Schedules  - this would unlock so much potential in Revit, and the API just can't get in there to solve it.

There are several outstanding Global parameter requirements:

The first is oh so simple, but would be a huge deal for us:
Enable global parameters to associate to Floor ‘Height Offset from Level’ system property

Enable global parameters to associate to Array Numbers

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

For more detail  refer to Global Parameter wishes


Stairs & Railings


There are so many things that need to be fixed on stairs and railings, that I have created a list of requests just for Stairs and Railings.

There are a couple of basic ones that just need to be done to improve stair arrows - not much more than bug fixes:

 

Families

Are you intensely irritated by the default setting for face-based family placement being 'Place on Vertical Face'?  I think that 99+% of users would like it to be changed (not to mention BIM managers who have to deal with confused users not understanding why they can't place ceiling fittings).
Vote her to  make the default 'Place on Face'

 

Form Creation

Creating forms in the Conceptual Massing Environment is fraught with problems - some of them could be alleviated by the following two capabilities:

Control profile order during form creation

Select Path during form creation

There are oh so many more things that need to be fixed in Revit - but since Autodesk concentrate on such a few, we need to target which ones would genuinely benefit the most people.  And we shouldn't ask Autodesk to spend time on things that can be done by some other means (API, Dynamo etc).

Have a look at the latest updates to the Autodesk Revit development roadmap to see what is planned or has been recently delivered.

Saturday, 5 May 2018

Revit Nurby Forms at BILT ANZ 2018 in Brisbane


I am looking forward to the next BILT ANZ Conference in Brisbane on 24 - 26 May 2018, where I will be presenting a session on creating 'Nurby Forms in Revit' - ie. creating complex forms with NURBS surfaces (double-curved), which are notoriously difficult in the Revit Conceptual Massing Environment.

In this session I will start by looking at using the Conceptual Massing Environment to create the equivalent traditional Revit 3D forms (Extrusion, Revolve, Sweep, Blend, Swept Blend), and examining the subtleties of different methods.  This will inform the next stage of creating sinuous forms in Revit, and the workarounds you'll need to overcome some of Revit's limitations.  Then I will demonstrate some techniques for creating parametric NURBS forms that you would not expect Revit to be able to handle.  Finally I will look at how to make these forms look better, as Revit is not good at displaying NURBS.  All this will be done without using any API, Dynamo or Add-ins of any kind.





Hope to see you at BILT in Brisbane for my session:  #1.3 'Create Good Looking Organic Nurby Revit Content' at 1.45 on Thursday 24th May 2018.