eLearning – Upcoming Revit Classes

Join the Ideate Tech Experts for eLearning - live online classes that provide your entire organization with easy access to premium education.

Upcoming classes include: 

10.3.11::Revit 201: Getting Started with Presentations

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

Click here for class descriptions, times and registration link. Questions? Contact education@ideateinc.com

Get It. Know It. Use It.

Searching for Specific Content with Ideate Explorer for Revit

Recently I spoke with a client who was wanting to search for elements within their Revit model that belonged to a level. Through the use of Ideate Explorer for Revit we were able to search in the entire project, for elements that belonged to a Level, and the search was specifically for walls. The following steps are used to find walls in the image:

• Step 1 Indicates that you are looking in the entire Project for the element(s).
• Step 2 Select that you want to look for items on a specific level.
• Step 3 Indicates what is being searched for. (this can be a category, or a keyword such as the word “Brick” in a wall, window, or family name.

Once the item is selected, use the Tools menu to show where the element is located in the project. Happy searching! If you would like to make suggestions on what you would like to see in future releases of Ideate Explorer for Revit send us your ideas.

---

Ron Palma
AEC Solutions Application Specialist
Ron has 23+ years of experience in the AEC industry as a designer, lead project designer, trainer and CAD manager. His instructional background includes Autodesk Certified Instructor, trainer, support technician, educator at Portland Community College and Clackamas Community College, and a U.S. Army certified instructor. Follow Ron @RonPalmaAEC.

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Classroom Training - Open Classes

Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.

Here are a few of the training opportunities Ideate has to offer in the coming days:

9.28-30::Portland
Revit Structure Fundamentals
10.5-7::San Francisco
Civil 3D Fundamentals
10.10-12::San Jose
Revit Architecture Fundamentals

Know your software. Sign up now!

Assess the ‘Health’ of Revit Projects Using Ideate BIMLink

During a recent review of a 16 story hospital project modeled in Revit, our Support team found something with potential to cause untold difficulties down the road. The issue would have gone completely unnoticed until problems arose if our tool Ideate BIMLink had not caught it.

The project consists of more than 500 Doors. When we created a Door link using Ideate BIMLink, we found that the ‘Link Properties’ list was showing two ‘Mark’ parameters instead of one. How could this be? The Revit schedule parameter list showed only one ‘Mark’ parameter.

Upon further review, we discovered that the information contained in the ‘Mark’ column was identical in all the Door instances except for those under one particular Door family. We began to investigate that Door family.

When we opened that particular Door family for editing, we found that someone had inserted a duplicate ‘Mark’ parameter into the family. Ideate BIMLink was picking up on the duplicate. Once the duplicate ‘Mark’ parameter was discovered, we could delete to avoid a host of conflicts and issues downstream in the project model.

We routinely use Ideate BIMLink here at Ideate, Inc. to run quality checks on Models as part of our health check service, and it is proving to be quite a useful tool in conducting these checks.

To learn more about Ideate BIMLink, please visit our website: www.ideatebimlink.com

---

Shruti Harve,
LEED AP, AEC Solutions Application Specialist
Shruti holds a Master of Science degree in Architectural Computing from University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom and is LEED accredited. Her experience includes working in Architecture and Construction firms in India and the United Kingdom as well as Structural Engineering firms in the Bay Area providing design, 3D modeling and drafting services. At Ideate, Shruti provides training and support for Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, 3ds Max, Ecotect and AutoCAD Architecture.

Get it. Know it. Use it.

eLearning – Upcoming Revit Classes

Join the Ideate Tech Experts for eLearning - live online classes that provide your entire organization with easy access to premium education.

Upcoming classes include: 

9.27.11::
Revit 301: Revit Architecture Family Editor Basics
10.3.11::
Revit 201: Getting Started with Presentations

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

Click here for class descriptions, times and registration link. Questions? Contact education@ideateinc.com

Get It. Know It. Use It.

“I Wish We Had Known This Earlier!” Dependent Views: Revit

“I wish we had known this earlier!” Those were the words the design team uttered when I showed them the “Apply Dependent views” tool as part of a Revit Consulting engagement here at Ideate, Inc. The team did not know the tool existed. It can be a real time-saver!

If you are modeling a ten story building in Revit and for plotting purposes, you have to break the views up into multiple parts, you right click on a view and Click: “Duplicate as a Dependent.” You have to do that for every single floor plan, then there are sections and elevations. If you are breaking the view up into four parts… that's right, clicking 4x10=40 times. Then, if the layout, etc. changes, that’s a whole other story!

With the ‘Apply Dependent Views’ tool you can create a set of dependent views for one view and then very easily populate it across other views. See screenshots below:

 

---

Shruti Harve,
LEED AP, AEC Solutions Application Specialist
Shruti holds a Master of Science degree in Architectural Computing from University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom and is LEED accredited. Her experience includes working in Architecture and Construction firms in India and the United Kingdom as well as Structural Engineering firms in the Bay Area providing design, 3D modeling and drafting services. At Ideate, Shruti provides training and support for Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, 3ds Max, Ecotect and AutoCAD Architecture.

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Classroom Training - Open Classes

Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.

Here are a few of the training opportunities Ideate has to offer in the coming days:

9.27-29::Seattle
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
9.28-30::Portland
Revit Structure Fundamentals
10.5-7::San Francisco
Civil 3D Fundamentals

Know your software. Sign up now!

Data What? Using Data Extractions to create a Topo Surface in Revit Architecture

On  a recent tech support day at Ideate, a case was submitted requesting help with creating a topo surface in Revit Architecture from points in an AutoCAD drawing file. There’s no direct way to do this, but there is a very useful AutoCAD tool called Data Extraction that produces a file that Revit can use to create a topo surface.

In Revit Architecture, there are two general methods for creating a topo surface. From the Massing and Site tab’s Toposurface command, users are able to Select Import Instance, or Specify Points File. The import instance is probably the easiest way to generate a topo surface from an AutoCAD drawing, however the drawing must include contour lines that identify elevations on the desired surface. If your file does not include contour lines, they need to be generated or drafted manually, which is not the easiest task in plain AutoCAD. On the other hand, if you have a point file (.CSV or .TXT) that contains point data in X,Y,Z format, option two will work for you. 

NOTE: You can create points manually in Revit, but who wants to click on each point and assign values one by one?

In our customer’s case, their AutoCAD file contained plain AutoCAD point objects (nodes with X, Y, Z coordinates) and nothing else. At this point, they had a couple of options; generate contours manually, then link the file in Revit, or create a point file from the object data and use that instead.

If only there were a way to extract object data automatically in AutoCAD...

The AutoCAD Data Extraction tool allows you to select drawing objects and generate a CSV or TXT file containing object data automatically. In  a series of dialog boxes, Objects, Properties, and File Formats are selected, then the application does the rest for you. Once it’s done, you have a point file that Revit Architecture can use to generate the topo surface.

As easy as that sounds, there are some things to consider to avoid potential errors.

1. The AutoCAD drawing must be in Decimal format before you extract the object data. Revit Architecture will only process points that are in Decimal Feet, Decimal Inches, Meters, Centimeters or Millimeters. If the file is in a different unit of measure, you may end up with fractions in your point file, which will produce an error in Revit.
2. The Point File should only have point information in it. Any extra columns or rows should be removed. Do not include any extra information like column headings or point numbers in the file. Since those are not specifically point related, Revit will indicate and incompatible data format when it sees those values. Extra columns and rows can be deleted by the user in Excel or Access once the file has been produced.
3. Revit must be in a 3D view  for the topo surface to appear. This may be common sense to the frequent Revit users out there, but I’m an AutoCAD/Civil 3D guy so that was news to me. Once I finally read the warning bubble (third time’s a charm) the surface showed up as expected.
4. Only Revit Architecture has Massing and Site tools. The functionality does not exist in Revit MEP and Revit Structure.
5. With that said, here’s how it works in the applications, starting with points in an AutoCAD file, ending up with a Topo Surface in Revit Architecture.

AutoCAD 2012 File with AutoCAD (452) Points

Start the Data Extraction command to create a new Data Extraction (.DXE) file

Select Objects or the Entire drawing for the Data Source

Verify the Object type from the Data Source

 Use the Geometry option to specify only X, Y, and Z properties from the points

 Clear any extra columns, and verify Decimal format for the data (drawing Units should be set to Decimal prior to starting the Data Extraction process)

Output .CSV or .TXT file (.MDB for large datasets and database functionality)

Click Finish to complete the process

Once the .DXE and .CSV files are generated, open the .CSV in Excel to verify the exported data. By default, the row identifying the column headings for Position X, Y, and Z are included in the .CSV file. Delete the row since it is not necessary for creating the topo surface in Revit and re-save the file.

In the Revit Architecture file, start the Toposurface command and use the Create from Import --> Specify Points File option

Select the .CSV file created from the Data Extraction and click Open, then verify the Unit format of the point file (to match the unit format of the original AutoCAD drawing) and click OK

 The infamous warning... 

Click the Green Check to complete the Toposurface process and switch to a 3D view (as the warning says) to view the completed Toposurface in your Revit file

If you’re in a situation where you need to create a point file containing  AutoCAD object data, consider the Data Extraction command in AutoCAD.

---

Matt Miyamoto, P.E.
Infrastructure Solutions Application Specialist
Matt is a licensed Civil Engineer in the state of Hawaii. Matt obtained a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has 7 years of private sector design experience which he applies in his role as an application specialist with Ideate, Inc. His project experience includes residential and commercial site development, private and public sewer, water and drainage systems, harbors improvements, and roadway improvements. While in Hawaii, Matt was involved in multidisciplinary projects for City and County agencies, State Departments, the Army COE and private developers. @MattM_PE

Get it. Know it. Use it.

AutoCAD Plotting – What Happened to the Colors?

As the Support Dispatcher at Ideate Inc. I have seen a surge of cases that center around printing in AutoCAD. In particular we have customers who are unable to print because their .CTB files are missing. Usually this has been caused by the drawing being set to use .STB files for printing instead of .CTBs. Here are the differences between the two and the particulars of switching a drawing from one type to the other.

CTB Plotting

Most users are familiar with .CTB files, or ‘color-dependent plot style tables’. These files process the drawing when printing and assign lineweights and other plot settings to printouts based on the color of the objects, which can have properties that reference the object properties.

STB Plotting

In 2000 Autodesk added an alternative print style that used .STB files called ‘named plot styles’. In this style the plot settings are assigned to a name and that name is applied to layers or specific objects. Some of these settings can be set to ‘By Object’. These will then look to the object properties, which is often set to ‘By Layer’. In this setup the colors in the drawing only affect the default color the object prints as when ‘By Object’ is specified for color in the named style.

Since the named styles can be applied to specific objects, the way that an object looks in the drawing may not reflect how it looks when printed. This requires test plotting or plot previews to catch problems with drawing appearance.

Starting New Drawings

There are two versions of each template shipped with the program, each associated with a different plot style. When creating new drawings, be sure to use a template that reflects the style that you want to use. The process of switching styles can become complicated in a drawing file that contains a lot of objects. We see this in support when users don’t notice the discrepancy until they try to print after making significant progress in a drawing.

Converting Colors to Named Styles

There are two steps to converting a drawing from .CTB to .STB

1. CONVERTCTB
   AutoCAD needs a .STB file to use to convert the plot settings when the drawing is converted. This .STB file must have been converted from a .CTB file, preferably the main one used in the drawing that is to be converted. This associates a color mapping to the .STB file. This conversion process is independent of the drawing that is open, converting all the colors in the CTB and consolidating them into unique styles
   (Note that a .STB file that has color mapping will not be fully editable as long as the mapping remains. It can be removed in the editor, but it will then no longer be able to convert files.)
2. CONVERTPSTYLES
   When converting a drawing, styles are applied to the layers based on their color automatically. For objects that have a color different than ‘By Layer’ the named style for that color is applied directly to the object. Objects in a converted drawing retain all of their properties.

Converting Named Styles to Colors

There is no actual conversion applied to a drawing when it is changed from .STB to .CTB. The drawing will not remember any of the named style settings. Any object that was set to a specific named style will revert to printing based on the color property. These objects will print differently and it can be difficult get the drawing to print the same as before the conversion. As a result it is recommended that these objects be identified before the drawing is converted and their color changed to match the .CTB file that will be used after the drawing is converted.

Sharing Drawings

As always, it is best practice to include the file(s) you use to plot whenever you send out a drawing. When receiving these files, use the STYLESMANAGER command to copy them into your plot style folder.

Related Command List

STYLESMANAGER – Opens the folder location of the .CTB and .STB files which should also include a link to the creation wizard. Plot tables can be edited by opening the file.

PSTYLEMODE – reports which style the current drawing is using. (1=.CTB, 0=.STB)

CONVERTCTB – converts a .CTB plot file into an .STB plot file. It is not possible to convert a .STB into a .CTB

CONVERTPSTYLES – converts the current drawing between .CTB and .STB.

PLOTSTYLE – controls the style that is applied to new objects in .STB style drawings. In most cases it is recommended that this be set to ‘By Layer’ (CPLOTSTYLE is the command prompt version.)

DEFLPLSTYLE – controls the plot style that is applied to existing layers in a pre-2000 .dwg or for ‘Layer 0’ when not using a template. (1=.CTB, 0=.STB)

DEFPLSTYLE – controls the plot style that is applied to existing objects in a pre-2000 .dwg or when not using a template. (1=.CTB, 0=.STB)

PSTYLEPOLICY – controls the plots style that is applied to existing objects in a pre-2000 .dwg or when not using a template. (1=.CTB, 0=.STB)

---

Jesika DiGregorio
Support Intern
Jesika received her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon where she worked on construction of a student-designed structure. Her work experience includes Junior Designer at an award-winning firm specializing in architecture and land planning, and Intern Architect at a firm that provides services in planning, design, construction documents and construction administration for projects of all sizes. Jesika provides online and phone technical support to Ideate clients from the Ideate Authorized Training Center in Portland, Oregon.

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Classroom Training - Open Classes

Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.

Here are a few of the training opportunities Ideate has to offer in the coming days:

9.19-21::Sacramento
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
9.26-28::San Jose
AutoCAD Fundamentals
9.27-29::Seattle
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
9.28-30::Portland
Revit Structure Fundamentals

Know your software. Sign up now!

Lidar and Points Clouds – Are You Up in the Air?

During support at Ideate, there are a lot of questions and a little bit of confusion over this topic, so I decided to blog about it. More and more customers have been requesting information on how they can work with Point Cloud or Lidar data within their Autodesk products. Depending on which application you’re using, the Point Cloud and Lidar functionality may be completely different. And, Point Clouds and Lidar Data are two different things.

LIDAR DATA

1. Lidar data is collected by Laser Scanners (sometimes referred to as Laser Scan data).
2. There are many different types of scanners and scanning methods available. The most common these days are Aerial, Ground Mounted and Vehicular Mounted scanners.
3. Lidar data files are generally raw data (lots and lots of numbers) that need to be processed or indexed before they will appear in a drawing file
4. Lidar Data files are usually very large and contain thousands, or millions, or billions of points.
5. There are many different file formats for Lidar Data. Not all formats work with all programs.
6. Lidar data files sometimes include more data than necessary. Different applications can be used to filter the data before importing it into your file.  Trimble RealWorks has the ability to process raw data from Trimble scanners and output a Point Cloud file format for direct import.
7. Scanners on today’s market now include color sensitive lasers. Color information can be included with a scan to assign a color to each point, creating a more realistic appearance for the point cloud.

POINT CLOUDS

1. Point Clouds are created from Lidar and other point data sources, and are usually in database format for Autodesk applications.
2. The common Point Cloud files used in Autodesk products are .PCG and .ISD (ISD files also have associated PRMD and IATI files) but there are others out there.
3. The latest releases of AutoCAD Civil 3D will process raw Lidar data, allowing users to create a point cloud database (ISD format). AutoCAD based products, Revit products and Navisworks can also process some forms of raw data.
4. Civil 3D works on a different processing engine from the rest of the applications, so the results will vary depending on what application is used, even if the same source file is used.
5. Civil 3D Surfaces can be created from Point Cloud data
6. Point Clouds may appear in color IF the scanned data included color readings.

Here’s an overview of what you can expect from the different 2012 Autodesk Applications. You may be surprised by how many of the current Autodesk products include Point Cloud and Lidar functionality.

 

The screenshots below are some samples of what you may see when opening or processing point cloud and laser scanned data in some of the Autodesk applications. The source file is 760MB, in PTS format and includes roughly 18 Million points. This file took just under 20 minutes to process on a 64-bit Windows 7 machine with 8 GB of RAM.

In these examples the PTS file was used to create a Point Cloud (ISD) database in Civil 3D. The resulting ISD database was then opened in the respective applications. In Navisworks, the Civil 3D drawing (DWG) was opened directly rather than the ISD database.

Because Revit products do not support ISD format files, a PCG created from a laser scan of a parking lot was used.

Civil 3D 2012 used to “create” a Point Cloud (ISD)
from PTS file

ISD File (created by Civil 3D) Opened in AutoCAD 2012

Civil 3D DWG file (with saved Point Cloud)
opened in Navisworks Manage 2012

PCG (ISD Files are not supported in Revit) file
inserted into Revit Architecture

As you can see, the results of importing and processing Point Cloud or Lidar data will vary depending on what application is used. For best results, identify the type of data you are working with ahead of time to make sure it’s compatible with your application of choice.

Happy Scanning! 

---

Matt Miyamoto, P.E.
Infrastructure Solutions Application Specialist
Matt is a licensed Civil Engineer in the state of Hawaii. Matt obtained a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has 7 years of private sector design experience which he applies in his role as an application specialist with Ideate, Inc. His project experience includes residential and commercial site development, private and public sewer, water and drainage systems, harbors improvements, and roadway improvements. While in Hawaii, Matt was involved in multidisciplinary projects for City and County agencies, State Departments, the Army COE and private developers. @MattM_PE

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Have You Lost Your Way in Revit?

We had a support case from a client who was trying to use Shared Coordinates on their project but kept crashing the project. Upon closer inspection of the project, they had found that they had deleted the Project Base Point and the Survey Point for their Revit project. Now you cannot simply highlight these items and delete them, the process is a little more involved.

When a Revit project is opened to using Worksharing, Grid lines and Layers are assigned to a Workset named Shared Levels and Grids, all other geometry/elements are assigned to a Workset named Workset 1. This includes the Project Base Point and the Survey Point. If these items are selected you can reassign the Workset they belong to just like all other geometry/elements. Assigning these two points to a new Workset now allows the elements to be deleted if the Workset is deleted. This evidently was what happened to our client. With no Project Base Point or Survey Point, the Shared Coordinates did not know how to work causing the file to crash.

The only recourse we could find, was to start a new project, and begin the laborious task of copy/pasting geometry/elements from one file to the next. Note that this method does not include the Worksets the geometry is assigned to in the original file.

So in parting, the next time you are setting up Worksharing in Revit, and begin moving geometry around, if you feel the need to move the Project Base Point and Survey Point, you may want to move them to a Workset such as the Shared Levels and Grids that will not be deleted.

---

Ron Palma
AEC Solutions Application Specialist
Ron has 23+ years of experience in the AEC industry as a designer, lead project designer, trainer and CAD manager. His instructional background includes Autodesk Certified Instructor, trainer, support technician, educator at Portland Community College and Clackamas Community College, and a U.S. Army certified instructor. Follow Ron @RonPalmaAEC.

Get it. Know it. Use it.

eLearning – Upcoming Classes

Join the Ideate Tech Experts for eLearning - live online classes that provide your entire organization with easy access to premium education.

Upcoming classes include: 

9.6.11::Revit 201: Worksharing Best Practices

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

Click here for class descriptions, times and registration link. Questions? Contact education@ideateinc.com

Get It. Know It. Use It.