Spring Cleaning for Revit 2015

Now that Revit 2015 has been published, many of our customers are starting to do their early prep work in advance of their official migration to Autodesk Revit 2015. In light of this work, here are a few simple spring cleaning tips for your consideration.

Before You Migrate to Revit 2015...

Family Audits

1. Open your office standard family (.RFA) files created in the past one year.
2. Launch Ideate Explorer for Revit.
3. Review all contents and delete anything that surprises you.*
4. Purge and then repeat to ensure nested content has been removed.

Template Audits

5. Open your office standard template (.RTE) files.
6. Launch Ideate Explorer for Revit.
7. Review all contents and delete anything that surprises you.*
8. Purge and then repeat to ensure nested content has been removed.

If you don’t have time to review all your new content (hah!) then at least be sure to audit your templates and your Titleblock and Annotation families, as they often have non-standard lines and sometimes an import or unexpected raster image may sneak in.

*Use Ideate Explorer’s built-in audit filter to find the most common culprits.

A toilet and title block family as seen by Ideate Explorer within the Revit Family Editor

Upgrading a Revit Project to Version 2015

Important information from Autodesk about the upgrade process, new to 2015.

Autodesk’s best practices when upgrading your project.

About the Author

Glynnis Patterson, NCARB – Director of Software Development Glynnis is a Registered Architect and has worked with the BIM industry since 1998. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, she has worked as an architect, educator and construction site manager. Glynnis is currently the Director of Software Development Services at Ideate, Inc. and continues to work with AEC clients across the nation, developing, and implementing best practices solutions. In her spare time Glynnis does volunteer work and builds Lego projects. @GVPinNJ

Windows XP and the End of an Era

Do you remember the first day you started using Windows XP? I do, and it was like taking a giant “jump to lightspeed” leap into the future of operating systems. It was a whole new world of richly rendered windows, dialog boxes, and that Start button. That start button was crystal clear! All this magnification coming from what seemed like the dark ages of Windows 95 (I did miss that Weezer video, however…). 

Although my XP days seem like they were yesterday, it was over 12 years ago Microsoft released Windows XP to the public. As all good things must come to an end, today Microsoft officially ends support for Windows XP, which for many users was Microsoft’s greatest OS of all time.

So, what does that mean for you as an Autodesk software user and an Ideate customer? Ideate Technical Support will still provide assistance for Autodesk software supported on Windows XP to the best of our ability, but can not guarantee a full issue resolution. 

Autodesk 2014 products were the last to be supported on Windows XP. 2015 products are supported on Windows 7 and 8/8.1 only. For Ideate’s OS recommendations, take a look at our Migrating to Autodesk 2015 software doc.

For those of you that are still holding onto those glory days of XP, or those unable to make that next OS jump, I assure you the future is bright. Windows 7 in my opinion is a great operating system. I’m even starting to get a little warm and fuzzy about Windows 8.1. Although it maybe a little early, I’ve already heard some interesting hints of Windows 9 on the horizon.

Farewell Windows XP. You will always have a special place in our hearts, but it's time we move on.

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Derek Wielkopolski
Ideate Technical Support Manager/Application Specialist
Derek holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Roger Williams University, Rhode Island. He is experienced working within the AEC industry from concept design through construction administration for both small and large scale projects. As Ideate’s Support Manager he ensures a timely and quality response to support requests and questions. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dwielk

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