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For those of you who have spent any time rendering, you probably have discovered that the entire process requires a lot of time and patience. After spending a considerable amount of time perfecting your settings and running many test renderings, nothing can be more frustrating than having lighting issues. As an AEC Applications Specialist and technical support specialist with Ideate, Inc., I have seen many cases in which people complain that their renderings in Revit are too dark or completely black when completed. If you are running into this issue, you may want to look at some key lighting settings to determine if they are the root cause. Verify the following four items and you shall see the light:
STEP 1
Verify that you have the appropriate Lighting Scheme selected for your view. Revit offers (6) different lighting schemes to choose from. For example, if you select the scheme called ‘Interior: Sun only’, then you will not be able to render your view with any artificial light fixtures.
STEP 2
Once you have determined the appropriate Lighting Scheme, verify that your Light Groups are turned on with a checkmark and that dimming is set to 1. Keep in mind that you can only select Artificial Lights when a Lighting Scheme contains Artificial Lighting. For example, if you select the scheme called ‘Interior: Sun only’, then you will not be able to select any artificial lights fixtures.
STEP 3
Verify that you have selected the appropriate Daylight Portal options for sunlit interior renderings. In order to select the Daylight Portal options, first click the Edit button under the Quality setting of the Rendering dialogue box. This will then open the Render Quality Settings dialogue box. Next, select which rendering quality you want (Draft, Low, Medium, High or Best) then click the Copy to Custom button. This option will then allow you to select which openings you would like to have daylight come through.
STEP 4
If your Artificial Lights are turned on, but little to no light is coming out of the fixture itself, then verify whether your lighting fixture family has geometry, such as a diffuser, that is blocking the light source definition. If you find that there is a diffuser, check to see if the diffuser material has a transparency. If the transparency is not selected, or the percentage is very low, you will see little to no light emission from your fixture.
Sash Kazeminejad, LEED AP
AEC Application Specialist
Sash Kazeminejad brings proficiency in Autodesk solutions including AutoCAD and Revit Architecture to Ideate customers. His industry experience includes project management, IT, and staff design for Hennebery Eddy Architects in Portland, Oregon. He has completed seven divisions of the Architectural Record Exam, leads Revit workshops, is LEED AP accredited and is on track to achieve California licensure in 2013 with Oregon to follow. In his academic life, Sash was awarded a Montana AIA Scholarship, earned a BA in Environmental Design, an MA in Architecture from Montana State University (MSU) and taught Building Information Modeling (BIM) and related topics at MSU Gallatin College. As a Revit Architecture Autodesk Certified Professional, Sash provides Revit Architecture training and support for AEC firms.
Get it. Know it. Use it.
Ideate is committed to your success, and as such I would like to start to demystify your Autodesk 360 account. Autodesk 360 is an online document storage and collaboration platform. You can create folders and share files of any file type. The difference between Autodesk 360 and other online storage platforms is that it links directly to your Autodesk Software. It has specific settings that allow you to easily collaborate with other users and share software settings amongst many workstations.
In this blog, I am going to walk you through signing into an account (this is assuming your account in already created) and I am going to explain the different settings and options.
To sign into your account, click the sign in at the top of your screen, as shown in the diagram below, or you can select any of the options on the Autodesk 360 Tab from your Ribbon. Not all Autodesk software has the Autodesk 360 Tab, but all have the 360 drop down menu shown below.
Once signed in, you can manage your account settings and options through the 360 drop down menu or the Autodesk 360 Tab.
I am going to now walk you through the list in the 360 drop down menu. These options also appear on the Autodesk 360 Tab on the Ribbon. Additionally, the Autodesk 360 Tab has a share and collaborate panel which does not appear in the drop down menu, we will not cover those options specifically in this blog.
The first option is to Sync my settings with the cloud. This allows you to move to other work stations and use the same settings through your Autodesk 360 account. You can sync settings from your desktop to the cloud or from the cloud to your desktop. For example, if you have your work computer set up just how you like it, you can sync those settings to your Autodesk 360 account, and then move to another computer, login to your Autodesk 360 account on the other computer and sync those settings on to the new computer. Once you have synced your settings, there will be a check mark next to the “Sync my settings with the cloud” option in the drop down menu, and the “Sync my Settings” button on the Autodesk 360 Tab will highlight as blue. The settings that you can sync are shown in the images below.
Selecting Online Options in the Autodesk 360 drop down list opens the Online tab of the options dialog box, shown below. From here, you can select to automatically save a file to your Autodesk 360 account every time you save a file on your desktop application. If you go in and out of a lot of different files, this could quickly fill up your Autodesk 360 account. I recommend unchecking this box unless you absolutely know you want a backup copy of your files on Autodesk 360. Also on the Online tab, you can be directed to your Autodesk 360 account, and you can sync your settings.
Choosing Autodesk 360 from the drop down list or selecting Launch Website on the Autodesk 360 Tab will take you to your Autodesk 360 online account. An example of an Autodesk 360 account is shown below.
Lastly, choosing Account Details from the drop down menu opens your User Profile dialog box. From in here, you can change basic account settings such as user name, email address and password. You can also select the services tab and see how much storage space you are currently using, see what other 360 services you have access to, and check your cloud credits (shown at the bottom of the services tab). Also, you can select the Downloads tab to be directed to a download for the Autodesk 360 mobile app and be directed to the downloads subscriptions page.
Thank you for reading. We will continue to bring you information on all of the Autodesk software. Check back to our blog regularly for updates and tips and tricks for a variety of different Autodesk software.
Visit our website at www.ideateinc.com.
Kate Ming
Ideate AEC Application Specialist
Kate has a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley. Prior to Ideate, she worked at a multinational company for four years doing general civil design on large infrastructure projects. She is versed in roadway, rail, and utility design. She also has experience with utility demand analysis and Low Impact Development plans. At Ideate, Kate provides training and support for Civil 3D, AutoCAD, and Navisworks.
Get it. Know it. Use it.
