Monday, March 29, 2021

LESSON LEARNED IN MARCH 2021

 We created a drawing sheet that only contained text, no graphics and thus no need to call out the scale in the title block and the default value of "As indicated" was not up to par.

The solution was to add two yes/no parameters to the title sheet with one linked to the other.  The first parameter "SCALE NOTE ON" was  tied to the scale note label. Both parameters are instance parameters.

Next we placed a text box and tied visiblity state of the text to "SCALE NOTE OFF".


The scale label is displayed when "SCALE NOTE ON" is true.


The custom text box is displayed with "SCALE NOTE ON" is false.

Mission accomplished! 




Monday, March 8, 2021

After ten years of nothing...a rebirth!

 After spending nigh on a decade at an excellent consulting firm, doing a bit of this and that, I decided to transition out of that world and into the construction world.

To be specific, the precast concrete world.

All new to me.

I knew one thing...I did NOT want to start off this new position using the same old 2D drafting program that we all love and hate.  After spending nearly five years implementing Inventor to create construction documents, the last thing I wanteed to do was go back to using 2D drafting package to detail and extract materials.

I wanted to continue working with 3D representations which can be then be leveraged to both extract materials and create the construction documents, or in my case, production and erection documents.

Ten years, a lot has changed with Revit.  This blog will (hopefully) document the learning process as I attempt to create an engineering and detailing department from ground zero while leveraging Revit to assist in the process.

What I learned this month, how to properly add in the weight with units to a schedule for a generic model.

First off...just like Inventor, Revit is unit aware. 

The key is creating a field with the proper units.  

The Structural Discipline contains the proper type.

Provide a memorable name and the proper formula.


You can then select the desired units from the Formatting tab.


Units with the value!

That's all for this post, more to follow.  



Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Column and Base Plate Tags...

In the office where I currently reside/work the column and base plate tags are called out skewed (rotated) 45 degrees.  As shown below...


The OOB tags, while nice, don't match...so a googling I went to see what others have done in the past...

This thread on the AUGI forums has several options being discussed.  I went with the last option, four family types, one for each quadrant - seemed to match the current office "standard".

Shared parameters had already been added to the column family, for the base plate mark, and size parameters (width, length, thickness, anchor rod diameter, and anchor rod quantity).

Yes/No parameters were added for each state and were then linked to the Family Type so that selecting the quadrant was done by selecting the desired family.

Not being able to shift the tag around (as you can with a leader) is the main drawback - if push comes to shove, specific tags could be switched to a tag with a leader on a case by case basis to improve readability.

Of course, it wouldn't be that easy, three of the four look fine, but the top-left tag doesn't seem to want to behave, it's not aligning as the other three tags at the end of the call-out line.


I'm calling it good for the moment, and now I'm off to try to get a key schedule to work with the base plate schedule, but that's a post for another day.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

How does the saying go... "The Road to Hell is paved with...

...good intentions".  Yes, I started this blog back in November of 2010, but I was too busy learning Revit Structure on the job...too do much posting.

Now we've begun another Revit Structure project, and as usual, the schedule is accelerated. So I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to try out the latest Revit to RAM SS link...it sort of worked.


It didn't keep the polar grids together, i.e. the circular grids came across in a polar grid, but the radial grid lines were placed in a ortho grid family.  The concrete walls came thru mostly complete, but I need to pay more attention to the multiple levels from Revit being turned into multiple layouts in RAM SS, making it difficult to easily move multi-story walls or columns.


The lower roof/slab (Green Roof) is warped, due to our initial (incorrect) approach to creating the slope, but, we did manage to slope the upper slab (successfully) with the top quadrant of the arc being the high point sloping down to an angled (in plan) wall.



For whatever reason, we've decided (or rather the Architect) to not have any orthogonal connections, (or so it seems).  Hopefully the second framing pass will allow some optimization of the beam placement.