Can’t schedule wall constraint - part 2

Following on from last weeks post about not being able to schedule the wall constraint, I noted it can be done via the API; it can also be done via an odbc export or even in tool such as Ideate BIMLink. Now, I am no API guru, so I had call on my good friend & fellow CASE Inc colleague, Don Rudder to help me out. Fortunately, I come up the problems & shoot them over to him, for him to weave his magic! So this is a sneak peak at a tool which will be released, hopefully, in December as part of CASE-apps. The tool in essence allows you to get access to any parameter from any category & pass it to a target parameter.Steps are:-

• Select a category
• All parameters can be used as the source for data
• Only Non Read-Only Text parameters can serve as the target (where the data from the source will be sent)
• Select a data format option (human readable would be 2’-6” as opposed to 30.0)
• Click OK

When the tool is run, if it encounters an group, it will throw up the following warning message as it tries to ungroup the elements on the fly & write the data. If you have lot of groups, this could take some time to go through clicking the “ok” button, however it will be quicker than manually inputting the data.

A resulting dialog shows a count of errors will then be displayed.

 

Panic in the streets of London!

Any Smiths fan will recognise this line ;-)…..so one of our BIM coordinators contacted me today. Panic! “Something weird is happen with all our filled regions! They were correct, now they are masking everything! They are set to transparent, but they still don’t display correctly”….so they wanted them to display like this…

“They are displaying like this on all our sheet views! What the hell? We just can’t afford to have this sort of thing happen, we have a major deadline.”

Not sure why this is happening, as the filled region is indeed set transparent. It seems like it got confused between the 2 settings of transparent & opaque in the filled region type properties. I am positive I have seen this issue before. Anyway, some further investigation & I noted the view was set to wireframe. Change back to hidden line & the problem was “Panic” over, now its time to hang the DJ.

What a piece of junk!

Still working progress, but I thought I’d share. Why Vasari & Revit is my hobby as much as its my job!

Off Topic – Hobbies, BMX, Revit

So this is a little off topic, but I thought it was worth sharing. So when I’m not geeking with Revit or spending time with my family I do have a hobby which harps back to my youth! I am 80’s child at heart and one of the cool things that came out of this era was BMX! So when I have time, I like getting knackered and trashed BMX bikes and refurbishing them back to their former glory. If you don’t know much about BMX, the craze started back in SoCal in the early 70’s, but really hit the big time in the 80’s. After dropping off the radar due to the mountain bike movement, its more recently hit the mainstream once again, with BMX heros like Mat Hoffman and Dave Mirra helping to drive the sport forward. BMX racing is even an Olympic sport.  One particular firm which I have a lot of respect for is S&M Bikes, American owned, American made, these bikes have collected a cult following over the years. Anyway, a few years back I bid for a S&M Dirt Bike frame on Ebay, the image is below. I knew exactly what it was when it appeared on Ebay and was determined to win this!

Anyway, I did win and I didn’t pay over the odds. When the frame & forks arrived I stripped it of all it parts.All the value was in the frame and forks; hand made in the USA from 4130 cromoly tubing.

I then stripped it back to bare metal.

I got the frame & forks powder coated red, as near to the original RAL colour as I could. But I also wanted to recreate the decals. I managed to get the original decals off the frame ok, which I then scanned in on my Mac. After cleaning the scans up in Photoshop, I then fired up Revit! I created a new drafting view and imported the jpeg scan.

I then traced over the scan using detail lines and solid fills to end up with this exact copy of the original artwork.

I then tracked down a firm on the internet which supplied clear decal sticker paper and printed the art work using my Epson Inkjet printer.

Then all I had to do is get the decals onto the frame!

So this is the completed bike!

So the next time somebody tells you that you can’t do that it Revit, you tell em’ that Revit can even do artwork !!! BTW, if you have old bmx bike or frame, I am particularly interested in tracking down  Skyway TA frame & forks, Haro Master or Haro Sport from the mid 80’s, let me know.  :-)

Size isn’t everything

I am currently building some title blocks for one of our clients. I had just completed the A1 sheets and everything was going swimmingly….next up A0 sheet. Let me explain my process; I always use the out of the box title block templates…import a DWG, as often you are just recreating a DWG variants in Revit. Then I trace over the imported DWG add linework, parameters, logos etc. Then I copy to clip board, start yet another new template and paste in what I previously create. The reason being is I don’t want all the embedded DWG “stuff” sneaking its way into my spanking new title block.

Anyway, the point of this post is when I got to the A0 out of the box template I noticed a minor error.  So the ISO A0 size is 1189 x 841 right? The out of the box Revit A0 template is 1190 x 840…..ok 1mm is 1mm and its only small, but this really is a genuine mistake. Lets hope this is sorted for RAC 2012.

Collecting packaging

I’ve read it somewhere that there are people who collect packaging…much like people who collect say Star Wars toys or model trains; people also collect things like old cereal packages and coke cans. Weird….anyway, in the early days of Revit I started collecting old Revit installation CD / DVD packages. I recently found a version or Revit 4.1 to add to my collection! (pre-Autodesk) Mind you I am sure there are some out there who will have versions older than 4.1.

Sadly my collection hit a barrier when I went to work for the reseller as we didn’t get our software sent on media; instead it was downloaded from a secret Autodesk media website. :-) But then my media collection was always destined to meet a rapid end when Autodesk moved from supplying media to internet based distribution. Shame really, as my collection will go no further than Revit 9.1.

Getting ripped off

Now I think I’m a reasonably relaxed sort of guy (my wife would probably say different! :-) ) But a good friend of mine passed this link to me today. It would seem somebody has been passing off my blog articles as theirs. They do at least make reference to the source.

http://revitinfo.com/Revit_Forum/Entry_Details/EntryID/223.aspx?&getindoolabinfo=aboutlink

Whilst I’m not that precious about what I write about, I little bit of credit or just a quick email to say, “hi, you ok if we link to your article?” wouldn't have gone a miss. Now I would probably say no problem, just make reference to who wrote the article. I remember Steve Stafford highlighting a similar issue around 12 months back and he wasn’t exactly thrilled by it then and either am I.

Pumpkin heads to Las Vegas

Remember the pumpkin modelling competition run by Zack Kron back in October?

From this…….

To this…….

Well as a winner of the Goodest category, he has kindly produced a printed 3d version of my winning designing. Unfortunately Zack can’t be at AU in person, which is disappointing, but he is having the pumpkin model sent to AU where I will pick it up. A big thanks to Zack for this and my kids are gonna love it!

My Pumpkin wins a prize!

My thanks goes to Zach Kron at Buildz blog for running the inaugural pumpkin modelling competition! My modelling effort managed me a first in the “good” category and my collegue William  managed a first in the “mostest parametric” category, with his stunning Grasshopper Rhino pumpkin, a big UP for the HOK boys!

It was certainly a good laugh, but for me its actually a great learning exercise, because you can push the tools of your trade in a direction which you wouldn’t normally get a chance to do. This will reap benefits when you come to have to create something on a real project, not that you will see many pumpkins in my projects! :-)

I had to jump through a few hoops to get to the end solution, but I applied a bit of Revit purist approach to solving the problem, which you can view in this video. Enjoy and I hope it inspires.