I’ve worked as a CAD trainer and consultant for over 17 years. During that time, I’ve seen numerous user interface changes for both AutoCAD and more recently Revit. In each case, critics have erroneously assumed that any radical screen revamp would ultimately alienate all users and sound the death knell of the product. Without exception, users adjust and the unfounded alarmism of these opponents is exposed as unjustified.

So it came as no surprise, when certain prominent and vocal members of the notorious Reviterati condemned the Ribbon as a pernicious addition to an hitherto perfect interface.

For the uninitiated, the Reviterati is that secret society (similar to the Illuminati in Dan Brown’s conspiracy theory novels) comprising veteran Revit users. By veteran, I mean over 10 or more years association from the early ‘iconoclastic’ period of this ‘insanely great’ (to quote early Steve Jobs) piece of software. Prior influence on early product development decisions doesn’t hurt either.

This conservative view of the UI betrays an underlying nostalgia that has no place in major industry. Yes, software development is a major global industry and alignment with the major players, such as Microsoft, is key to ensuring survival. Although it may be quaint to drive a DeLorean, watch your movies on a Sony Betamax and ask the grocer to re-quote prices in pounds, shilling and pence; this ethos hardly represents progress.

The unpleasant side of nostalgia is the fear of change. This is clearly seen when ‘old-school’ AutoCAD users prefer memorizing every single dimensioning variable, rather than just entering a value against the representative image in a dialog box. Or when contract draftsmen insist on installing their  personalised keyboard shortcuts from a virus-riddled floppy disc that they’ve carried around for ten years. There’s nothing wrong with these preferences. Just don’t let them become an end in themselves and a badge of CAD literacy.

What do we know of future changes to the Windows OS that will make the Revit Design Bar and Options Bar unsuitable in Windows 7 or later? Yet, there are some who feel impelled to decry the new interface as a step in the wrong direction. Since when was gaining additional drawing space a bad idea? Since when did a more task-oriented and context-sensitive screen become a hindrance to new users?

And now to cap it all off, the breakaway 2009 UI movement are happy to show us how to violate our Autodesk support agreement by running Revit 2010 in 2009 debug mode. Imagine the problems generated by a software crash in this state. You dutifully post a support request on the Autodesk Subscription Centre with a capture of your screen and journal file only to find the whole matter rejected as an unsupported customisation.

So here’s the deal, if you want progress, adapt to the new interface. You may even like it. Alternatively, under the Autodesk Previous Use Policy, running Revit 2009 is perfectly acceptable for subscription customers. But whatever you do, don’t bow to the wishes of the Reviterati by running 2010 in 2009 mode.

Many of our customers moving from 3D Plus to Revit Structure have commented on the inability to model local offsets on beams, bracing and columns within Revit Structure. The only visible  parameters within the instance properties on a beam are Side 1, Side 2 or centre. This can be rather limiting when producing a model. Fortunately, this is not a limitation of the software but a lack of forward thinking within the family files supplied with Revit Structure (see Below).

With a few simple steps and a little family editing, you can add a new parameter which will allow you to offset the physical definition of the beam wherever you want but leave the analytical model unchanged. Below I am using a Standard UB section from the Revit Structure 2010 library. Select the beam and choose edit family as shown below.

When working with the framing families it is worth noting that the Autodesk supplied families have two physical representations of the framing members. The two models are for the medium and fine levels of detail. I normally delete the medium level of detail and just leave the fine level of detail which is the framing member with the fillets.

Select the 3D framing member and then choose Element Properties. You will see that all members based on a swept profile have a Horizontal and Vertical profile offset parameter. Ironically, Autodesk have built these parameters into the profiles but have not exposed this within the framing families!

The next step is to link the Horizontal Profile Offset parameter to an instance based parameter. Click the Associate Family Parameter Button as shown below.

You will then see the Associate Family Parameter dialog box. Click the Add Parameter button and add the following parameter as shown below. It is important to make sure that this parameter is an Instance Parameter so you have control for each individual beam within your model.

Click OK a few times and then load this family into your current project. You will than be able to control the  physical position of the beam or brace using the element properties dialog box. You will have to make sure that you align the hidden detail to the web physical model in plan. Bear in mind that you can download a full library with these features and beam weights from Excitech’s Advance Content from our subscription website at http://www.excitech.co.uk/subscription/Revit_Structure2010_UKContent.asp

Enjoy,

Lawrence

The first of many tips and tricks in Revit! I have lost count how many times I have been asked how to create a 3D floor slice or section views in Revit. Although most people will revert to using the section box you can use the View Cube to achieve the same results faster. The View Cube is available in Revit 2009 and 2010 and located in the top right by default.

To create a 3D view using the View Cube the first step is to duplicate the view by right clicking over the view in the browser and choosing duplicate view. Rename this to something more suitable. Right Click over the Cube and select Orient to View. You are then presented with Floor Plans, Elevations and Sections which can all be used to define 3D Views. Below You can see a Default 3D View.

Below I have chosen the First Floor plan. If you don’t want to see the section box you can type VG and under the annotations tab you can turn the visibility off.

Hope this helps,

Lawrence

With Google Earth Pro, you can conduct mapping analysis using existing GIS files. One of the most popular GIS file formats is the ESRI Shape files.  A Shape file, having all the sub-files inside, ties the points and the table together. Google Earth allows you to import the data by importing the .shp file type. After importing the file you are able to apply a Style template and create a theme map.

In this image I used the polygons and applied height and colour from the style template to create a nice looking thematic map that indicates population values.

Visit our web site to see our Google Earth Pro accredited courseware by following the link; http://www.excitech.co.uk/training/training_courses.asp?Prod=General_CAD#General_CAD

When creating Section views you can now control how many Ordinate lines (Gray Lines) display by simply deleting the lines that are not required from the Section View. I recently explored this process and found that deviating form the UK Country Kit Styles to be a challenging at times.

In this image you will notice I only require the levels from the Centre line, both Channel lines and also the Daylight lines.

The labels on the left have additional levels that need to be deleted. But lets first look at which Band Styles I used to get the correct levels. In the image below under Bands Tab you can see the three Styles that are applied.

The GAP column has a 5.00mm value that allow the Bands to be offset on the Y-Axis away from the Section view. To get the correct Levels we need to scroll further along the and adjust the SECTION 1 and SECTION 2 columns.

To remove the unwanted Ordinate lines and labels you will need to use CTRL + SELECT, this will allow you to individually remove each ordinate line (gray lines) from your section view. In my screen capture I have selected the labels and you can see how the Cyan grips highlight all the labels. Be careful not to select the incorrect labels as this caused me some frustration in the exercise.

The rest of the Section View Labels are easily modified inside the Section View Style dialog box. The DATUM 35.000 label (Title text) as well as the ALIGNMENT label (Title content) can be modified by substituting values according to my screen capture below.

I recently tried to install Civil 3D 2010 onto my Windows XP drive, which is already struggling with tons of other CAD software. Having participated in lots of the Beta testing programs I am quite used to installations not going to plan, but this one was a real pain.

The first issue I had was that when I ran the stand-alone install, I managed to get as far as installing Design Review – nothing else was installed. The error message helpfully informs you to look at the install log for further details, where I read something like…

Install .NET Framework Runtime 3.5 sp1 Failed Failure is ignored, Result=1603

Well this wasn’t very useful, and although searching the Autodesk knowledgebase had some information on error 1603, it didn’t really help me either. I decided then to download the full .Net framework package from Microsoft, in the hope that I would get more information on why the installation had failed. The full package can be found here:

 http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/e/20e90413-712f-438c-988e-fdaa79a8ac3d/dotnetfx35.exe

After trying to install the full .Net framework package, I was able to look at the event viewer for more details on why it wasn’t installing.

It then became clear that I had some problems with Windows XP. Permissions on several directories appeared to have been “lost”, and the installer could not write to the relevant folders.

.The sensible course of action at this point would probably have been to wipe the drive and carry out a full re-install of the operating system, but I decided to see if I could salvage it – so I re-set the folder permissions and then tried the .NET installation again. This time it worked fine, and so I tried the Civil 3D installation again.

Unfortunately, Civil still wouldn’t install – another look at the event viewer shows adlmPITSetProductInformation failed. Clearly this was something to do with the licence manager, but there wasn’t enough information here to work out exactly what the problem was.

A search on the knowledgebase again took me to the following page:

Issue

While installing a 2010 product, you received the following error:

adlmPITSetProductInformation failed

Solution

The message "adlmPITRemoveProductInformation failed" may indicate a corruption in the ProductInformation.pit file.  The workaround is to manually remove this file and then run the installation process again.

The ProductInformation.pit file can be found on the workstation in the following locations:

Windows XP:
C:\Documents and settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\ADLM\ProductInformation.pit

Windows Vista:
C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ADLM\ProductInformation.pit

When I looked for the file it wasn’t there – but on a hunch I checked the folder properties and once again found that the permissions on the folder were not set. Sure enough, after I re-set the permissions the installation went perfectly.

While I was struggling with this installation I also had a problem with the Windows Installer. I found that after one attempt at installing the software, when I tried to run the installation again it was telling me that the software was already installed. However, in XP’s Add/Remove Programs, Civil 3D 2010 wasn’t listed. If this happens then there is a fix available. You can download the Windows Installer Clean-up Utility to fix the list of installed programs – but take care when using this tool. You will need to manually clean up the registry and delete any files or folders left behind by the failed installation before you can re-install it. There are full instructions on what to delete here. I used a registry clean-up tool to make sure any entries relating to Civil 3D 2010 weren’t left behind.

My advice to others when faced with these kind of installation issues would always be to consider a clean install of the operating system. However, I realise that is not always practical, and in my case I simply didn’t have time to install XP and all of the other applications I needed ready for work the following day. If you are prepared to be patient, methodical and do a bit of detective work along the way, it is possible to pin down why software applications don’t install – and the sense of achievement when you do finally get it to work is great!

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing some exciting information and processes to exchange data from Revit Structure and Revit Architecture to Inventor for the purpose of Digital Fabrication. Autodesk Labs have released a new tool for Inventor called iCopy which allows a skeletal model to be patterned across a set of parametric and adaptive rails which will allow a basic design to ‘adapt’ to irregular geometry. In the example below, I have imported a model from Revit Structure to Inventor and applied a curtain panel to the concrete frame with full manufacturing details for each curtain panel.

Watch this space for updates!

As the Contract Manager or Software Coordinator you have added new users to the Autodesk Subscription Center. Now, you need to manage this list. You will want to make sure that users have received their login details, have logged on to the center and used the facilities available to them: e-Learning, support requests and file downloads.

Users might approach you from time to time to request their profile to be reset because for some reasons, the login details they have no longer works. You may want to delete users that have left the company or moved on to a different position within the company. To do this,

1 - Go to www.autodesk.com/subscriptionlogin

2 - Go to Contract Administration

3 – Choose View/Edit Users

4 – From the list of users, click on Edit User

5 – Update Settings will enable you to make changes to the user’s access rights to e-Learning, Web Support and File Downloads; Delete User will take away the user’s rights to access the Autodesk Subscription Center.

Metal Wood Framer (MWF) is a Stud wall generator that can be added on to Revit Structure 2010 or Revit Architecture 2010 from StrucSoft solutions (see link at the end of this blog). It offers many powerful macros and editing tools to provide a stud layout model, construction drawings and CNC output for manufacture.

The first step is to create your walls and window and door openings. You do this by using any standard Revit wall, window and door style as show above. On the Add Ins panel you will find the MWF ribbon as shown below. To get a quick Stud Wall click the Create button and then select a wall in Revit.

For fast and efficient production you can create wall template files which allow you to set stud configurations based on wall styles and then use the Quick create tool which automatically applies the preconfigured styles to the walls.

Above you can see the MWF stud wall settings dialog box. You can select the basic construction configurations here. Once you have selected the create button then you will be able to set the structural members that will make up the Stud wall construction. You can set general tolerances for the timber and steel members and add in extra structural members as required. Once this is done you are then ready to create a drawing. The only setback with the drawings are that they are created as drafting views and are not associated to the model so you would need to recreate these if the stud wall changes.

The drawing and cutting lists below has been generated automatically with all the relevant tags and dimensions attached. Not bad for a few minutes work.

Obviously there is much more to the product than I have shown here but hopefully it has got you interested enough to download a trial copy.

For more information and a 30 day trial check out the link below;

http://www.strucsoftsolutions.com/mwf.asp

Have Fun,

Regards,

Lawrence

When you first signed up for the Autodesk Subscription program, your company would have named two primary representatives for your subscription. Those two primary contacts are called the Contract Manager and Software Coordinator. Depending whether you are the Contract Manager or Software Coordinator, you will have varying levels of access that I will not go into detail in this post. However both the Contract Manager and Software Coordinator will have the authority to add users to the Autodesk Subscription Center. Once added, those users will be able to follow the e-Learning tutorials, submit support requests and download product upgrades and extensions.

To Add new users:

1 – Log in to www.autodesk.com/subscriptionlogin

2 – Go to Contract Administration

3 – Choose Invite New Users

4 – You can either use the Quick Add Recipient or the Recipient List

i – If you only have a couple of new users to add, use Quick Add Recipient, enter the email address, first name, last name of the person you want to add, click on Add to List, then on Check List. The system will confirm that no errors have been found in the list you have provided.

ii – The Recipient list enables you to paste a large list of names as long as you follow the email, first name, last name format. Click on Check List to ensure that the data is loaded in the system.

5 – Select what you want your user(s) to have access to, be it e-Learning, Web Support and File Downloads.

7 – You can personalise the email to encourage your users to log to the center.

8 – Click on Send