Converting Wall-based casework to Face-based in Revit

Recently there was a need for a custom piece of Revit family casework which was inadvertently made using a wall-based family template. I came across this post about switching lighting families from wall hosted to face-based and with a little tweak, made it work for casework.

This is how you do it.

1. Open up the family you need to convert to face based. Note the "Host" is currently set to "Wall" below.

2. Click on the "Family Categories and Parameters" button

3. Change the Category type to "Lighting Fixtures"

[We do this because the Copy-monitor function, which is a step in the process, only works on certain family categories]

4. Now, create a new project and load the family into it. Save the project as "Wall-hosted family.rvt"

5. Create another new project and link in the "Wall-hosted family.rvt" file.

6. On the Collaborate tab click "Copy Monitor" and "Select Link", and select the file you linked in.

7. Click the "Copy" Tool and select the Casework family, then click "Finish"

Ok, now here's the last part. 

8. Make sure the family isn't already open. Select the family now live in the project and click "Edit Family"

9. When the family opens up, click the "Family Categories and Parameters" button again to change the Category back to "Casework" and note that the Host is now set to "Face", woohoo!

10. Save your family file as an .RFA file in your library and you are done!

Trash the project files unless you've got more to convert. You can load multiple families into the project for this process if needed but you'll have to edit each one independently and save.

Cheers!

BIM Perspectives - NY May 29th

Join me in NY at the BIM Perspectives event, where I and a number of Industry professionals will be speaking on BIM in the Practice of Architecture and Engineering:

Building Information Modeling (BIM) Perspectives is a series of events that we hold in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. In this event, you will hear from various members of multi-disciplinary project teams about their best practices for using BIM as a basis for a collaborative design and construction process. You will learn about the challenges and benefits of implementing BIM technology from the perspective of leading local and national AEC practitioners. This year's theme for BIM Perspectives New York is "Collaboration," focusing on the entire project team. From the property owners and facilities professionals, to the architects, engineers, construction, and specialty contractors, we will investigate new ways to accelerate innovationon. We will examine how cloud based and mobile collaboration are empowering extended team members and enabling flexible and dynamic project workflow.    REGISTER NOW When: Thursday, May 29, 2014 8:00 am – 1:00 pm EST Where: McGraw Hill Auditorium 1221 Sixth Avenue New York, NY 10020 Credit: Microsol Resources is an Approved Provider through the AIA/CES and will provide a Certificate of Completion for 3.5 AIA LUs and PDH for this seminar. Cost: There is no cost but you need to register to participate FEATURED PRESENTERS Safiy Abdur-Rahman, Director, Integrated Building Solutions | BIM, NYC DDC Ian Atkins, Associate Principal, Firmwide BIM Application Manager, KPF Craig Barbieri, Design Technology Manager, Pennoni Luciana Burdi, Deputy Director for Capital Programs, Massachusetts Port Authority John Cannistraro, President, Cannistraro Erik Churchill, Project Manager, SHoP Construction Jon David, Regional Manager | Virtual Design and Construction, Turner Construction Laura Handler, Director of Service Design & Strategy, Tocci Building Companies Stephen Jones, Senior Director, McGraw Hill Construction Jan Leenknegt, BIM Manager, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) Robert Mencarini, Principal, Array Architects Ken Murphy, BIM Director, Thornton Tomasetti Joe Romano, Principal, Vice President, Langan Shawnita Sterett, Director of Infrastructure, Autodesk James Vandezande, Principal, HOK They will be discussing the following topics and more:    REGISTER NOW Microsol Resources has been delivering integrated solutions to the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries for 25 years. It is a recognized leader in building information modeling (BIM) technology solutions, as well as an Autodesk Platinum Partner with offices in New York, NY and Philadelphia, PA, with a professional staff of BIM/CAD Applications Experts focused on supporting the AEC community.

Design Technology Summit (DTS)

You may know that I'm involved in the RTC DTS Organizing committee and I'm excited to say that the 2nd DTS is almost here. If you don't know about the DTS, info can be found here.

Reposted from the Design Technology Summit blog:

It’s less than a week away now, here’s a little update. If you are already registered to attend you should have received an email recently too. If you haven’t please let the Secretary know as soon as you can.
If you are still interested in attending registration is full, with 27 companies being represented. We may have an open slot however. Keep in mind that the focus is biased toward firms with 100+ staff and/or multiple sites. If you’d like to make it even though it is last minute please contact the RTC Secretary.
We’ll kick off the event on Wednesday evening with some networking. We’re going to be doing a little Design Technology speed dating, yes it will be as geeky as that sounds, but it should be a good ice-breaker to help get conversations going.
Thursday we will focus on establishing our small groups, something new that we will start this time around. Each small working group will address these topics: Innovation, Collaboration and Management.

The small group leaders will be:

• Collaboration – Lee Miller – HOK
• Innovation – Josh Emig – Perkins & Will
• Management – Robert Yori – SOM

On Friday our small groups will report back to the full group on their topics. Going forward they’ll be focused on them for the next 6-9 months and they’ll set the expectation for what kind of deliverable the full group should expect to see at future sessions. Each group will prepare draft reports for their Bucket and make them available 1 month prior to the Summer DTS (June) meeting which is co-located with RTC NA in Schaumburg, IL (near Chicago).

We will also strive to solicit and include input from people that were not able to join us this time.
We’re very excited to have the HP/Nvidia team as a sponsor, for DTS as well as a Platinum Global Sponsor for RTC overall. A special treat, they’re taking us up to Fort Collins on Friday afternoon for a behind the scenes tour (NDA required) of the HP R&D Facility located there. This should be very interesting and I’m sure we are all looking forward to it.
In June we’ll get back together just before RTC begins. It will be an opportunity for the full group to hear back from each of the small groups and then discuss each major topic in a large group format. Going forward we envision our Winter meetings as our Small Group meeting and then the Summer meetings being our Large Group meeting. We’re also hoping to find a way to present what DTS has been working on to RTC attendees during each RTC event.

We expect that the Summer meeting will be either 2 or perhaps just 1-1/2 days. We’re still working on scheduling it around some of the RTC related activities currently being planned for the Wednesday prior to the official conference start on Thursday. RTC is hoping to have something special sorted out and naturally we want DTS attendees to be able to take part too. More news on that when it becomes available.

RTC’s Design Technology Summit is proudly sponsored by our Platinum Global Sponsor -  HP|NVIDIA

We are also very pleased that Global eTraining has joined RTCDTS as a Bronze Sponsor

BIM infographic

I came across this infographic the other day on the Line/Shape/Space blog. I always find new metrics/statistics on BIM interesting and you may find this interesting too.
Enjoy!

Click for Full Size image

Revit viewport arranger

This looks darn handy. It's a Revit 2013 add-on utility that arranges your viewports in Revit. You may already now some of the keyboard shortcuts like WT for window tile, ZA for zoom all, and Ctrl-Tab for switching between open windows, but this utility gives you even more handy flexibility in arranging windows. It's called Palladio X and it's free, thanks to the folks at Mensch und Maschine Software SE. I like the classic architectural reference in the name.
Check it out here on the Autodesk App Exchange.

Left: Revit managed viewports     -     Right: Palladio X managed viewports

Nicely stacked viewports...

Now if you are working on a large project, keeping this many windows open may decrease your performance and may not be a good idea. It would be a good idea to close the ones not in use. That being said, there are lots of working scenarios where this utility would be very handy. If you try it out, leave a comment. Thanks to Markb for posting this to Revitforum.org
Cheers

AIA Philadelphia TAP Announcement

In the AIA Philadelphia Chapter newsletter that was published July 27th 2011, the AIA announced the creation of the Philadelphia TAP group. I am posting this here because Revit currently plays a major role in the technology of the AEC industry and will most likely be a consistent thread of commonality weaving through the many topics of discussion. Follow the link to read the announcement. The announcement describes the need for a Technology in Architectural Practice(TAP) discussion in Philadelphia, it's affiliation with the National TAP group and identifies it’s Groupspaces website and contact information.
The announcement also requests nominations for Advisory Board members and encourages membership by all industry professionals in the Philadelphia area. If you are in Philadelphia, join the discussion here.

Package your Revit projects in a jiffy

Check out eTransmit for Revit, in the Labs now. A much appreciated tool provided by our friends at Autodesk. It's described as follows:

• Copy and detach a Revit model and associated files to a single folder for internet transmission. This removes the typical error messages when you copy central files using the operating system.
  
• Locate dependent files automatically and include them in the transmittal folder, reducing the possibility of error. All dependent files are automatically converted to use relative paths to ensure that the dependent files can be located by the model.
  
• Choose to include related dependent files such as linked Revit models, CAD files, DWF markups, decal images, and external keynote files. You can transmit any Revit (.rvt) model that has been upgraded to Revit Release 2012.
  
• Transmit models that are using file-based worksharing or server-based worksharing. eTransmit for Revit will also work with non-workshared Revit models.

There are some known issues and Revit 2012 Web Update 1 is recommended.

Rendering in the Cloud - Project Neon for Revit 2012

Check out Project Neon for Revit 2012.
http://neon.labs.autodesk.com/index.aspx
David Light -has a great post on this.

Natasha Luthra in my office ran a few images using our In house projects and the results were impressive. Other than a slight lag in accessing the server (apparently they are slammed with requests) the rendering itself took only a few minutes and even allowed her to add a few environment maps after the image was rendered. Best of all, she could continue to work on her project while the "Cloud" rendered her image.
According to #jvandezande this morning at about 10:30, it is currently having an issue with anyone who updated to SP1 but he says they are working on fixing it.