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!

Announcing new Revit training category at Digital-Tutors

This past summer I was honored to be invited to be a Guest Tutor at Digital-Tutors. Digital-tutors has a wide variety of professionally crafted tutorials on topics like modeling, lighting, texturing, dynamics and more with tools like 3DMax, Maya, Inventor, Sketchbook Pro,  Mudbox, Photoshop, Rhino and most recently, Revit!

Digital-tutors is a seasoned provider of eLearning targeted towards Professional CG, VFX & Digital Arts for the Movie and Gaming industries. This month they released their new Architecture-focused Computer Aided Design tutorial category and a few of the best pros in the industry including Kelvin Tam, and Pierre Derenoncourt, have joined me on Digital-tutors to kick-off the first release! 

Sign-up for a free trial at Digital-tutors and learn how I created the Philadelphia Rowhouse in the picture above!

Cheers,

Craig Barbieri

Revit Hardware?

Over the years I have seen this question pop up pretty consistently, and that is the "Hardware" question. "What's the best workstation for Revit". I'm not sure if you are aware of it but there's a relatively new page on Autodesk's website that helps you find suitable hardware for Revit, and other Autodesk software as well.

There's a good description of it here: Without A Net

With the advent of Cloud computing there are many more options that include virtual workstations, "Private Clouds" and so forth that should be considered an option because they can be easily expanded for little cost and is considered a "Capital Expenditure" which can be billed to a job, versus the firms overhead, or your pocket book.

A rookery of folks on the LinkedIn Revit Users discussion board commented on the question of hardware and provided a slew of opinions for you if you are interested. This rookery included a few folks from BIM9 and Advance 2000, who offer cloud services.

Cheers

What Revit Wants: Repurposing the Autodesk USB Media

What Revit Wants: Repurposing the Autodesk USB Media

If you happen to have a 16Gb or 32Gb 2012 Autodesk Design Suite USB thumb drive gathering dust in a drawer, I repurposed one (after backing up the data) by using the following tool … after reading Luke’s handy post and a handful of the comments:
Formatter.zip
It’s a simple tool with one button. I make no guarantees or warranties but it worked for me.

Cheers

Noteblock for tracking comments in Revit

This is one of those ingenious uses of the tools in Revit to make collaborating better:
BIM Troublemaker: Comment Tracking Using Noteblock Scheduling