Creating a Revit Template

This will be a repost from something i typed up for a user at RevitForum.org, but since i am always making reference to our Revit Template, some people have been asking what i *consider essential* to a decent template. Please keep a few things in mind:

1. This is just one persons philosophy. MANY people do it very differently.

2. The resulting template will be large. Again, one persons philosophy. I like to consider myself a student of process. If i can make someone faster at detailing a cabinet, they can spend more time designing a Church. Placnig a door schedule on a sheet is not something that needs talent to attend to it, you can standardize it.

3. This template is predicated on one core belief: Revit CAN be fast. CRAZY fast. But it CAN be slow, too. These tools are IN the program, to make it fast. If you dont leverage them, its mediocre through and through.

So without further hesitation, the longest post to not have any images. (Maybe ill add some later...)

Building a Revit Template

Many people I encounter wonder and inquire about the importance of having a GOOD Revit Template to start from, and I would assert that it’s the single most important thing in improving efficiency, quality, clarity, and consistency in your Projects. The following is a list (and a BRIEF explanation) of the order I PERSONALLY have gone in, when building a Revit Template. Explanations about the order will be included, and each may be expanded in to a longer topic on its own.

This guide assumes you have started with an absolutely blank file. It also assumes you have the Revit OOTB library installed somewhere.

1. Decide where your content will live. On the office network, somewhere all Revit users can access. Do this first. Make the directory. Keep your “Office Content” separate from the Autodesk content. It will help you year to year.

2. In the template, Find the origin. It may seem silly now, but when you realize it isn’t where you thought later, you’ll me bad. In the old days it meant imported a CLEAN .dwg with nothing but an X drawn at 0,0,0 Origin to Origin, marking that spot with reference planes, and pinning it. Now, you can turn on the Project Base Point / Survey point, and mark THAT with reference planes. My advice? Name them Origin N/S and Origin E/W, pin them, and call it a day. THEN, open your first blank TITLEBLOCK, and do the CAD trick, import the dwg OTO, and mark that with reference planes. Pin. Save as “1st titleblock” and close. (It WILL matter later).


3. Annotations. (Trust me, do these first. NOT doing these first is why there is a reputation that Revit cant look like your office used too) I start with the Imperial Library folder called “Annotations.” If you’re in RME or RST it is different, but I do the same thing there, with the appropriate folder. If Autodesk has one in there, chances are you need it. Edit Family, Save As (to an entirely new directory) and start making annotations that look like what you firms standards are. Note: Labels are family specific, so figure out the firm font style, size, etc, first. Make them all, then save them all in your Firms Annotations folder. Load them all in the template, and start assigning them to the system families. Remember that some annotations have funky “type settings” under Manage > Additional Settings.

Load them. People ask me (or think it ridiculous) that my template is 47MB. But let me ask you something: Are you saving anything by NOT having the Room Tag loaded in the project? No. It means loading it later. Load it now.

Note: There is a reason were doing the NON-model stuff first. Everyone jumps in head first. They get so far ahead they don’t have time to cover the basics, then they wonder why they don’t have time to cover the basics. If youre fast, you can get through all of this non model stuff in two days, and be on your way.

4. Titleblocks. You need them, to make drawings. Remember that Origin starter title block you made? That origin will always be the BOTTOM and LEFT of your title blocks. Do Save As a few times, make the sizes you need, expanding the title block to the right, and the top. I use Jpegs for images, not .dwg or Filled Regions. It has no ill effects, besides a few bizarre printing issues with KIP plotters and drivers.

5. Viewport Types. Depending on your office standard, this might be 1, or 50. Viewports are one of the system families that use embedded regular families, which mean instance parameters don’t do much (anything) for you. So the bottom line is: If youre “office drawing title” consists of “stuff on the left” and an extension line, you can do it in one Viewport Type. If it’s a series of lines of boxes or text on the right side as well, youll need a lot. We have 46. No biggie.

6. Content. Time to build some System Families. Your office probably has standardized walls. Start putting them together, and filling in the correct Type Marks. Research “Core boundary,” “Function,” “Assembly Code,” etc. All things that get left out, but which MIGHT benefit you. NOTE: The moment you have to build a wall type, you’ll use Materials. Start thinking about that, but im going to ignore it for now. Materials is too big to get on the first pass. After walls, things you should put in: Standard Floors, Ceilings, Roofs, Curtain Walls, Curtain Panels, Mullions / Profiles*, Windows. (*The OOTB Mullion profiles have it MOSTLY right. Adding in a bunch of parameters, and breaking the detail component in to 4 separate pieces, gives you a LOT of flexibility).

7. Doors. I left them out of the Content section. Break out your companies Door Schedule. If its in the schedule, and its important, you’ll need a (SHARED) parameter for it in the Door Family. Start yours from Scratch. Throw out the OOTB ones. Research Nested Panels and Nested Frames. If built correctly, all doors can schedule together: Regulars and Curtain Panels alike.

8. Cartoon your sheets, place your schedules. This may seem silly, but we just made the door schedule, right? Did we drop it on a sheet? Why not? We do it once in the template, or they do it once in every project. In fact, take this opportunity to Cartoon your set of typical drawing sheets, and to place typical stuff on them. Drawing List. Does it always go on the cover sheet? Put it there. Room finish schedule. Door Schedule. Annotation Legend. General notes. Cover images. Ceiling Plan legends. Drop it on the sheets. Once now, or once on every job. (In the “second round” we will make an entire set of ‘Design Drawings’ too…)\

9. Create some Views. There are some Views you are just ALWAYS going to have, right? Floor Plan- First Floor. RCP- First Floor. Finish Plan- First Floor. Elevations (Exterior).

10. View Types (Sections / Elevations). While youre cartooning some views, realize that not all Plans are the same. Nor are all Sections. Nor Elevations. Add a Shared Parameter or two to all view types, for browser sorting. Sort your views in to all of the different “view types” you will want: For Plans, things like: Floor Plans, Dimensional Control Plans, Enlarged Plans, Plan Details, Finish Plans. Separate them by how you would classify your drawings. For views like Sections and Elevations, make different section types, and elevation types: Building Sections, Wall Sections, Millwork Sections, Site Sections, Demolition Sections… Yes, include Demolition. True: Revit can sort views by Phase. False: This will work for demolition. Since demolition happens DURING the current Phase, your demo markers show up in all of your new drawings. Using a new type, you can separate them.

11. Filters. Here is how you separate them. Research Filters. You can select things by criterion, to either remove them from a view (uncheck visibility) or alter them. Start thinking through uses for Filters. We have about 20 that are in EVERY view, by default. Interior Finish Walls, Exterior Finish Walls, Building Sections, Wall Sections, (since annotations > sections grabs them all at once), demo sections (here is how you turn them off at once), Grids- Major, Grids Minor, Not in Contract, For Reference Only, Door Panels, Door Frames (if you nest them, and want to turn them off for Tag All Not Tagged). If you can put data in it, you can Filter for it.

12. Placeholder Links. Maybe you’ve done your first project already, maybe you haven’t. But chances are, if youre working in Revit, there is one thing you might have: Consultants Models. The BENEFIT of revit is: Everytime you link them in, you see all of the stuff everywhere! (Coordination!) The down side is: You see everything everywhere! (Levels, Grids, Analytical models, reference planessssssss). So here is what I do first: Create a blank file, for EACH disciple. File New, Save as. Do NOTHING in the file. Make one for STR, M, E, P, and FP (just in case you have a job where they are all separate). It doesn’t matter where you store the files, youll never use them again. (Mine are next to my template, but they don’t even get copied to every new project, since it doesn’t matter). Here is why were doing this: Every consultant is different, but there are certain things I KNOW I don’t want to see: Their levels in elevations and sections. Their grids in plan. Analytical models. Rigid Links. Spaces. I want to gray out the steel in RCP so I see it for reference, but it doesn’t dominate the open to deck spaces of the project. Well, if you have these links in there, you can PRESET that stuff so you NEVER have to deal with it again. Then when you get a real consultants file, Manage Links > Reload From, and it maintains the overrides.

13. View Templates. This one is the most overlooked, in my opinion. Can you survive in revit without View Templates? Absolutely. I worked in Revit for 2 years before I used VT’s, and I did fine. Once I learned to really leverage them, however, I got INSANELY more efficient. ALL of the things we did recently in the list, and some we haven’t done at all yet: Turning Filters on and Off (section types showing per view, etc), overriding certain elements, setting Level of Detail, Graphical Style, Annotations in Linked Files being turned off, and so on. Make a View Template for EACH f the view types you sorted your browser by. Different Section types, different plan types. Which plans show which elevation markers, which section markers? I prefer a view template for every view type, and I trust them enough that I should be able to reapply all of them five minutes before I print.

14. Materials and Hatch Patterns. I waited until I built my 3rd Revit Template to touch materials at all… Because OOTB stuff is so littered with them and Fill Patterns, it’s a massive undertaking to get through them. Youll hodgepodge it a few times in the interim, so maybe this one waits to the end. But time permitting, here is my suggestion on how to handle it: Delete every single material from the template. Then start remaking them, one by one. Delete every Fill Pattern from the Revit.pat file. Remake them. When you remake them, name them for PURPOSE, not graphical STYLE. Its Masonry-Brick-Cut, not “Diagonal Down.” This was a problem even in CAD. When you delete all of the MATERIALS, it will switch everything in to your System Families to “By Category.” Youll have to go item by item and replace them. Hey: Is a 3-5/8” stud the same as a 6” stud? No? Make them separate materials, so you can apply different keynotes to them later. Just a thought. J By the way, whats irritating is there are materials IN your content. They come in to the projects too. If you want to go nuts, go in your content one by one, and delete them.

15. Naming Standards. It will probably hit you long before Materials, but at some point… Youll want to standardize how things get named. All things: Families, views, Models, Materials, worksets. Revit is a fickle machine, and some things alphabetize in the absence of a better method. So youll want to come up with a system.

16. Object Styles / Linestyles / Lineweights. Linestyles, I do the same thing as Revit patterns. I don’t call it “Dash” I call it “Demolition.” I don’t call it Hidden, I call it “Casework- Plan rep.” Do I end up with redundant Linetypes? Im sure I do. Who cares? Purpose Built = people don’t use them incorrectly. As for Object Styles and Lineweights… I use a rather lengthy and wasteful procedure ive outlined elsewhere, but it works well. At the end of the explanation, youll see that I mention doing this last. I know lineweights are the firs tthing people notice about revit, but its true: Save it til last. Or at least, last in the firs tround of items you do. The reason being: When you make content, you will see linestyles, lineweights, and on and on. When you start this, youll realize you want to open every single family to check them, and streamline them. It’s a hassle. But here it is quoted:

Start with Object Styles. Decide what should be darker or lighter RELATIVE to one another. (And i get rid of at least half of the 16. 16 is just nuts. 8 is plenty, IMHO. Then i use the other 8 for super huge stuff like Titleblock lines). So lets say i have 8 numbers. I assign the OS cuts and projections to 2-8 (keeping 1 for hatch).
Then when im done with Object Styles (pass 1), i go and do a plan detail. With modeled objects, detail components, stuff in projection, stuff thats cut. And i duplicate it, 10 times. I change it to ten different scales. I plot it. i look at it. Theyre not all going to look good. So i check the CONTRAST between the items. If i dont like the CONTRAST, i readjust the OS (pass 2), and go back to print.Once im happy with the CONTRAST, i print my OS settings, and go scale to scale, with that pesky lineweight chart. This line is too light. What is it? A cut wall. Thats a 7. How thick is a 7 at this scale? Make it thicker. Rinse and reprint. And do it again, and do it again. For all of the scales (pass 1). Its not necessarily true that just because the scale gets bigger the lines should too, but sometimes, it is. So you have to monkey with it, for every single scale.

When i get that one pesky sheet of details to look decent, i revisit OS (pass 3). Anything there i want to revisit? If im happy with them, i do a wall section. Print it at a bunch of scales. Check it, it shouldnt need as much as the plan details did, but it may need some adjustments (LW pass 2). Make some.

Decide which adjustments need to be project wide in the OS/LW, and which ones you want View Templates to override (i dont like using VT's this way, so i try to avoid it).
I also find you have to do it after your content is done, which is a double edged sword, in case you have to go back and adjust your content. But until you know how everything will be built, how do you know how it will plot?

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Obviously we are all insanely busy, so the chances of you getting through all of this in one sitting- or before you have to get back to billable work- are slim to none. My advice? Start with the ones that DON’T seem very important the first time you read them: Filters. View templates. Easily the two most important in the list, and the most productive, but you cant leverage them until some of the other stuff is done, and done well. Naming Standards- It makes the Filters easier, and that makes the View Templates work easier. We have a standard for naming/classifying walls. That means we can have *intelligent selection sets* for particular wall types: Masonry, Metal Stud, Finish Tile, and so on. Make up a system. A lousy first try is better than none at all. Placeholder Links: Do it immediately. We spend time fussing with consultants stuff over and over and over.

All of this stuff will make a template huge, especially when you get far in to it. Ours is 47 MB, but it is hands down the most productive piece of content we have in the office. People can go right in for design, and have things melding together immediately. If it HAPPENS on every job, don’t make them DO it on every job. CAD is gone, and the days of worrying about file size are over.

As always, this is just how I do it my way. Weve been successful with it, but… Your mileage may vary. :)

An Interesting issue in the Filter Dialogue...

We use Filters a great deal in our office, and in our Template. More and more, with being able to use the data from the objects themselves, i find they work a lot better than using the all-encompassing category controls of the standard VG dialogue tabs.

When adding in some more Filters, however, i came across an interesting "snafu" with the Filter Tab interface. I'll file a Support Request on it, but thought i would throw it up here as well.

Incidentally, the constant need to use the "up up up up" button is ridiculous. We need to be able to click and drag them. Filters are hierarchal: if multiples both override the same thing (assuming neither overrides by disabling visibility, which makes it automatically trump, which makes no sense, but i digress.) So with them being hierarchal, the ones at the top are given priority. But, you cannot control where a filter goes when you add it: It goes to the bottom. Then its "up up up up up." And if two filters need to "Pass in the Night," and one has cut items disabled, you have to REMOVE the filters, and add them in in decreasing magnitude of Override Capability.

Uhhhhhhhh....

Familiy Browser 3.7- Reviewing the new Features...

This is a Repost, for anyone who frequents http://www.revitforum.org/, but i found it beneficial enough while working on Content at Beck that i thought i would post it here, even if it seems superflous folliwing the last Family Browser Post:

1. Phillip and company added a couple of new features to it this last week, and i honestly didnt think i would use them, since i was quite content making my previews manually, for a NUMBER of reasons.

But today, i had great cause to test both features out. So a quick review:

1. Preview Icon generator.

I cant say how great this is. I was "on the fence" about whether or not i would even use it. Reason being: Ive been making all of my previews manually, from batch-processed screen shots, that were taken from the PROJECT environment. Why? Well, for some reason Autodesk hasnt given us Shadows or Ambient Occlusion in the Family environment. For seconds, ever try to get a decent angle on a Face Based family in the Family editor?

Well, what i didnt expect was that the Preview Icon generator works in the project environment. See attachments. Both are straight from the project, and the first is all Face based content, no goofy angles and backwards or laying down cabinets.

Let me also say that its great to show previews where the content has some CONTEXT. Tried it with the items selected, and it works like a champ.

The one thing i DID notice, just to be careful of: The Preview generator doesnt work if you have other Screen Capture software running. So, i keep Snag It here for making training docs. If Snag it is active (even not in use) the Icon generator may not come alive. Just a heads up.

2. The Type catalogue creator.

I just finished modeling an internal piece of content for the KONE Monospace Elevator (KONE's content is garbage). I built in the parametrics i knew it needed, meanwhile three different project teams are currently using it, in a total of 5 different sizes. Even though its built the way i believe it SHOULD be (the elevator family does NOT have the shaft walls or the shaft wall equipment (doors and controls) in it... There are still 16 parameters in the parent, controlling 12 parameters each, in 8 nested families.

One of the project teams got over to my desk before i had the TC written, so I figured id play with the new toy instead of making him stand around while i wrote the hash tags in the text file:

Its GREAT for making the Type Catalogues. I wouldnt have minded doing it the old way, but wow this is much faster not having to screw around with getting syntax correct. Loving it. Banged out all of the variations we need in about 3 minutes.

Anyway, v3.7 is stellar.

I know this blog doesnt get updated frequently, and that now THREE (or four) posts have been dedicated to content and content office deployment, but its something very important to me. Ive been in a few offices where ive seen one of the following:

1. Awesome content in house, and no one knows whats there. They re-invent it.

2. Awesome content in house, and no one knows whats there. They download garbage.

3. They know its there, but they cant find it. Time waster.

4. They start copying it to little cache's of their own, because they cant remember where it is.

After all: Whats so great about a process that makes us faster, if we arent faster when we use it?

Beck Family Browser Update, and more Content....

A few months have gone since the last post, and certainly (if for no other reason than to further the AU Unconference conversation) i meant to post a bunch of content for Revit and discussion. But i digress- its been an eventful few months since then! The AUGI posts disappeared, then came back, ive been on the road a lot for work, and weve been making more changes. So here we are!

A few interesting Content Updates: A year later, we are still strong (even stronger) believers in the Kiwicodes Family Browser, at Beck. I started out with v1, the office got deployment at the onset of v2, and i am just now updated everything for v3, which is available now. (A post on it can also be found at http://www.revitforum.org/, where many of us went for our Revit conversations after the debacle at AUGI. )

V3 of the FB has a lot of improvements, but this post is more about what we discovered during the implementation. Some of it has to do with the FB, some with Revit, and some a combination.


The first issue we came across, was Previews. This reared its head in v2: Some families were getting Gray squares for previews, while others had such a small preview they were basically useless. The latter is a typical Revit problem with all things Radially Constrained, since the Family extents reach out to the centermarks.


The former, it turns out, is an interesting problem. When the ORIGINAL "Save As" is done, that CREATES the file, if it is in {3D}, it will not get a preview in the FB. Im not sure why. Solution? Switch to "View 1" (if there isnt one, make one) then do a SAVE AS over the family (not a regular updating Save, it wont fix it).


These, coupled with the radial issues, got me thinking about making the previews myself. Tedious, to be sure... But im thinking there may be some return on investment there.

We have been playing around with the size of the previews on different tabs. The video doesnt do it justice, but we have some tabs maintaining the 64x64 standard images that the FB generates, and some up to 100x100. It makes the FB look strange and require scrolling, but for content where the image tells the differences, it works out great. But then we noticed another issue, and ive heard on http://www.revitforum.org/ that other firms have had this issue as well:

Although our content is named sequentially, sometimes when it gets to the family browser... It isnt. They appear in haphazard order that SEEMS to have no rhyme or reason. After a bunch of testing, here is what we found out:

The Family Browser is NOT looking for Alphabetical Order. The Family Browser is NOT looking for Date of Last Modification of the files. It is NOT looking for anything File size related. BTW, i have checked all of these variables for all three files involved with the FB: The rfa itself, the Type catalog text file, and the image file.

It IS however, looking for the ORDER THEY ARE PLACED IN TO THE DIRECTORY that is listed in the FB text file.

In my example above, you will see that the Families are all named sequentially. I ran the UpgradeRFA on them to ensure that the families were all "created" in sequential order. I used a Batch processor on the images to make sure they were as well, and manually did the same for the text files. Here is where it gets cool:

I built them all on a folder on my desktop. Then i "moved" them to the office library. If i have sorted by Date Last Modified, they populate the Family Browser in REVERSE order. If i sort Windows Explorer by NAME and then drag them to the library, they populate the family browser palette in Sequential order (as you see in the image).

To verify this, i removed all the foles from the office library, and dragged them in, in the order of: B01, B03, B05, B02, B04, B06.

True to form, that is how they show up in the Palette if i instantiate it after doing that.

So if you want to insert a family in alphabetical order, and it keeps putting it at the BOTTOM of the palette, Cut and paste everything AFTER it, to another directory. Place your new family. "Move" the stuff back.

Phew!

A video, if you would rather follow along on the screen. I dont populate the FB in the video, since im tied to the network, but youll get the idea. :) EDIT: I also apologize for the lousy vid quality! But its late, and im not redoing it. Youll get the pint!

I still owe the unconference group a bunch of content posts, among some other interesting things weve been working on. But its been a hectic few weeks. More of my posting has been over at RFO these days, so head over there.

Posts from AUGI- Creating a Standard: Doors

I am delinquent in getting this post... posted, but it has been an insanely busy time! A discussion was started on AUGI about custom content, and after a somewhat heated debate was had over the successes and/or failures of Revit Content sites like Seek, RevitCity, etc... A few of us were of the opinion that the failure isnt really on that of the content sites, but that of the content standardizers: They arent end users, and theyre not using the software to get the work out the door. How CAN they know what needs to be in the standards?

Autodesk has taken some initiative posting the Revit Model Content Style Guide, but many of us disagree on if it is helpful or not. It often recommends things that arent a value to the PROJECT, in the spirit of helping REVIT.

I would cut and paste my thoughts on the subject, but its quite lengthy. You can read them in this post, specifically addressing the Content Style Guide.

So what IS a successful standard? Well, in my VERY humble opinion: It needs to account for the most complex situations. Otherwise, when those situations DO come up, its a free for all. The beautiful thing about a complex standard that covers all bases, is it STILL works for a more conservative project. So... Whats critical in that standard? Well, here is my hope:

Im going to go category by category, and post what we are using at Beck, as "our standard." Then im hoping others will do the same. By Vegas time or a bit after, im hoping to have something we can share with the 'Desk. If- at any point in this discussion- it becomes useful, ill post our content as samples, along with the Shared Parameters files.

For the first Category, im going to start with Doors... As theyre often the most complex.

Admittedly, at Beck we like our Revit models a bit more Complex than- perhaps- they need to be. This is a diagram of one of our doors, and the Parameters they have.

This includes a series of Offset parameters and if/then statements, allowing the Door to stay "hosted" to the wall, but push itself off of the wall. This is primarily because we model our walls as multiple walls, so the "Revit Wall" cannot drive the size of the door frame in ALL cases.

Discounting that as something that is not necessary in a standard (as its just our desire), lets look at the rest:

Width: Some doors have one panel, some have two. Theyre not always equal. This NEEDS to be planned on. We have two independant Panel Widths. We have other functionality, to automatically make them EQ, but thats all fluff. i think we cal all agree we need to Panel Widths, STANDARD.

Panel TYPES: This starts the debate about Nesting. Though it may be arrogant to assume everyone works like us, ill go on the limb and say this NEEDS to be standard. Anyone whos done a job with the OOTB doors, knows how exponential the number of doors to edit becomes, with Panels arent nested.

FRAME Types: Always a gray area, since some people make the "Frame" families the Door family itself. But, having worked with them as seperate Nested Families, i have to say i think its great. Ill put up a vote for them being Nested. What are your thoughts? This also starts to delve in to Frame Dimensions, and WHERE should they be controlled?

But, if i WERE to desire Manufacturer Built Content, my personal thoughts are it should be like this:

Door parameters(parent family):

Panel 1 Width (Length)

Panel 1 Type (Family Type: Door)

Panel 1 Finish (Material)

Panel 2 Width (Length)

Panel 2 Type (Family Type: Door)

Panel 2 Finish (Material)

Overall Opening Width (Length- formula driven)

Panel Height (Length)

Panel Thickness (Length)

Panel Floor Clearance (Length)

Frame Type (Family Type: Door)

Frame Profile Jamb Width (Length) [for cutting the opening out wider]

Frame Profile Head Height (Length) [for cutting the opening out taller]

Door Panels (shared):

Panel Width (Length) [tied to the Panel widths in the door]

Panel Height (Length) [tied to the Panel height in the door]

Panel Finish (Length) [tied to the Panel Finishes]

Door Frames

Opening Width (Length) [tied to the Overall Opening Width]

Opening Height (Length) [Tied to Panel Height]

Okay, so ours have a bit more than that. These are also just thye basics. Of course the Frames will have more, as will the panels, for variations IN the panel. But these are (i8mvho) what need to SCHEDULE, and be made from a STANDARD shared Parameters File. But im out of time at the current moment. What are your thoughts on the above?

The Office Library (part 2)

As i mentioned last week, much of what we did on the Wiki is now Superseded by a new content Navigator we got from a third party developer. What we purchased: the KiwiCodes Family Browser (clicky).

This product looks strikingly like the Design Palette from ACA and Civil3D, if youve used them: And thats a compliment. Now, i have LARGELY been a disponent of using third part Add-ons in my Revit Implementations, as you have many more directions you have to think about in terms of Support, Version upgrades, error checking, etc. But this appears to be a banner year, with so many high powered Add Ons coming in to play... The Family Browser, Site works from Eagle Point, and a few others we cant mention yet, that are in the works. My point is, if my goal is to provide the most efficient tools for Beck, the time is finally here (in my opinion, for those of you who thought the previously available add ons were worth it) to let the add ins in to the workflow.

The family browser itself also meant a restructuring of the Office Content Library, since the tool organizes Tabs by File Directory. The OOTB library largely ships that way- with subdirectories upon subdirectories... And i largely UNDID all of that for our office libraries. When you have to manually search for parts in a kit with that many folders, i dont find it is efficient. Plus, a stringent naming system keeps everything organized alphanumerically anyway, so ALL Furniture being in one folder made sense. All Equipment in one folder, and so on. But, i didnt mind subdirectory usage here, since the Family Browser largely means no one needs to browse the library anymore.

The tool also lended itself to Task Based Organizing: Something i was fond of while supporting an AutoCAD Architecture office at QPK Design, who also used Civil 3D. (Shout out to my buddy Lance King, who helped build all of our networked Palettes there). So i went the same route at the The Beck Group, with our new implementation of the Family Browser. The following are the different "Tab Groups:"

...

...

The beauty of the tools organization is several fold: 1. If you check the names of all the tabs, youll see redundancy again, much like the old Wiki. Well, i can think of several different times i may want to put in Cabinets, be it Interiors Work, general Modeling, etc. Since these are AUTOMATICALLY driven by their directories, its zero maintenance to have the tabs in multiple locations.

Plus, props on the Palettes being auto refreshing. I add content to the directory, the next time someone clicks on the tab (note: they dont have to relaunch revit), the tab is updated. ACA and C3D did it, but i had to manually add the content to a palette config. Here, i dont have to. Awesome.

Here is a short video cycling through all of the Beck Palettes:

Philip at Kiwi codes was also great about tailoring this for ease of use. A TON of features were added between v1 and v2, including Management functions to auto load custom sets of palettes, and a button that launches the URL from the Family Type properties, which we use to take you to an instructional page on the Beck Revit Wiki, for using the content.

A few things to look out for: It generates previews in jpg format, and saves them in a directory. Philip and i have noticed some strange-eties with this, but its not quirks in the FB itself, its quirks with Revit. Heres what weve found:

1. If the *initial* save-as that CREATED the family, occurred in the view {3D}, it wont get a preview. Itll get a gray box. This is also true: the preview wont ever work in Win7. It DOESNT MATTER if you "resave" the file in another view. Doing a Save As in a 3D view named something else (View 1) corrects the problem. No idea why. Maybe the Factory can chime in.

2. The previews it generates are 64x64 pix. I made some manually, since some families are difficult to get zoomed in properly. Make sure you respect the 64x64... The FB will grow with the previews, and get ugly. :)

All in all, its a great add on. Unfortunately, the day i showed it to the office, i had to leave town on a Family Emergency. So im heading back today, and it should be fully deployed by Tuesday!

Next thing i hope to write about, is Site works... It looks really exciting!

Mobilizing an office, and Distributing Information...

I often wonder... How does everyone filling the role as BIM Manager for many people manage to distribute information about all of the changes made, to all of the users that use them? Template updates, Content creation, content modification, Standard detail updating, etc... Theres a lot to keep everyone informed about.

The running joke amongst me and one of my (now) coworkers, HAS been that over the last few years i would take a position, set up an entire office, and then leave.... Only to have to start over at the next office.(Here is hoping this time i dont end up having to go somewhere, im quite happy!). But whats always plagued me during the implementation trials... Is how to keep everyone informed? Of COURSE, i know how every family works. What every parameter does. Where the constraints are. How things flex. Whats in the template. Which things are ready, and which things arent. Its only natural... I built it all. But thats not fair to the entire rest of the office.

So finally, while setting up a Content and Training library for Beck, we saw the opportunity to do something ive always wanted to do... And we seized it: The Revit Explorer. At least, in my mind thats what it was called. The format of it lended itself more to: The Revit Wiki. But it was/is as follows:

The first and most significant (in my mind), was the Content Page. We have Registered Architects, designers, Interior Designers, Project Engineers, Project Managers, and Interns, all looking for content. Does everyone know what Folders the library is broken up in to? What Revit Categories to check? No. Should they have to? No.

So the content link goes to a very bland looking list. The reviteers will notice its awfully close to a Revit Category list, but its not. While it started out that way, the categories were then broken up further, in to groupings that made sense architecturally. Revit System Families were included (Architectural staff often dont need to know- or care- that they act differently than components).

One of the beautiful things about an HTML solution, is that redundant links can point to the same location. So some things are included under Equipment, that are also located under Plumbing, or Casework, and so on. They all point to the same pages, when it gets down to the content level, and thats a beautiful thing. If three people guess (interpret) that a piece of content is something different... If theyre marginally close (read: if i anticipated that interpretation), they find it anyway!

The pages shown below (Doors) point to families that are stored in the Office Library. The items that are system families, ALSO point to the office library, where systems of Model Groups are saved out. Just because its a "Revit System Family" that plays by different rules, why should it act differently for the staff needing to load it?

The other benefit to this solution is images. I stand by the long and complex naming strategy for Content that ive implored upon people in office and office again. Until the Factory gives us a Component button that functions by category, and sorts in a fashion other than alphabetically, this will continue to be necessary, as a means to circumnavigate chaos in a Revit Model. (Foreshadow: This whole page is still relevant, although someone built JUST THAT: A version of the ACA Design Palette, for Revit. Thats coming up in my next post, as were using it as the new front end for all users, and for this website).

Still, pictures are much easier to understand than a 5 field Family name, meant to declare what the usages are of the Revit Content. From here, the user knew they had the correct Door: Now it was just a matter of knowing how to use it. Considering how parametric a lot of families are, this is a trial in and of itself. So each family had three links: About me, Open for Load, and Find in Library.

The last one, did just that: It took you to the directory in the network that had the content in it.

Open for Load, would launch the family in Revit (in session, if Revit was opened, with their project, presumably), and then they could simply hit "Load in to Project" and be done with it... Never having to bother with finding the library.

About me, was a page (1 per family) meant to tell the users which parameters were meant for them to use, and what it affected. They look as such:

They may seem like overkill, but i cant help but think its a vital necessity: Highly flexible and parametric content- How much of it do you have? I mean, the harder and faster we push in to integrated delivery, and the more advanced and data/object rich modeling we do, the more theyre necessary.

The image at left is a door family. With the advent of reporting parameters in 2011, doors afforded us many new options: Report the thickness of the host, which we then translated in to (user defined) "ignore the thickness of the host," and for that matter "ignore the LOCATION of the host as well." Why?

We derive much better results (both on the architectural detailing side, and on the construction estimating and sequencing side) from having our Wall Finishes and our Wall Structures modeled as two separate walls. Ever see what that does to a Wrapping Door Frame graphically? Yuck. Now our teams have a way to have the frames auto-throat-determine and wrap at interior partitions, and ignore and manually define throat dimension and frame placement, in exterior conditions. Which ALSO means no more skirting to BS typical details for Frame Locations in Cavity walls. Its a thing of beauty. But, its a lot of parameters. So this web page serves to teach the users which parameters control what.

The Page called Office Standards is just that... Things that are Beck Specific. But another of the fantastic things ive enjoyed with this web page, is the Beck Training Page.

The way i look at it, there are two types of people looking for Revit Help documents, and those two groups of people will search in two different ways:

Those who just underwent training, will search by the class they took. (chronological)

Those who arent in training, are looking for the topic they need help with. (systemic)

I normally train with Powerpoint, and live hands on work, afterwards. But i saw the chance here to just do away with the PPT, and build the presentations in chronological order for the Training classes at Beck University. This worked out very well:

In the image above, you see both ways to search. The top four links are by "topic," while the bottom one takes you to the Beck U training schedule:

Much like the redundancy links on the content page, i like this setup because really... The links are all pointing to the same thing. If you go to "Beck University- Day 1- Modeling," somewhere in the slides you will find Levels and Datums. But if- instead of the Training U page- you go to Revit topics- Building a Model.... Youll find Levels and Datums.

The other major nicety of this system, is that the images are all linked from the office Server, instead of embedded in a Powerpoint. Now, im sure thats doable in Powerpoint as well, i must admit ive never tried.

But working with a program in such infancy as Revit, where the UI, menus, ribbons, options, add on's, and whatnot are changing year to year, this makes updating training material MUCH faster.

I dont have to remove an image, and reinsert an image. I just write over the image on the Server Directory, and its done.

Which leaves me to the last remaining item... The one that was toughest for me to grasp the severity and necessity of, as i was the creator of the material: How, and who to, must i alert to what ive changed, every time ive changed it?

For this, we actually had a conversation amongst the offices internal Revit Users Group: Should it be everyone? Just Revit Model Managers? Project Managers? All Revit users? And how often? Template changes? Content Additions? Standard Detail revisions?

In the end, we settled on this: There is no perfect system. If i email everyone at every change, they will all filter their inboxes to delete my email (LOL... Tell the jokes now, girls. "We already do!" hahahahaha). So, we set up a very simple system as follows:

They are four "Document sets" on the site, which is basically Sharepoint.

One for Content, One for Template changes, and one for Standard Details. They are just pages with lists of text and notes on them for what ive changed in each category, but theyre set up as different document sets, so each user in the office can set up an "Alert," if they would like to be notified via email when i make changes. Instantly, daily, or weekly. Their choice.

Its not a perfect system, but it is- by far- the best ive had the change to implement, for disseminating information.

If you read this far, the irony will be the next post: A third-party app provider has made it so: The Content "About Me" pages will live on, as will all of the Training and Office Standard pages... But the Content navigation pages became largely unnecessary with a new application derived from the API.

Imagine.... The Design Palette from AutoCAD Architecture. Replete with: Content IN Revit, thats NOT in the project, that automatically calls from the library (meaning the complete capability to rethink whats natively in the template, since its all available without a load function). That updates in real time. The loads and/or places content. That is office-wide configurable. And....

That connects to this Wiki's About Me pages. To be continued!