Happy Holidays - See you in 2017!!! (Christmas Gift Inside!)

It has been a weird year wouldn't you say? If you keep up with world news, I think you will agree. So in keeping with the theme, my Christmas gift to you for 2016 is a link to a weird thing I came across in Revit earlier in the year! 

Click to open your gift.

Revit Link in 2016

Most viewed blog post: 'Upgrading to Revit 2017 - Text Issues'

My Favourite post: 'Delete Unnamed Reference Planes Using Dynamo'

Best Revit Tip: 'Duplicating Views with Linework'

Something new: 'Learning Dynamo: 'Dynamo Thoughts' YouTube'

What I want for Christmas: Mavic Drone by DJI 

I will be taking a break from posting and will be back sometime in January! So stay tuned!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday and New year!

Dynamo Player with Unnamed Reference Planes

In October Autodesk released Revit update '2017.1'. I posted a few links in a blog post here. 
With the 2017.1 update came the 'Dynamo Player'. The Dynamo player allows you to run DYN files without having to open them in Dynamo. The interface is easy, simply click 'Play' to run the graph. 
The player comes pre-configured with a set folder that you can change to any new destination. The player will then list all your DYN files contained in the folder. 

Earlier in the year I wrote about what is probably the easiest Dynamo graph, a single node from the archi-lab package. You can read more about it here. The Dynamo Player now lets you clear your unnamed reference planes by just clicking play! 

I really think this will make integrating graphs into office workflows much easier, especially for those users who were perhaps a little intimidated by opening and using a graph. 

The player isn't perfect, yet. At the moment it doesn't allow for input, but it is in the pipeline!  

Insight 360 - Known Glitch with 2017.1 Update

**Updated 17/12/2016
In October the Insight 360 team at Autodesk wrote a post about the recent 2017.1 Revit update. (Read the blog post HERE). As part of the update, the Insight 360 panel received an update in its appearance, upgrading to the 'Energy Optimization' panel, as well as a few other changes to streamline the tool set. 

The update means that if you have Revit 2017.1, you no longer need to install the Insight 360 plugin separately. 

Image Courtesy Autodesk

Unfortunately, when I upgraded to Revit 2017.1, my Insight 360 panel did not update... <Insert sad face>

After some back and forth at the Autodesk forums and a few others chiming in and reporting the same issue Autodesk took a look at the problem. So far they have drawn a link between the Microsoft Windows Region & Language settings (no I am not kidding) and the failed panel update.

Reports from the Autodesk forum boys/girls suggest that if you have U.K. language settings set on your PC when installing 2017.1, you may experience problems. 

If you need a quick fix, the solution is to uninstall Revit 2017, change Windows language settings to U.S. and reinstall Revit 2017 and 2017.1 update. 

I will post an update when a hotfix is released.

**I spoke a moment too soon. Woke up this morning with a message saying a hotfix has been released yesterday. I have installed the hotfix and it has fixed the issue for me, so I now see the new energy optimization panel, great! 
This is a link to the hotfix on the Autodesk Knowledge Network. 

Revit Ducts - Bottom Offset & Justification

I don't often use the 'Duct' tool, so when dealing with them recently I had to learn some new and in my opinion weird 'Duct & piping' rules. 

When placing ducts the offset value is always to the centre of the duct, even if you set the offset justification to bottom! When you first place a duct, the offset value will respect the justification you assign to it. Things get trippy when you want to edit the ducts (which is what I had to do). 

When adjusting the ducts after placement the default 'offset' represents the middle of the duct, even if you change offset to 'bottom'. As you can imagine, this was causing some confusion and as it happens, this is as designed behaviour. It means that when adjusting duct heights, you need to take into account other parameters. 

Rather than go into more detail on this behaviour myself, I thought I would just provide a link to a very good post I found on the subject by Doug Bowers at 'aectechtalk'.

In THIS post he explains the behaviour and how to deal with it. The article was written in 2014, but I have since dropped by the autodesk mech forums to confirm nothing appears to have changed in recent versions.

A link to his blog post can be found HERE. 

Learning Dynamo: 'Dynamo Thoughts' YouTube Videos

Interested in learning Dynamo? Bill Debevc (from the BIM Thoughts podcast) and Ian Siegel (voice of this Dynamo Lynda.com course) have started a YouTube channel titled 'Dynamo Thoughts'.

This from their 'about' page....

"DynamoThoughts is a new concept in video learning, instead of the usual "sit and watch" videos, DynamoThoughts format is different. Ian takes program suggestions from you and me. He then figures out how to program our suggestions in Dynamo. Now comes the exciting part, I watch and learn from Ian. Then I do it again from scratch learning, making and correcting mistakes as I go. We think this is an excellent way to learn, even something as complex as Dynamo."

You can visit 'Dynamo Thoughts' HERE and subscribe. 

'Dynamo Thoughts' YouTube Videos