Identifying Renamed Headers In Schedules

Revit gives us the ability to rename the headers in our schedules. If the name has been changed you may find it difficult to determine which parameter is actually being used. 

A quick way to identify the parameter is to click the header cell in question. In the ribbon, under the Parameter panel, you will see two drop down menus. The first identifies what type of schedule has been created, the second identifies the parameter name. 

In my example above, we can see we have created a 'Multi-Category schedule'. I have a header renamed as 'Item Name' which is using the 'Type Comments' parameter. 

BIM Knowledge & Skills Framework

Recently the Australasian Procurement and Construction Council (APCC) and the Australian Construction Industry Forum (ACIF) released the 'Building Information Modelling (BIM) Knowledge and Skills Framework'.

You can read more about it here on the ACIF website. You can find more information about previous documents that have been released as part of this series here. 

Courtesy: www.acif.com.au

Australia adopts International Standard for BIM Data Sharing

Standards Australia recently published AS ISO 16739:2017, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) for data sharing in the construction and facility management industries. 

If you are interested, their media release can be found here.

Deleting "Built-in" Dimensions in Families

When you start a new family template in Revit, you may find preset dimensions. 

For example, if you open the door template (Metric Door.rft), we are presented with a 'Width' dimension & a 'Frame Projection Ext' dimension in the 'Ref.Level view. 

What you may have also discovered is while you can delete the 'Frame Projection Ext' dimension, you can't delete the 'Width' dimension. At least that's what it seems at first...

If we take a closer look at the parameters, we discover that out of the factory, the 'Width' parameter is marked as a 'Built-in parameter' where-as the 'Frame Project Ext' is not. 

Width Parameter is "Built-in" & cannot be edited.

Frame Projection Ext. Parameter can be edited.

I don't know the reason why the factory does this, but the good news is, there is a way to delete this dimension so you can apply it elsewhere, and here is how.

Instead of selecting the dimension in the traditional method, tab to select the dimension line instead. It is the same method as deleting a dimension from a string of dimensions. The tab method will highlight the line the dimension sits on. Click this and now hit delete.

Revit 'Purge' Dialog Needs Updating

Autodesk have in recent releases started attending to dialog boxes in Revit, to allow us to adjust the sizes dialog sizes. Distinctive dots in the lower right corner of the dialog indicates it is resizable. The warnings dialog is another example of a dialog box that is currently not resizable. 

The purge dialog is yet to get this treatment, but something I haven't noticed before is when you slide over to see the full type name, it's cut off, completely. The graphics don't refresh and we can't scroll to the side anymore. 

Time for an update me thinks!?  

'Walls' Category for Revit Component Family

You may already know, that as a component family, the 'wall' category isn't actually available, so usually in these circumstances, I will go with a generic model family and create a subcategory or if I really need to, settle for an in-place family.

I came across THIS nice little post from 'What Revit Wants' recently as another alternative and so far it appears to works nicely.
In summary, Luke walks you through a method of saving an in-place family (which allows us to select 'walls' as a category) and save it as an RFA file.

I haven't really found a strong use case for this yet, but we'll file it under 'tips & tricks'.

Revit Masking Regions in Model Families

I was messing around with a model family a colleague downloaded today. We were having problems with visibility of elements. I needed a refresh on masking regions and so I dug up a familiar article and good explanation from the Autodesk Knowledge Network titled 'About Masking Regions in Model Families'. It gives 3 examples on how to control where masking regions are drawn in model families using the 'Draw in Foreground' parameter.

You can find the link here. 

Image: Autodesk Knowledge Network