Happy Holidays, See you in 2019!!!

It has been a quiet year on the blog. For the last two years, I published more than 40 blog posts. This year, I managed just 12, posting in only 7 of the 12 months of the year.

In seeing those numbers the other day it did help me realise just how much I have deviated from my usual routine in 2018. 

It has been a very busy and hectic year and on reflection, it wasn't exactly what I had planned, but I have still learnt a lot! I think every lesson you learn, good or bad, planned or unplanned, negative or positive contributes to making you better at what you do. It makes you wiser. This has no doubt been the case for me and I am glad to end the year off well!

I am looking forward to the new year and what it will bring! (Like BiLT in Melbourne, I know it will bring that! Can't wait!)

My trip to the Great Barrier Reef was a highlight this year!

With that it is time to sign off. I am changing things up a little this year and instead of a review of the years posts, I am going to instead leave a link to the TED Radio hour podcast. It has been a podcast I only started listening to recently and one I have thoroughly enjoyed! I hope you enjoy it too! 

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holidays! 

Empty System Panel is Missing

So, it turns out the curtain panel 'Empty System Panel' family has been missing from most of the default Revit templates since at least 2017.

This thread has tracked the problem for the last few years.

If you are not familiar with this important system family, it allows you to create curtain wall screens, (no glass between mullions) such as the one below.

However, whilst these two screen appear the same, only one of them can manipulate it's shape or attach to slope roofs. 

You see, to make things nice and confusing, there is an 'Empty Panel' loadable family available in the default library that comes with your Revit installation. However, it is a LOADABLE family, not a SYSTEM family. The system family comes with special powers that allows its shape to be manipulated. Anyone who has ever tried to attach a curtain wall with custom panels to a slope roof before, or has come across this empty panel problem, will likely have encountered this error message:

The beauty of the system Solid, Glazed & Empty panels, is they allow for this manipulation without throwing up this warning. 

Finally, being a system family, it isn't loadable, just like walls, floors, roofs and ceilings to name a few. Therefore, the only way to get this into your project should you need it, is to copy and paste a curtain wall that uses the empty system panel family into your project. For some, this may not be so easy if you don't have a copy of a pre 2017 template lying around.

I by chance had one on file and have saved this to a blank template which now lives in one of my cloud storage drives so I will ALWAYS have it on hand if when I need it. 

Hopefully Autodesk take my problem report I logged today seriously enough to fix the next release template.