Autodesk University 2011 Here we come!

You may be wondering “Where is the Scottish part of this Revit Alliance?”, “Where are the post that say Colour instead of Color and Primary instead of Girder?” Well, Allan is preparing his AU Class material of course! So if you are going to be attending AU this year be sure to sign up for Allan’s class! You Want Design? Structural Engineers Can Do Functional Graphics in Autodesk® Revit® Structure Too! It’s bound to be awesome! AND he has a funny accent!  Even if you aren't a structural junkie like us, I’m sure you will get some great tips and tricks! 

Oh yeah, and I’ll be there running his powerpoint! Haha! Just kidding, but I will be there heckling him at least! 

I know the Revit Structure class selection is out of this world awesome looking and I personally am really looking forward to all of the classes on the analytical model! Most of the time slots I had 2 to 4 options to choose from, and I really wanted to see them all! Hoofta! 

And remember all of the previous classes are available for viewing under AU Achieves on http://au.autodesk.com/ after you create a free login! So if you aren’t able to make it to AU this year,  just cannot wait for November 29^th, or just need some quick learnin’ be sure check out all the old classes. I especially recommend this one on fool proof ways to slope framing ;) 

See you in Vegas!

Revision Trickery

As I was blog-stalking today, I saw Steve Stafford over at Revit OpEd posted about the revisions on sheet dialog that is somewhat hidden in the sheet properties but helps with revisions schedules so much! It got me thinking I should post about some other little revision tricks that I think are hidden or people just don’t think about.  

In the revision dialog you have the option for your "numbering" sequence to be by number, alphabetic, or None. None is the secret hidden power here!  If you want to add your initial packages such as DD and CD to your revision schedule, but don’t want to show a number because you will not be tagging anything, you can do this by adding these items to the revisions dialog and changing the sequence to none. You’d then need to go to each sheet's properties and in the revisions on sheet dialog check on those initial packages as they apply. Sadly, there is no way to check these on and off quickly from the drawing list.

I’ve also had it where we start clouding and tagging, but then for one issue we only want clouds and no tags, and end up going back to clouding and tagging needing to keep the tags in sequence. I just set the revision that didn't need the tags to None, and the other tags number as they should.

 

The next thing is that the revision tag does not have to read the revision number!  Common examples would be including the ADD, RFI, or ITC indicator in the tag. Or showing the date the revision was made.. etc etc. So, Go on and Edit those Revision Tags! Make new families, new types, whatever works! Look at all your options! And remember just because AutoDesk named a parameter one way does not mean you cannot use it to indicate something else (as long as everyone on the project is aware of it).

Personally when I know the project is going to be heavy on tags like ADD 001 skipping to RFI 023 to RFI 037 I like to use the Issued To or Issued By fields in the revision dialog since I typically never use those for anything else. It keeps all the tags the same for that revision just as quickly as using the revision number and lets you shorten the name from what is shown in the revision schedule. Or just set your schedule up to read any of the other parameters available.

 

If you wanna get crazy, try adding the Mark or Comments parameters to the revision tag label. Then you can basically add whatever you want to that single revision tag.  Not sure why you'd do that for a single tag and not the others but hey! Ya never know!

 And lastly, something I just learned a few days ago... Use split when drawing the revision clouds! Hello! I don’t know why I haven’t tried this; It’s these simple things that really make me go Oh Duh!

So you’re clicking a bazillion times to draw your revision cloud when you fall asleep and get a giant double arch. Instead of deleting and redrawing, just split that bugger!

Until next time good buddies!