Revit 2014 Beam Properties and Schedule UI

I made some chronicle videos for work and thought I'd share them on here too. Note I did these off the cuff as I was going for "lets do this thing once" instead of "lets make this perfect". So there is a couple mis-speakings  (I could rattle all of them off but lets just hope not many of you notice.. hehe.. nothing major.) I also go over some things that relate directly to my company's standards, workflows and/or general comments to my co-workers.. so yeah. Our way may not be your way.. or heck even the best way, but its the best for us.. and we do good work! So there's my disclaimer! 

So first up is the new beam properties. I did mention lack of shape handles, but with Update 1 out last week they did give us the ability to atleast use Align to change the start/end extension/cutbacks.. so yay!





Next is about schedules and the first part is just going over the new contextual ribbon tools/UI. Towards the end it gets rather specific to my company's 'dummy schedules' and general notes. So you may not want to watch the last part as I was just brainstorming thoughts out to my co-workers to see if any are interested in pursuing these ..*cough* workarounds. But ya never know, it may spark an idea for you too!

Note I also forgot to mention you can merge multiply rows too, not just columns as I show.


Hopefully you found some information in these useful!

Use Structural Column family template for Deep Foundations

I stumbled upon something amazing today. I had downloaded a helical anchor family from the internets (augi forums I believe?) and upon placing it in my model it shot the isolated footing down because it was a Structural Column family. So I’m like.. okay that’s an easy fix.. go into the family and change its category to Structural Foundation. Upon reloading I see that the Base and Top Level/Offset parameters are still available. HECK TO THE YEAH!!

We've been fighting our drilled pier family for ever because we only had a depth parameter. So to get the correct Elevation At Bottom value to populate the schedule you had to do the math with whatever the top elevation was. Painn in the butt... One instance would be wrong and the schedule would just blank out for the Elevation At Bottom...

So I remade our drilled pier family today... Started with the Structural Column template. Modeled all my geometry, added shared parameters, etc. Then changed the category to Structural Foundation and loaded that baby in!

And now.. instead of trying to use my brain to do maths.. I can just type -20'-0" for the base and the Elevation at Bottom is perrrrfffeeeccctt :) 

(yes I am very tempted to keep the name "MoBetta")

 

 

The only issue I'm seeing right now is that when you first place it, it defaults to the current level for the base and level above for the top... this is not a deal breaker for me...

Ooo the "Height:" in the Options bar still shows up so you could change it to unconnected and just a foot or something so it’s not as bad, but again.. easy fix compared to doing math.

 

 

 

Now I have to consider how many of my other deep foundation families I want to update! 

Dimensioning curved things

So for dimensioning curved things/circles... What Options do we have?.. Radius and now Diameter in 2013.. well boo hiss.. I wanna dimension from face to face of my curves. 

This seems unpossible! But here's the trick folks. Draw a detail line near by.. or reference plane... or something straight. You'll want it approximately perpendicular to where you want the final location of the dimension to be....

 

Now use the Aligned Dimension tool and select the line First, then select each face of the curved elements. When you pull the dimension away the witness line ends are at the perpendicular "where i want the dimension to end up" line shown above. (perpendicular apparent intersection?? Ha..I'm just making phrases up now.)

Now you may think you can get rid of that extra dimension to the straight line by simply using "Edit Witness Line" and deselecting the temporary line...

WRONG. It will hate you. and you will hate it.

 

Just Delete the line!! Way easier and every one's happy! 

 

Much better than showing a radius dimension for each face.

Dimensions will update as elements are changed and you can use the dimensions to adjust the locations and what not. 

 

However you will need to add another straight line via "edit witness line" if you want to add or remove any curved elements from the string. In 2013 you can use tab-select to select just a portion of the dimension string and then delete it that way!

Example 2: Diameter pulled away and/or for diameter pre-Revit 2013..

 

 If you know of a better way to do this please let me know in the comments :)