What is FormIt and Why Do I Care?

There's no question we use a lot of tools in the design process. In addition to Reivit we use, Sketchup, Rhino, Navisworks, Enscape, C3D, and Dynamo, just to name a few. So this post is about yet another tool to go in your tool belt. But stay with me. I'm going to explain why you should be interested in using FormIt.

What is it?

FormIt is an Autodesk product that looks and feels a lot like Sketchup. Some of the modeling techniques are similar and it's really fluid like Sketchup. So you may be asking yourself... "If I have Sketchup, why do I need Formit?" Keep reading.

Conceptual Model with Revit

• Conceptual mass families created in FormIt become Revit mass families
• Lefel created in FormIt become levels in Revit
• FormIt models with materials appplied

Conceptual Modeling with Revit Content in FormIt

• Groups in FormIt can be categoriezed to become Revit families
• Revit families can be exported as FormIt groups and then converted back into the original Revit family.

Why Do I Care?

Ask yourself one question. Do I car about becoming more efficient at what I do? If the answer is yes and you find yourself struggling with the Sketchup to Revit workflow, give FormIt a try. FormIt has a short learning curve that can be overcome in just a few days. 

Oh, I almost forgot. FormIt can be launced from the Chorme web browser and is also available on mobile devices. The FormIt team has always wanted you to be able to design anytime anywhere.

Of course FormIt isn't perfect. It's a fairly new product and is still maturing. However, if you want to explore the possibilities of becoming more efficient by using a tool more compatible with Revit, give FormIt a try. What do you have to lose?

Click here to learn more about designing in 3D anywhere and here to learn more about designing with intelligence. 

Visibility Checklist - 10 Ways to Find What You're Missing in Revit Views

No question about it, the number one reason people call me is to help them find something that’s gone missing in the view they’re working in. So I thought it would be helpful to create a checklist of where I look when something has gone missing.

Visibility Graphics Dialogue

This is the first place I start. Check to make sure the category of the element you're missing is on in the VG dialogue.
If the category is on, make sure the sub-category is on. This is often overlooked so be sure to expand the category to expose the sub-categories.
Sometimes, however it’s a nested family category that you have to watch out for. In the example below you’ll notice the door category and sub-categories are on in the VG dialogue. However there is part of the door family that is not displayed. That’s because the door contains a nested family from the Detail Item category. This is also true for any linked model. Each linked model has its own set of VG, so make sure you check them.

Worksets

Check to make sure all the worksets are visible. Even if set to visible or show, elements on a Closed workset will not be visible.

Make sure all the worksets are open. If any are closed you can open them in the Workset dialogue from the Manage Collaboration panel on the Collaboration tab on the ribbon.

Filters

To ensure a filter is not the culprit, make sure they're all visible. If a filter is the cause of the visibility issue you may have to edit it to avoid showing items that have been intentionally hidden with the filter. Check with your team members before editing or removing filters.

Design Options
Check the Design Options tab in the VG dialogue. The element you're looking for may be on a different DO than what's set in the view. You can temporarily change this setting to show any of the DO. Note: DO only work with 3D elements. 

View Range

Check to make sure the element you're looking for falls within the Primary View Range. If it's outside this range you won't be able to see it. If the element does fall outside the primary range, you may not want to change it right away. Discuss this with your team to make sure you're not affecting someone else's setting. 

Plan Region

Plan Regions control a separate view range in floor plan views. Check the VG dialogue for Plan Region visibility in the view. If Plan Regions are visible, check their view range settings. 

Hide at Scales Courser Than

If you're missing a callout, section, or elevation marker be sure to check the view properties setting "Hide at scales courser than" in the missing view. The scale of the view may be the reason why any one of these view markers are not showing up.

Detail Level

Any loadable family can have it's visibility set to Course, Medium, or Fine. If the visibility of the element is set to something other than what you have your view set to, it will not show up. This setting will also effect nested families so you may have to edit the family to get to the bottom of it.

Manually Hidden Elements

Don't forget to simply check for hidden elements by clicking the Reveal Hidden Elements button on the view control bar.

Phases

If your project has phases there's a good chance your missing element was created on the wrong phase and the phase filter in the view is causing the issue. Make sure to check both the view as well as the element phase settings. 

Ideate Revit Add-in to the Rescue!

X-Ray is an add-in tool the will help you find what you're missing. In addition to helping you find missing stuff it will explain why it's missing, which is always a good thing. 

When things go missing in Revit it's easy to blow your top. Just slow down and work through these 10 areas and you're sure to find what you're missing.

Revit across the internet?

Great post today from Steve over at OpEd. He brings up a good point about trying to make Revit do things it's not really designed to do. Often time these work arounds end up costing you more time and money in the long run. I had similar issue this morning. My firm is currently working with another firm on a project located in a different state but close to one of our offices. The local firm is the prime and we're handling the interiors. At the beginning of the project it was decided that everyone work in the same model and we'd use Revit Server to host the models. If you used Revit Server before you know that working over different networks is very difficult and not really supported by Autodesk anyway. However, we do it because we are gluttons for punishment and because we want the ability to work in the same model. 

This method worked while the model was small and few people were working in it. Once the model grew and more more links were added it became apparent hosting the model in a single location and creating local files over VPN access was the wrong decision. At the worst point it was taking 4.5 hours to open the model. This was not sustainable and of course it disrupted the work flow of all those involved in the project. We then had to brainstorm to figure out the best way to resolve the problem. We settled on creating dead links for the MEP model as well as the structural model which has it's own set of problems. The project is now running somewhat smoothly with 30min. sync times. If it gets worse we're thinking of sending our staff to work from our partners office until the project is done. 

I guess the moral of the story is two fold. Planning is everything and if at all possible don't try to make Revit do what it's not really designed to do.    

Design Review Mobile

So I just wanted to post a little something about the new Design Review Mobile and Autodesk Cloud services. I've been able to test this new service from Autodesk using one of the ipads in our office. In my opinion this will at some point become a usable service, but right now...not so much. I was able to download the app and get up and running easy enough. Uploading files to the cloud was a piece of cake. The markup tools are simple and easy to use, and because you're working on the cloud those mark ups are automatically visible from the viewer on the cloud.
I had a bit of trouble manipulating the 3D model. It's a bit difficult to spin the model around to the opposite side if you need to see that. In fact I haven't been able to get around to the back side of my model using my ipad yet. Pan and zoom work great, orbiting is a bit tricky especially when you can't establish a pivot point.
In addition to the 3D model viewing trouble I, and a few others, had problems with viewing 2D dwf sheet views generated from Revit. We all had the same problem. When trying to view the sheet view we'd get an error saying "The page you are attempting to view is too large to be displayed on your device.", which didn't make much sense since the 2D views were much smaller than the 3D view.
This was the explanation from Autodesk:
"This error means your device's available memory isn't large enough to hold the data contained in a given sheet. There are many factors which contribute to this size, including the number of and size of embedded bitmaps and the number of total drawable objects in a sheet.

This error does not mean that the sheet's resolution is too large, that there isn't enough storage space on your device, or the original document's file size is too large. It has no relation to your Autodesk Cloud Document storage capacity.

 We are investigating what options there are for supporting larger 2D data sets on these low memory devices. However, currently if you encounter this error on your device it means the sheet takes up too much memory on the device to be viewed."
 
Still waiting to hear from them on what options there are for supporting large 2D data sets. All in all I'm pleased to see this type of move from Autodesk. I think once we're able to work out the kinks this will be a great way for CA folks to work in the field. No more lugging around a huge set of drawings, quicker response times for errors and problems in the field.
 
So if you've got an ipad download the app and give it a whirl.

I'm back!

So I understand this is the first post I've done in a while, but I've turned a new leaf what can I say.

While reading a post from David Light's blog this morning he referenced an article written by Martyn Day for AEC Magazine. Below is a quote from the article. I'm amazed at how software is driving the hardware these days.


"The single model utopia also does not make sense from a hardware perspective. Depending on the software being used, BIM models get very big, very fast. David Light from HOK recently told me that the firm is stipulating 24GB of RAM for its new workstations so it can hold the Revit datasets without paging to disk on its biggest projects. This is a considerable investment. BIM simply cannot run on old machines designed for running AutoCAD or VectorWorks. Other BIM modellers are not quite so memory hungry but they still quickly start to swell as the model detail grows."

Great article...give it a read.

ACE Seminar

So I'm sitting here in the Fiesta Inn, in Tempe listening to all these presentations about BIM. For the most part the discussions have been centered around the contractor or the sub-contractor. One subject in particular as hit home with me. How do you share the BIM model? To me it depends largely on how the project is contracted. If you're talking about a CM at risk contract then responsibility for sharing the BIM model becomes a little gray. The architect may not want to share the model with the contractor because they may feel they're doing part of the contractors job. Even if the architect does share the model, the contractor may not want it because it wasn't modeled to a contractors specifications. In other words the contractor is going to want to extract information from the model that the architect may not have modeled. For example, the architect may not model the footings or foundation walls. He or she may decide it's not worth modeling and just pick up that information in a detail view. This will not be acceptable for the contractor. The contractor can't use the information that isn't there. If however the contract is written as a design build, where the contractor is driving the boat, they can dictate to the architect how the model should be built. They can do this because in this case the architect is under contract with the contractor. I'm not sure what the solution is, but knowing these discussions are taking place makes me hopeful for the future.