I was talking with a Revit user the other day that was having trouble placing a Truss object in their Revit Structure. After they placed the truss, it would disappear even though all visibility settings for the view were correct in allowing it to display. Needless to say, the user was frustrated. The problem was that there were no members defined for the truss, so only the truss’s reference lines were visible when the truss was highlighted.
This article addresses a feature in Revit that seems to have gone unnoticed by many Revit users. That feature is the anchor symbol for multi-segmented equality constrained dimensions.
Part of the power of Revit is that when a multi-segmented dimension has had the quality constraint applied to it by picking the EQ symbol, the objects being dimensioned will move in equal distances when one of the objects is relocated. The anchor symbol gives you more control over that dimension function.
The anchor symbol allows the user to control which object is the anchor and will stay stationary when adjusting the spacing between objects that have had an equality constraint applied to the dimension string. If the user is not aware of this anchor symbol, then it appears that they have no control over which objects move and which one stays in the same position. It is nice to have the ability to specify which objects move and which one stays in the same location.
In a previous life, I was employed by a large Architectural firm with a primarily residential focus that performed a lot of home design for home builders. One of the characteristics of creating home plans for builders was that they typically desired houses that had mirrored versions of the same plan. While this is done in other construction types, it is typical for most home plans.
Autodesk Revit contains both Reference Planes and Reference Lines, but it seems that most people do not understand or utilize Reference Lines. While Reference Lines are used as control lines for information within a family similar to Reference Planes, they are not a type of Reference Plane. It is its own type of object designed for a separate purpose. Basically, you should use Reference Lines instead of Reference Planes when you need defined endpoints for a work plane. A prime example of an important Reference Line usage is for allowing for the rotation of objects within a family. A general rule is that if you want something to rotate, use a Reference Line to control it.
Do you ever want to easily visualize what objects are on different worksets in a view in Revit®? Autodesk incorporated this ability into Revit® with their 2012 versions, but it seems to have gone unnoticed by many users. Worksets are a highly utilized function used within Revit® by any organization where multiple people need to work on a Revit® project at one time. There is a tremendous amout of information available on what worksets are and how to use them to manage your project, so this article is to just address the ability to control how you see worksets in a particular view. This is a helpful feature for troubleshooting projects to ensure that users are placing information in the proper workset.
Okay, I realize that isn’t really breaking news and is something that people already know. However, the fact that people are already aware of that is what can create issues. While various software packages can be expensive, design software is one of those software categories that really is expensive. I have previously written a blog article on architectural design software packages under $2500 entitled “Inexpensive Architectural Design Software“, but those packages are not the mainstream products being utilized. For most companies to compete in the AEC design community, they are pretty much required to utilize a software package that will cost a minimum of $4,000.00 per user. Most software packages also either require you to be on a subscription plan or make you pay a large upgrade fee to remain up-to-date with the software.
Regardless of the method that you use to pay for the software, it is a large expense for each user. However, I must say that is the cost of legally doing business. If a company (or individual) wants to participate in a market that requires design software, then the software costs must be considered part of the business expense. I may not like the cost to play, but I still want to play, so I need to pay.
Details are a vital part of the documentation process for building design and construction projects. CAD users who have used AutoCAD for years have typically developed a large detail library, or at least possess many details used on previous AutoCAD projects. Those details are valuable as a lot of time and knowledge has gone into developing them. It is important to be able to access those details for usage within Revit.
While there are various methods utilized for re-using AutoCAD details, not all of them are good solutions and some can add corruption to your Revit project file and create problems.
