Upon opening Revit 2023 for the first time there will be a significant change in the look, specifically the Project Browser. One of the new features is to know if a view is on a sheet or not by adding an icon next to all the views. I always suggest trying out new features for a while before disabling them. However if you do wish to turn this off it can be done with a single Right Click in the Project Browser and un-ticking the option for “Show View Placement on Sheet Status Icons” As with most feature this can also be set in the Revit.ini with the following setting. [Project Browser] Show Vi ..read more

With the Revit 2023 just coming out one of the features they talk about are performance improvements. This is always welcomed, who doesn’t want their software to go faster or have less hesitation. While the program itself will be faster the help file only lists the areas they have improved upon. It doesn’t go into detail on if there is a setting or is it just automatic behind the scenes. From the Revit 2023 What’s New Help I haven’t had a chance to really look into all these new improvements but I will say I have looked at the first one, “Rewind tool view cache”. For this one to work it will e ..read more

As many Revit users have found out when trying to use Count in formulas for schedules this isn’t possible. However there is a workaround for this. It involves 3 Calculated Values one of which is the not so often used option of Percentage. In a Twitter conversation there was a question of how do I show a highlighted row for Revit Links where there is more than one instance? The following example will work not only for Revit links but for basically any schedule where the sum of Count is needed. First a Calculated Parameter will need to be created, in this example I named it “Single”. The formul ..read more

As most Revit users have found a custom curtain panel family can only be rectangular in shape. Anything that becomes non-rectangular will be replaced with a system panel, either empty or solid, as seen in the image below. I have used several workarounds in the past depending on the panel being used. This week I recently decided to use a common family type that I use to solve alot of Revit limitations and that is the use of an adaptive component family. What I realized is that even when a panel is changed to the Empty System Panel type there are still 6 faces to this invisible element. Which m ..read more

Over the years I have tried several ways to copy parameters from one family to another. I have created solids or reference planes added dimensions and then copied all of that to the clipboard, then pasted to another family, and deleted what was pasted. I have used Dynamo and other add in tools as well. This week I realized you can simply copy the dimension, then paste into the other family. No need to go back and delete everything as nothing will actually paste but the parameter names ..read more

I had a client as this week how to change the fill pattern line weight for the building pads in his project. I explained to him that Line Weight 1 is reserved for for fill patterns, simply adjust that value and it should adjust all fill patterns. Turns out I was wrong and should not have used the words “all fill patterns”. Building pads in Revit do not follow this rule, the fill patterns line weights are tied to the Object Style Projection line weight (as seen in the image below). In this clients case he had changed the Projection line weight to be 6, the Out Of The Box template has it set to ..read more

I was giving a presentation this week and realized a new small thing that has been fixed (in my opinion it was a bug). If you were in the family editor in 2021 or prior and wanted to move a parameter up and down, sometimes it would be greyed out. This was due to the fact that a group above the parameter selected had been minimized in the Family Types dialog. Revit 2021 Family Types Dialog with group collapsed However in Revit 2022 with this same scenario a user is able to move a value if one of the groups above it collapsed. Revit 2022 Family Types Dialog with group collapsed ..read more

Reading a discussion in the Autodesk forums today I realized that this topic is something that comes up often and not everyone may know if this solution so it deserved a post. When modeling a curtain wall, no matter as a window, storefront or as a curtain wall in at a corner there can be an issue where the automatically embedded curtain wall cuts the openings on each wall but fails to cut the end portion out of the wall, as seen in figure 1. Figure 1 I have seen several suggestions to edit the profile of the wall, or add an in-place void or use the wall opening command. All of these suggestion ..read more

While setting up an engineering firms template this week I had a brainstorm while working on creating the Composite Metal Decks. Typical Composite DeckWhile I was setting up their structural metal deck and loading in the profile for “Slab Metal Deck” it dawned on me, these profiles could also be used for other things besides metal deck. Often we want to see floors with 2×6 or tongue and groove decking. Yet we may not want the overhead of modeling these elements (Yes I have modeled them as beam systems in the past). Wood DeckingWith that thought I tried to create a simple Structural Dec ..read more

When Autodesk introduced their cloud platform BIM360 Docs for Revit (formerly BIM360 Team, formerly A360, formerly Skyscraper). There was an issue where if a linked file using shared coordinates was moved (mostly .dwg files), thus modifying the shared coordinates, the file would fail to synchronize. The user had to use the save command first telling Revit to ether save the “current” position, do not save or disable shared positioning. This was a bug where this dialog box was not allowed not come up during a synchronize process and only during a save process. Well in 2020.2 I can say this i ..read more