Although this blog is mostly about my trials and tribulations with Revit, my experience with BIM software started many years before Revit was even dreamed of.  There have been many forerunners to the current crop of BIM programs, and I had the privilege of working with two of them, which I would like to talk about lest they become forgotten in the mists of BIM history.  The term ..read more

Following on from an earlier post about stepped railings, here is a bit more information about what happens when you try to add Top Rail extensions.Weird Railing Stuff - part 18If the lowest boundary line on the railing path has a Slope property "By Host", the railing segment will be horizontal (assuming you have done a Height Correction on the other segments) To add an extension to the base of ..read more

A couple of years back I posted on how to create a stair with stepped sides.  I always intended to follow it up with what happens to the handrail, and how to solve it?  Well, it is never too late. Just in case you are wondering how to create the stepped side to the stair run in sketch mode - here is a trick for creating a DIY array in Revit.When you create a stepped boundary for a stair run, the ..read more

There are several situations in Revit where the Array tool is not available - one of those is when using the Sketch commands.  Here is a quick workaround.Stair Sketch ExampleIn this example I wanted to create a stepped side to a stair in the sketch mode.When I selected two of the stepped boundary lines, I discovered to my horror that the Array tool is greyed out.WorkaroundInstead of using the ..read more

Way back in Revit 2015, Autodesk gave us a really nice enhancement:Ability to use all the sketch line drawing tools to quickly create Revision Clouds. Prior to v2015 we had to laboriously draw each arc of the cloud as a segment (2 clicks:  for start and end of the arc) - the longer the segment, the larger the arc radius.  For those who never experienced it, that was a really tedious workflow.I ..read more

Way back in 2016 I posted about my dislike of Windows 10 (not to mention 8 and 8.1 which I thought were diabolical).  I resisted upgrading from Windows 7 for several more years - even after Microsoft ceased support for that version.  Many IT Managers around the world followed the same strategy until official support stopped - whereupon they were forced to move to Windows 10.My reasons for ..read more

 What is one of the first things that you teach people who are moving from Autocad to Revit?"When making changes in Revit, DO NOT delete and replace elements - you should always modify the original elements even if it takes longer" Why is that?  Because you never know what data or hosted elements are attached to existing elements - so if you "Delete and Replace" you might lose the data or hosted ..read more

In Revit 2019, one of the fantastic new features was the ability to slow double-click to rename views in the Project Browser !  Fantastic?  Not true - it is an almost universally hated new feature.  If you search on the internet, you will find an endless list of questions and answers on how to disable this feature.I do know one person (who shall remain nameless) who claims to like this feature ..read more

 Excited by all the hype about Revit 2022.1, I just downloaded and installed it.All went well apart from a couple of minor glitches:1 - Parallel InstallsIt decided that it could not install more than 33%, and sat there for ages before announcing that it had failed due to some other install going on.  I have no idea what it was - some kind of system update, which required a reboot?After rebooting ..read more

Back in Revit 2012 Autodesk changed the way materials work - so that they had separate graphics and appearance properties.  This was the start of much confusion for many users - and still to this day it catches people out.  You know the drill:  duplicate a material;  change its appearance properties and suddenly a hundred other materials change too . . . .Well, I am not going to address that ..read more