Revit Hatch patterns revisited

A long time ago I talked about the in's and out's of hatch patterns in Revit and how they are made from scratch. I'm not sure why the universally used functionality hasn't been addressed in any shape or form by the Factory but thanks to some talent out there in the world, there are easier ways to address patterns. I recently came across Hatch22, a fairly easy-to-use Revit Add-in that addresses the missing functionality. It's Pay as you Please and worth a look if you find yourself in need of non-standard patterns. I found the instructions fairly concise and thorough except for a few things: The View type (Dratfting/Detail/Model) in which you draw your pattern was vaguely referenced, and the wording describing how drawing Scale relates to the pattern and it's output was unclear. The plugin dialog looks like so:

You essentially draw your pattern and pattern boundary in a Revit drafting view, and use the four line styles Hatch22 loads into the file to help the lines do what you want them to do.

The Add-in and a new pattern for a Perforated Ceiling tile

I found that it did not recognize circles, spitting out a blank boundary file and that it had some issue with some of the hexagon linework, to where it had to be "corrected". All in all it's a good tool and Gregory Mertens deserves some patronage for his work.
Cheers

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Watch "AU 2012 Keynote crowd" on YouTube

Like some of you, I am at AU. For those of you who have never experienced it, here is a quick video of the attendees at the Keynote speech at Mandalay Bay hotel. The full video may be posted online at au.Autodesk.com soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRZci9sJhyM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Craig

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Passionate about BIM

Dash over to Stephen Hamil's blog and see what it takes to be passionate about BIM...

Passionate about BIM: When writing summary information for conferences or introducing other speakers the words "passionate about BIM" often spring to mind. But ...

Are you passionate about BIM?

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Revit viewport arranger

This looks darn handy. It's a Revit 2013 add-on utility that arranges your viewports in Revit. You may already now some of the keyboard shortcuts like WT for window tile, ZA for zoom all, and Ctrl-Tab for switching between open windows, but this utility gives you even more handy flexibility in arranging windows. It's called Palladio X and it's free, thanks to the folks at Mensch und Maschine Software SE. I like the classic architectural reference in the name.
Check it out here on the Autodesk App Exchange.

Left: Revit managed viewports     -     Right: Palladio X managed viewports

Nicely stacked viewports...

Now if you are working on a large project, keeping this many windows open may decrease your performance and may not be a good idea. It would be a good idea to close the ones not in use. That being said, there are lots of working scenarios where this utility would be very handy. If you try it out, leave a comment. Thanks to Markb for posting this to Revitforum.org
Cheers

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Increase efficiency and accuracy of surveys

Earlier this month Tobias Ebbinge from Picard Innovations reached out to me to introduce his company and software called Yuzu. You may have seen Steve Stafford’s post on this at Revit OpEd. Like Steve, I saw a similar technology at AU last year called PKNail. They are similar tools according to Tobias but Yuzu is available for Revit and Autocad as well, and there's a price difference on top of that.Yuzu facilitates Architectural surveys with the help of a Leica Disto (sold separately) and a Windows laptop with Revit.
Here’s the video walk-through:
http://vimeo.com/42406629
There are some great benefits to this method of surveying. First, as you survey, the model is built with only a little help from you.  The Leica Disto device communicates via Bluetooth so there’s no messing with cables. Yuzu and Revit create the walls and etc. using the wireless measurements as you survey.

Second, from experience I can tell you that people (of which I include myself) make mistakes, especially on surveys. Sometimes this means going back to the project site to verify, and sometimes more than once. Since you are building the Revit model as you measure, you’ll leave with a finished and laser-accurate survey model.
There are some good tutorial videos to get in-depth understanding of how it works here:
http://www.picardinnovations.com/support/product/yuzu_for_revit/
Yuzu is currently $750 and will work with the less-expensive Leica D3 BT checking out at $379. Making it a bit over a grand investment but now consider this: The number of hours saved by reducing your survey trips, reducing the number of people required to survey(1), eliminating the time it takes to translate your chicken-scratch into a model back at the farm, and leaving the project site with a complete and accurate survey model… It likely pays for itself after the first project. If you use Yuzu or PKNail, I would be interested in hearing your opinion on it. And if you have a spare Leica Disto, send it my way!
Cheers

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The casualties of the Revit revolution start their recovery

This speaks volumes and may bring a tear to your eye…

If you are interested in helping this chap out, here is the link.
Cheers

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Revit Hardware?

Over the years I have seen this question pop up pretty consistently, and that is the "Hardware" question. "What's the best workstation for Revit". I'm not sure if you are aware of it but there's a relatively new page on Autodesk's website that helps you find suitable hardware for Revit, and other Autodesk software as well.

There's a good description of it here: Without A Net

With the advent of Cloud computing there are many more options that include virtual workstations, "Private Clouds" and so forth that should be considered an option because they can be easily expanded for little cost and is considered a "Capital Expenditure" which can be billed to a job, versus the firms overhead, or your pocket book.

A rookery of folks on the LinkedIn Revit Users discussion board commented on the question of hardware and provided a slew of opinions for you if you are interested. This rookery included a few folks from BIM9 and Advance 2000, who offer cloud services.

Cheers

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