Using sat files

Received an enormous sat file from the steel fabricators today 225mb. Decided to link it into our Revit model - slow to load in and made the model unworkable. The answer was not to link to the sat file, but to import the sat file into a clean Revit project, save that and then link that Revit project into our model. The size of the project with the sat file imported into it was 30mb - a massive reduction.

Family doesn't show in section

This had me flummoxed for a couple of minutes.

Someone had modeled the roof M&E equipment as an in-place family and in sections it wasn't drawn correctly, this also happened when someone had created a stair as an in-place family.

The problem was that the type of family that the inplace family was created in was not one that can be cut. You just change the family type to one that does show when cut and hey presto all sorted.

To see the families that can be cut, go to Manage, Object Styles, hit the Model Objects tab.

As you can see Mechanical Engineering category does not cut:

Google 3D mapping

I was sort of surprised when I heard that Google had sold SketchUp to Trimble, as a product it did seem as though Google why not putting in the development that it needed to keep up. If it wasn't for all the ruby developers out there it wouldn't be half as useful as it is.

Googles acquisition of SketchUp was to provide a tool for people to populate it's google world - things move on and they now have the technology to do this through aerial shots:

http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2012/06/heres-why-google-got-rid-of-sketchup.html.

Hopfully you will be able to download this data and use it in a 3D modeling program.