3D Room Section

One of the things that I liked about ArchiCAD was the ability to quickly create a 3d room section.

To achieve this in Revit:

• I create a Callout (View tab; Create panel; Callout).
• Open a default 3D view.
• Right-click on the View Cube. 
• Select Orient to View; Floor Plans, and choose the Callout view you just made. Your 3D view will automatically have a Section Box that matches the Crop Region of the Callout! 

This works really well unless you have a large number of views that you have to scroll through to find the one that you just created.

Another way - is the free COINS Auto-Section Box add-in available on Autodesk Exchange. Install the add-in, restart Revit, select a few objects then click the button. It will create a section box around those objects in the selected 3D view - very easy!

Download at:

Autodesk Exchange Apps

Revit Content

This has been in my drafts - for nearly a year, so the new is pushing it a bit.

There is a new site competing with AutoDeskSeek, NationalBimLibrary, and BIMStore for supplying free manufacturer’s 3d content. Unlike BimStore and AutoDeskSeek, BIMOBJECT.COM provides models not only in native AutoDesk formats (dwg, 3ds, rvt, rfa), but also in SketchUp, ArchiCAD, AllPlan, IFC, etc. Content seems to be European, product descriptions are not always in English.

Ceiling Height in Room Data Tag

Adding ceiling height to a Room tag

On a project we needed to include the ceiling height in our Revit generated Room Data Sheet. Our Room Data Sheet is a glorified room tag.

I couldn't find anyway of doing this automatically, I presume that it would be very difficult as a room could have different ceiling heights.

The solution that we used was using a plugin from White Feet. The addin allows you to populate a parameter value from a calculated value - we created a Shared Parameter called CeilingHeight which used the calculated value of  a Room's Volume/Area and parameters.

For this to work you need to have Volume computation turned on, and make sure that the room's Upperlimit is set higher than your ceiling height, if not Revit uses the Upperlimit value. The default Upperlimit is 4m, worth checking if you have an Atrium or double height room:

White feet

White feet create a set of great addin tools for Revit. The one we are going to use is the Parameter Tools. http://www.whitefeet.com/Tools/.

You will also have to create a Shared Parameter called CeilingHeight. This will be added to the template in due course.

Once you have installed the plugin, select Parameter Tools and then select Math Calculation:

 

In the Math Calculation window select the following (CeilingHeight is the Shared Parameter that you have created):

Note: the CeilingHeight value will not automatically update, you will need to run this before each issue to make sure that it contains the right data.

Revit Cloud Rendering

At the moment we are on subscription and use AutoDesk's render cloud for our Revit renders. Interested to see that there is a competitor: https://limitlesscomputing.com/solutions/LimitlessRender

They also do Cloud rendering of walkthroughs. $999 for 300 frames (1920x1080) with upto 25 lights. At 24 frames per second, that's about £80 per second. Anyone used them?