Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Revit Trees, Shrubs, Bushes, Plants, People

I commend Autodesk for implementing some pretty spectacular rendered trees into Revit 2010 in the form of RPC trees. However, what happened to our standard view trees? I use standard views more than I render anything in Revit. Am I stuck with the ugly 'paper' cutout trees? Not with a little ingenuity and some knowledge of families. Hopefully you can take my trees from my file sharing page, customize them some more, and send them back my way?

I uploaded some trees to my file sharing page here that I hope everyone can get some use out of.

I created some trees (rather manipulated the Jonathan Furlong's trees from Revit City) to create a unique mix of standard view, and RPC render trees and other goodies. I named them all 'Perfect', as that is what I continue to work them into being. The 'Perfect' Families are standard view only and the 'Perfect RPC' families are both standard view and RPC view.

If you want a different plan view look, swap out the imported cad file in plan view (import to current view only) with one found in my file sharing area under Revit Files--Plantings--Cad Plans.

I realize I only have one style of tree going, so please contribute! Try to keep geometry to a minimum so Revit doesn't take forever to add shadows or draw them. Just use mine as an example.

Also, ever noticed how dark the Revit people are in standard views? And no matter how hard you try, you cannot change their color. Soon, I will post my 'Perfect People' and 'Perfect RPC People.'

Enjoy!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Fading object in the distance


Many people will give you many theories about how to ghost or fade elevations in the distance in Revit, a lot of them work, but none are very easy or quick. Some suggest overriding graphics in view, some suggest creating a mass with a transparency, some suggest drawing in a filled region... But really, there is no good way in Revit. Revit is not developed enough to pick up subtle graphic presentations as that.

My image shows what happens when you ghost with a transparent white filled region. It is very bland and covers the color of the trees in the foreground. Right now, Photoshop (or similar) is the only way to get a real quality ghosting of building elevations that rest in the background. In this situation, the ghosted facade is 100 feet back from the color facade, right now there is no way to set a depth to be ghosted like you can in floor plans.

The absolute quickest way that we use is to create a filled region that is transparent white or gray to mask out anything in the background, it has the least amount of setup time and can be grouped and copy and pasted to other view if need be. However, trees will get masked too, and when using a transparent white or gray, bold colors come through as ghosted color and light colors come through as whatever the color of the filled region is :-( You can see in my image that the brick in the background shows through as a pinkish color, and is the only color on the whole masked section.

Since we're on the subject here is a list of things Revit CAN'T do well or at all:
  • Automatically ghost distant elements in elevations
  • Site and terrain modeling such as roads, sidewalks, and more
  • Render Effects such as a freehand sketch look or anything else
  • Adjustable lighting - for a rendering program, there is very little control over realistic and artificial lighting
  • Limited selection of families and objects
  • Does not offer ultimate versions i.e. Architectural/Mechanical/Structural/Landscape
  • Offers NO Landscape version
  • Sucky and limited selection of trees and foliage which look different in model view and in a rendering view. Model trees cannot be seen in a rendering and the rendering trees cannot be seen in a model view, and worse, you cannot create your own look for rendered trees without, you guessed it, more expensive software and lots of time.
  • Add. Yes I said add. Revit cannot add rounded numbers in schedules. Example: 310.25 SF + 310.25 +310.25 equals 930.75 SF. If you are rounding to the nearest tenth in Revit, 310 +310 +310 equals 931. Punch it in on a calculator and you will clearly get 930 NOT 931. Can't tell you how many times Revit has made me look stupid because of that one.
  • I'm sure I could think of more, but I'll stop, for now...

Revit Questions

If anyone out there happens to stumble upon my blog, feel free to email me with Revit questions. Don't hesitate to ask, I learn more by teaching others. Just thought I would throw that one out there.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Topography Elevation

Having trouble getting Revit to show the right topography elevation. That's okay, it happens to all of us. When it comes to topography and terrain modeling, Revit is no longer intuitive and practical. Let me tell you how to fix this:

Revit 2010 has included handy new hidden elements in elevations called project base point and survey point in the form of a little circle and a little triangle. If you do not see them in elevation, try showing the hidden elements (i.e. the lightbulb on the bottom of the screen) and then zoom to fit (ZF on the keyboard). When you click on the icons they show information on project coordinates.

The circle, called project base point, is what we want to pay most attention to. It shows you what the angle is to true north and the relative elevation. I have worked on projects where the elevation starts at a random number like 10' - 3/32". Whatever number this starts at, is what Revit treats as Zero elevation. Let me give you some examples, then I will explain in a little more detail how the project base point and the relocate project button relate to each other. It is quite confusing so hang in there.

Examples:
1. Problem:
You designed your project before you had any Topo information, the base elevation says your building is at zero, you put the topography when you are on the zero elevation, you run a string of contour labels across it, only to find they are off by some random number.

Solution:
Follow the steps at the beginning of this blog to find the project base point circle. Click on the circle and it will show you the number that your Topo is off. To remedy this, modify the elev number here (DO NOT use the relocate project command)

2. Problem:
You design your project, you used the relocate project command, and you placed you Topography in the project while you where in your main level plan. Your topography base point will be based on this level's floor. It is now nowhere near the right elevation.

Solution:
Follow the steps at the beginning of this blog to find the project base point circle. Click on the circle and verify that the elevation number is relative to the distance you used to relocate your project. If so, or if not, you may manually change this number back to zero. This will not change the location of your project. If your main level elevation is at 643'-0" it will stay at that elevation. What I do next, is I create a site plan elevation at elevation zero and then building my topography. It should end up in the right place, throw some label contours on it and check it out. If the label contours are still off, play with changing the labels parameters from shared to project and visa versa.

Further Explanation:
THE PROJECT BASE POINT AND THE RELOCATE PROJECT FEATURES do not go both ways. This is where it gets confusing. If you relocate the project (In the project location section of the manage tab under the position pulldown menu) it WILL change the elevation of the project base point. If you change the project base point it WILL NOT change the project elevation. The project base point represents just that, the project base point. This is the base elevation for everything. The tricky part is, if you are not aware of the project base point, the elevations will read correctly, but the labeled contours of your topography will be off by whatever the project base was originally set to when starting the project.

Again to remedy this, manually change the project base point in elevation by clicking on the circle and changing the number to whatever you want it to be. Then, use the relocate project command if you haven't previously done so.

ADVANTAGES of these two elements being independent of each other:
The contour labels can be shown as the ACTUAL elevation, while the building can be shown as a relative elevation to whatever number you choose.

DISADVANTAGES of these two elements being independent of each other:
It can be very confusing when you are trying to show both your building and the contour labels as the ACTUAL values.

Flippin' Doors!

A quick way to flip doors, windows, columns, trees, walls, or any flip-able element in Revit, is to press the spacebar right after placing or selecting it into the model. Easy enough! It is the little things in life that matter...

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Adding Commas in Revit Schedules

Maybe you, like me, have Googled to the end of the internet to find out how to add commas into schedules in Revit numbers that exceed 4 digits; i.e. 100000000 SF vs. 100,000,000. Well look no further, here is how you do it:

In Revit 2010 or later, go to the manage tab, click on project units in the project settings area, find the units that you would like it to apply to such as Area, and change the formatting to include 'Use digit grouping.'

That's it, enjoy.