Couple Font Issues with Revit

I ran across a couple issues with Revit and using Fonts, whether they are “custom” fonts or if they are out-of-the-box Windows fonts.

First off, when looking at the Windows Fonts folder, you’ll see TrueType fonts (TTF) and OpenType fonts (OTF) and you’ll see pretty much the same list when you look at the font list in Revit.  Well, not all OpenType fonts are created equal and it actually matters when it comes to Revit!  OpenType fonts come in two “flavors”…one being made with TrueType Outlines and the other is made with Postscript Outlines.  Windows doesn’t care which “type” they are, but Revit does.  It took me a second to adjust my eyes to notice that my font list in Revit wasn’t matching the font list in the Windows font folder. I verified this with Autodesk and Revit can only read OTF’s that are made with TrueType Outlines.  So if you are investigating (or investing) in a custom font, make sure it’s either a TrueType font or an OpenType font with TrueType outlines!

The other thing I’ve run into recently was with using either custom fonts or “hand-type” fonts from Windows.  Apparently, fonts when read in Revit do not keep their true size!  Take a look at the image below.  You can see that only ONE of the five are actually 1/4”!  So if you are going to use a non-blocky type font, be careful as the size you want might not actually be true!

I again threw this one to Autodesk and here’s what they had to say…

“This is a known issue with Revit and TrueType font types. Depending on the font type it may not always match the actual dimension it is displayed in Revit as.

I added your case onto the development team request, and notified the team. This is scheduled to be addressed in a future product release.”

Well, in order to get the text to actually to be 1/4” when plotted, you have to increase the size parameter up 1/32” or some other value.  It varies with different fonts, so there’s no rule or anything that I came across for getting the true size when plotted.  I know many might be thinking…it’s such small difference, just leave it alone…now one will notice!  Yes, you definitely can leave it alone and some may not notice.  But, I was surprised to see how much difference it can make when the text is used in Tags and referenced against what it looked like in the AutoCAD symbols.  Big difference in what we used (which was the Graphite font by the way).

Oh, and regarding this being addressed in a future product release…I’m guessing 2012, but hopefully in 2011.

BSD SpecLink-E and LinkMan-E Coming Soon

A while back I posted that BSD SpecLink was going to join the fun and come out with a new version of it’s specification software and allow it to link to Revit, just like e-Specs currently does.  Well, it’s almost here!  Here’s a snip of the press release.  You can read the full press release here…

---snip---

Atlanta, GA, June 15, 2009 — Building Systems Design, Inc. (BSD) today announced live demonstrations of the final beta release of its new BSD SpecLink-E (SLE) software at Construct2009, a national trade show for the commercial construction industry being held this week in Indianapolis. SpecLink-E is the successor to BSD’s award-winning BSD SpecLink+ specification-writing software currently being used by thousands of design professionals nationwide.

SpecLink-E will participate in the building information modeling (BIM) process through integration with CAD environments such as Revit Architecture 2009 via an integration manager called BSD LinkMan-E(TM) (LME), also in development at BSD with a patent pending. With LinkMan-E and SpecLink-E in place on the same computer or the same network, relevant project data can be transferred in both directions between the CAD environment and the specifications environment. Users will also be able to set SLE so that data from the drawings will inform the specifier about product choices, or the software can be set to automatically select appropriate sections and “pre-edit” the specifications, based on decisions made in the CAD environment. In addition to showing its current products, BSD will demonstrate linking between BSD SpecLink-E and Autodesk’s Revit at Construct2009 in Indianapolis, June 17-19, 2009.

---snip---

I took a look out on BSD’s website to see if there was a demo or anything on the upcoming products.  You can take a look at a power-point presentation on both products at the following link…

http://www.bsdsoftlink.com/speclink-e/speclink-e.htm

I know the press release indicates that LinkMan-E will work with Revit Arch 2009, but I would assume that they are working on it being compatible with Revit Arch 2010.  Well, I least I hope they are!

Save Reminder Notification Change in Revit 2010

Yet another slight change in 2010 that may be overlooked…the Save Reminder pop-up in Revit 2010.  If you haven’t loaded up 2010 yet, here’s what it looks like for a “single user” project and a workset enabled project…

Now, I know some of you are probably wondering why I would even post about this…so it’s looks different, big deal.  Well besides the looks, the functionality has changed with-in the pop-up.  Notice, no more drop-down to change the Reminder Interval.  All of the setting make sense, except for one thing…where is the “Do not save (or synchronize) and do not set reminder intervals”??  Well, they’ve cleverly hidden it with the Cancel button.  Yep, if you don’t want to save and don’t want to set the interval, just hit the cancel button.  In 2009, we could just hit the Dismiss button to close out without doing anything.  Not really sure why the whole design had to change or why they couldn’t keep the Dismiss button, but someone somewhere thought it needed to change…