Managing Room Separation Lines

For many of the users I teach Revit to the first time, the inevitable questions arise when we discuss Room Separation Lines…

“Do they print?”

Yes, yes they do.

“How do we get them not to print?”

You can turn them off in Visibility Graphics. 

“But then do we have to keep turning them on/off every time we need to add or manipulate them?” 

Yep, pretty much.

Then I usually get the disappointed look.  But then I go over this little way of being able to have them hidden on the “printed” plan and still be able to add/remove (manage) the Room Separation Lines.

Duplicate your Floor Plan View/Views that you need to use Room Separation Lines on. You don’t need to Duplicate with Detail, just Duplicate it. I usually will go with an Overall Plan if you’re using Area Plans/Matchlines.  (By Area Plans, I mean Area A, Area B, etc.)  Then, go into Visibility Graphics for that Duplicated View.  Navigate to the Room Separation Lines (Model Categories, Lines) and change the Room Separation Lines Projection (the only thing you can change) to be something like Red with a lineweight of 6. This will show those bad-boys nice and bright on your floor plan. You can then keep the Room Separation Lines turned off in your “printed” Floor Plan views.  Anytime you need to manipulate, add, remove, etc. your Room Separation Lines, just flip over to the “Floor Plan – Room Separation” (that’s what I tend to call it, call it whatever you want) view and do your work on the Room Separation Lines there.

Flipping Stairs Flips Stringer Side

Little something I ran across during a class a couple weeks ago.  When working with Stairs in Revit 2013, someone asked about having a stringer on one side and not the other.  No problem with Component Stairs in Revit 2013. 

Then I went to show how you can change the “direction” of the stair by using the Flip Direction arrow at the top of the stair….and this happened:

Notice how the stringers also flipped sides, which is not the outcome that someone would want.  Sure, we can go in and remove/add the stringers to be on the appropriate side, but that’s just extra work!  Besides the fact that the stringers aren’t continuous …there’s a piece of stringer missing on one side of the landing (in the 2nd image).

Just a little something to be aware of when flipping stairs.  And it doesn’t even pertain to one sided stringers…it also pertains to each side having a separate profile being used!

Can’t Change Scale of Elevations, Sections, Callouts

The screen shot below is the Ribbon/Options Bar after initiating the Section tool….notice anything missing?

What used to be in the Options Bar is now gone….the ability to “set” the scale of the View you are about to create.  In 2013, you have to basically just create the Section, Elevation or Callout, then once the view is created change the scale. 

Not sure the reasoning behind this one, but it’s kind-of annoying that you can’t set the scale prior to placing/creating the View.

Can’t Copy Light Fixtures in Gyp Board Ceiling Revit 2013

Something weird I ran into a while back while teaching a class…not being able to copy a Light Fixture in the out-of-the-box GWB on Mtl. Stud Ceiling.  I can copy Fixtures all day long in a 2x2 or 2x4 ACT Ceiling (even the Generic Ceiling), but as soon as the ceiling is changed to the GWB, I get the following error…

The 2nd part or the error just says the the “Elements were deleted”.

This happened even with the latest service pack installed (Update 2).  The only work-around I’ve used and have told my students to use is to basically use either the 2x2 or 2x4 ACT Ceiling for all of your Ceilings to start.  Once you get the Lights placed, then swap your Ceiling out to the proper type.  I even tried taking one of the ACT Ceilings, duplicating and making a new Ceiling Type (mimic the GWB type), no go.

BUT, I did find that if the Ceiling Type doesn’t include the Gypsum Wall Board Material, the Lights can be copied just fine!  And it doesn’t matter what Gypsum material I used from the Library…as soon as Gypsum was applied to the Ceiling Type, the Lights didn’t copy.

Remove Dimension from String Revit 2013

In Revit 2013 (all flavors), we now have the ability to remove a single dimension in the middle of a string!!  It’s always been painful to tell people that they needed to wipe out one end or the other and recreate the string if something in the middle needed to be removed for whatever reason.

Here’s a very, very short video on how it works…just remember, don’t select the string and try to Edit Witness Lines to remove a dimension this way.

Removing Single Dim from String

BDS-U 2013 Doesn’t Install NWC Export

For those you don’t know what BDS-U is, it’s the short form for Building Design Suite Ultimate.

Anyway, finally got this bad boy downloaded, extracted and installed yesterday.  Installed practically everything in the suite and popped open Revit 2013 and noticed the Add-Ins tab wasn’t showing.  This was a little odd since the Suite is supposed to install the NWC Exporters, so the Add-Ins tab should be there.  Even checked the Export within the Application Menu, no NWC Export Option (new feature of 2013 by the way).

Great, I can see the numerous amount of support calls/emails coming in about this.  It’s a simple, yet annoying fix…and I’ve already posted about it.  See this post about the NWC Exporters not installing and how to fix it.  Even though the post is from 2009 (2010 software), it’s the exact same process.

I really, really hope I had the odd-ball install where the exporters didn’t get installed in the proper order…