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.

System Requirements for Revit 2014 Products

Instead of copy/pasting a giant list of requirements that Autodesk has listed, below is a link to the System Requirements page on Autodesk’s website:

System requirements for Autodesk Revit Products

Please, please note that Windows XP is NOT listed!!  If you are still using XP (or even Vista, which I rarely run into), you’re going to need to upgrade your OS!  Not to say that Revit 2014 won’t install or run, but any issues relating back to the OS will not be supported.  Also note that Windows 8 32bit is not supported.  Autodesk has a page dedicated to OS compatibility for Revit, all versions - Operating system compatibility for Autodesk Revit Products

Out of the 3 configurations they list for system requirements, I would go for the Value: Balanced performance configuration at a minimum.  However, if you really look at the difference between that and the Performance: Large, complex models configuration, it’s mainly more RAM….so might as well stuff as much RAM in the machine as you can afford.

What’s New in Revit Architecture 2014

Yep, the wonderful time of the year when bloggers all across the globe push out their “version” of what’s new in the 2014 Autodesk software.  Instead of reposting a long list of enhancements, here’s a couple posts that do a great job of showing the new features…

• As always, David Light has his great post on the new features!  Click HERE to go to his post.
• Autodesk even got into the “game” this year and has provided a page with the new features (as well as many of the existing features).  Click HERE to see Autodesk’s page.

A couple items that probably won’t make the list for new features in Revit 2014 are integrations with Inventor and Vault. 

• Inventor 2014 can now export directly to a Revit Family (RFA) file.  I haven’t been able to work with an exported RFA file from Inventor yet since we had some version issues.  Once the products hit the streets, I’ll post more about this.
• Vault integration has been updated to now include search capability of the Family properties. I’ll be posting more about this as well in the future.

I also put together a video for our (MasterGraphics’s) YouTube channel. Once we get it uploaded, I’ll create a new post with it and update this post as well.

And now the wait begins until the software can be downloaded….