Tip - Increase / Decrease Focal Length of Camera

Great tip!! I wonder how long this has been available? I only have back to 2014 and it's available there.  It's nice to be able to do this, just wish Autodesk would bring forward the setting in the Properties so we could choose an actual focal length :)

TheRevitKid.com! - Tutorials, Tips, Products, and Information on all things Revit / BIM: Revit Tip - Increase / Decrease Focal Length of Ca...: I bet you read the title of this post and said "no way, you can't do that in Revit!!"

Turning the Page

Recently, I turned the page and started a new chapter in my work life.  I’ve moved on from being an Application Engineer for an Autodesk reseller in the Chicago area and am happy to announce that I am now the Technical Application Manager for a General Contractor in the Chicago area!

I’ll continue to keep this blog going, just may have a slightly different twist on some of the items I’ll be posting about. I’ll now be dealing with much more that just Autodesk products, so you may start to see some info coming across about how non-Autodesk products are being utilized in conjunction with Revit.  You may even start to see posts about non-Autodesk products in general!

It’s definitely a different world being back in the AEC industry…should be a fun ride!

What’s New in Revit 2015

Instead of listing out all of the new features of Revit 2015, I’ll point you over to Steve Stafford’s Revit OpEd blog where he’s got the entire list of updates.  Thanks Steve for pulling this together!

Highlights for Revit Architecture are the following for me (in no particular order)…

• Sketchy Lines (Visual Style)
• Family Parameter Order
• You can now adjust the order of your Family Parameters (about time!!)
• View References
• You can now adjust the Referenced View to be something other than the original instead of redoing the Reference (about time!)
• Add Images to Schedules
• Revision Cloud drawing tools
• No more multiple picking of points, can use Rectangle and Polygon tools
• Shared Parameters in View Titles
• Allowing more customization to View Titles

Like I said, these are just some of the “high” points from what I’ve seen.  Nothing earth-shattering, but some decent enhancements mainly from a documentation standpoint.

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.

This Operation Could Not Be Completed

This error message came up for a customer of mine when they were upgrading a Revit 2013 project to 2014 and using Revit Server.  The file worked perfectly in 2013, but as soon as the file was upgraded to 2014, they couldn’t save it to Revit Server 2014…the above mentioned error popped up.

So, like I do with a lot of my customers, I had them send me the file so I could test it out on my end.  This allows me to test the file using my setup, which helps determine if it’s a file issue, Revit Server issue, or maybe both.  Now, you might be asking…”how do you know what issue it is?”  If I can replicate the error on my end, it’s likely a file issue or potentially both.  If I can’t replicate the issue, then chances are it’s an issue with their Revit Server.

While I was getting the file downloaded from the customer, I had them try another file (different project) and it worked perfectly.  Okay, that narrows it down to more than likely being a file issue…but I still wanted to verify that on my end to make sure.  Sure enough, I got the file and received the exact same error message when trying to save the file to Revit Server 2014.  Autodesk, here we come!

I worked with Autodesk support to get their take on the file. They attempted to do the same thing we did, get the file saved to Revit Server 2014…same error.  After they reviewed the journal and log files (which I looked at as well, but couldn’t decipher what was going on) they determined that it was an issue with the project’s permission data.  The “short-term” fix was to detach the central and blow away the worksharing…yep, bring it back to a single-user file.  Then, once that process was completed, re-enable worksharing.  By doing that process, the permission data was stripped out and re-established and the file could now be saved to Revit Server 2014.  However, the file was sent over to the development team for them to take a look at what was going on in the upgrade process since the file worked just fine in 2013.

The development team came back and said they found the issue, it was an invalid workset ID assigned to one of the elements.  They were able to fix the file by assigning a workset ID to the problem element.  They sent me the fixed file and it worked perfectly.  And they didn’t sent back the converted single-user file back, they sent back the original file with the original worksharing/worksets.  Sweet!

But, I couldn’t stop there….I had to ask the question; “Is this a fix I could have done, or does this issue need to be handled by the development team?”  The answer, they had to do it as we “end users” don’t have the ability to assign workset ID’s to elements.  However, you might be able to cut/paste the problem element once you know what element it is (by investigating the journals/logs) and fix it that way…

Challenge Accepted!! (when I get time to test it out …)