AU 2011

Autodesk University 2011 is almost hear and all the courses have been released. I have heard a lot of disappointment with the number of Revit courses this year especially when compared to RTC.

RTC is probably great if all you are wanting things that revolve around Revit. However, AU still has the better diversity for those looking to branch out and look to see what else they can do. Inventor/Revit, QTO/Revit, Autodesk Labs, etc.

A colleague of mine and I will be presenting and uncoference at AU this year "Extending Your Autodesk Revit Models for BIM to Fabrication." Hopefully this will be a great forum on how to take your Revit models past CDs.

Autodesk WikiHelp

Autodesk has recently unveiled a new website called Autodesk WikiHelp. As with any wiki site it in almost purely user supported with content, although Autodesk has started it out already with many sections full of content. This seems like a really great idea and the process to submit information is relatively painless. When you find a page you would like to add information to click "Edit Page" then type what you would like to, save, agree to their terms, and then wait for it to be approved (approximately one day the times I have submitted).

There are a few drawbacks I found, one is the log in...I am not sure if perhaps I did it wrong, but it seems to me that I now have an Autodesk login, Autodesk Student Community login, Autodesk AU login, and others....sure would be nice to just have one login and one profile. The other drawback I see is actually getting people to submit on it, right now there are many forums and blogs out there on Autodesk, Revit, BIM, etc...this is just one more site in the array of resources.

All in all this is a really cool website, one of my favorites is their video of Revit 4 which takes me back to when I first started Revit and makes me appreciate the new UI and all the other great additions they have done to Revit since....

Missing/Lost Sheet (2011)

So the other day two of my colleagues came to me because they had a sheet that they could not find in the project browser. We knew it was an actual sheet not a dummy sheet since we set it up and put views on it. It was not deleted because it showed up in the sheet list and we were not able to renumber a sheet to it's number.

This my not be a large issue to some, if you primarily go into the views to make changes rather than work of sheets, since the missing sheets still reference the same and print the same as well. If you need to get to the sheet to make changes, where did it go?

Ben May of Revit-Ninja pointed out a case where his sheet had been moved up with views in the project browser. This happened to be the case for me as well. So to find this sheet, right click on "View (Plans/Details)" in the project browser, and turn off any filters and folders. You should now just have a long list of all your views. Scroll down to where "Sheets" would be alphabetically (ie "Sheets: RF-102S) and low and behold there is your missing sheet.

That is the solution if you don't mind switching up your browser to find that sheet every time...if this is an issue you can always delete the sheet in the Sheet List (right click and delete row). This will release all the views from the sheet so they can be replaced on a new sheet of the same name and number. Granted this may not always be very friendly if you happen to have 30 or so details on this sheet.

Now, AutoDesk says this is a very rare occurrence, but there is no way to fix this instance of the sheet to get sheets listed back where it is supposed to under "Sheets."

Autodesk Nucleus

This is an item I would not be surprised to see in RAC 2012 or 2013....Nucleus is a Maya based modeling tool that is starting to be incorporated into Revit. For all of those who remember the massing overhaul a few years back, this transformation makes that look rather generic and archaic.

Granted, with a background in engineering this does make me cringe when I try to imagine all the new non-squared designs that will potentially evolve if this is pushed to be included in the OOTB Revit release. Nonetheless, this still seems like a REALLY cool tool developed and AutoDesk is allowing you to play around with it until the end of this year.

This also does have great potential on the engineering (structural) side as well with its proclaimed ability to simulate loading conditions. Their website says that it has the ability to display gravity, wind, and collision loadings, but I think where this could have a greatest significance in today world, if accurate, is with blast and seismic scenarios.

Though it does state that designs made with Nucleus will still function after the trial expiration date, I would still be wary of overhauling your library before (if) this becomes standard OOTB with Revit.

Mouse Hotkey

I recently came across a pretty cool tool called StrokeIT which attaches shortcuts to your mouse and how you gesture. Now I am the type that love using my keyboard short cuts and so to me I feel that this would be a little too different for how I prefer to Revit, but it is still a really cool tool and many out there may find this a nice alternative to browsing around for tools on tool bars and using the keyboard.

Below is a video of how it works. You can also see the video on this forum. I am not sure why the video is so blurry on here?