Revit: Rooms and Computation Height

I will start by saying I have no idea why what follows worked, but I am documenting it here in case I come across the same issue in the future.

We had a model in Revit 2022 where a number of Rooms were not filling the expected plan area. One edge was stopping somewhere in the vicinity of half way to the Wall to which it should have gone; this affected three adjacent rooms, all along the same invisible line. I turned on the visibility of Room Separation Lines (and made them red and fat), but there were none there. I turned on hidden items, I checked the links that were Room Bounding, and I looked at the Design Options that were in the model. None of them appeared to have any contribution to the issue.

I cut some sections to see if there was something on the floor below that could be projecting its influence to the floor above, but that came up empty as well. I knew that there was a setting for Computation Height, and I decided to look into that to see if it was set oddly. It was set to 0'-0" (as I would have expected). To see if there was something right at the Level that was causing the issue, I changed the Computation Height for that Level to 0'-6", and the Rooms expanded to the Wall that was the expected boundary. For grins, I changed the value back to 0'-0", and the Rooms stayed expanded.

That resolved the issue and allowed the project team to get on with their work, but it bothers me that I cannot say why it worked. I get that changing the height forced Revit to recalculate the extents of the Rooms, but why were they wrong at the start? I suppose that will have to remain a mystery, as I have other work to do as well.

Downloading Autodesk Installation Files

Autodesk Account is your first place to find downloads of software and updates. For most releases, you should find the current release and the three most-recent previous releases there, assuming you have permission from your account administrator to do so. But sometimes you need something older than that; Autodesk Assistant, the successor to AVA, should allow you to get the current release and the five most-recent previous releases.

Here is an example of how to use the Autodesk Assistant.

• Go to https://manage.autodesk.com/home and sign in with your Autodesk Account.
• In the lower right corner of the browser window, there should be a "speech bubble" icon. It may take a few moments to appear. It looks like this:
  
• Click on the bubble to open Autodesk Assistant. On Screen 1, choose Post-purchase support. On Screen 2, select Downloads.
  
• On Screen 3, choose Download Software. On Screen 4, choose Find a product download.
  
• On Screen 5, use the edit box to type in the name of the software you wish to download. A list of matching items will be generated. When you see the one you want, select it and continue to follow any prompts to download it. You can enter a specific release name, but if it is not available, you will be so informed (Screen 6).
  

As you can see on Screen 3, you can also use this process to download Service packs, hotfixes, add-ins, and more. I would recommend using Autodesk Account for the versions it supports, but if you need something a little older, Autodesk Assistant is at your service.

Revit: Clean Uninstall Instructions

Autodesk currently has uninstall instructions for Revit 2020 through 2025 in separate articles, one for each version. I am posting links here for easier future reference.
Revit 2020
Revit 2021
Revit 2022
Revit 2023
Revit 2024
Revit 2025

Revit: Moving a Grid Line with Disjoin Checked (Don't Do It)

Made a discovery today, related to the previous post regarding moving items with Disjoin checked. Once again, I failed to notice that was checked. This time I was experimenting with Copy/Monitor. I set up a structural model with some Grids. I cross-linked the structural and architectural models, and Copy/Monitored the structural grids in the architectural model, from the structural link. Then I moved one of the Grids 2'-0" perpendicular to its length and synchronized the change.

Back in the architectural model, I reloaded the structural link and, as expected, was told that there was a Coordination Review for a link. I ran the Coordination Review for the structural link, and, unexpectedly, was told that an element was deleted (not moved!). This was confusing, because I could see the grid line from the structural link; it was there. I did it all again, with the same results. I decided that since it was after 5:00 pm, I would save my models and try again tomorrow. I went to move the grid in the structrual model back to its original spot so I would be ready to roll tomorrow, when I finally noticed that the Disjoin toggle was checked on the Options bar. Remembering my previous problems with moving Views on a Sheet, I cancelled the command and checked the Revit ID number of the Grid. Then I moved it, with Disjoin still checked, and checked the ID number again. It was different!

So it turned out to be operator error (or, more accurately, operator ignorance), rather than a glaring bug. I am willing to own that; in fact, I am glad that is the case because I can fix operator error/ignorance. And I am glad that I figured the issue out in far less time than the previous one took. I just have to get myself to check the Disjoin toggle whenever I use the Move tool, because Move + Disjoin = Copy + Delete Orginal.

Revit: Moving A Legend on a Sheet Deletes the Legend

I was trying to move a Legend on a Revit sheet a precise distance, so I was using the Move tool rather than dragging it and eyeballing the location. Instead of moving the Legend, Revit deleted it, and issued this warning:

There was no second instance of the same Legend. If there were, why delete all of them? Some on-line searching turned up a case where someone had a Section view deleted from a Sheet when they tried to move it. The offered solution was to look at the Options bar after selecting the Move tool and to uncheck the Disjoin toggle if it were checked. It turns out I did have the Disjoin toggle checked, and unchecking it allowed the Legend to be moved as desired, with no deletion and no warning message. I do not understand why having Disjoin checked caused Revit to think there were multiple instances which then needed to be eradicated, but I am glad that I was able to find a way to do what I wanted to do.

Revit: Choosing a Maximum Value in a Formula

Nothing earth-shaking here, just recording this so the next time I need to do it, I do not have to put it together from scratch. The formula to get the larger value of two parameters is relatively easy:

if(A > B, A, B)

But if you need to pick the maximum value of three parameters, it gets a little trickier:

if(A > C, if(A > B, A, B), if(B > C, B, C))

Expanding that to the maximum of four values requires something like the following:

if(A > D, if(A > C, if(A > B, A, B), if(B > C, B, C)), if(D > C, if(D > B, D, B), if(B > C, B, C)))

I am hoping I will not ever need to get the maximum of five or more values.

Revit: Upgrading Family Files

I found this sitting in my Drafts folder. I have no idea why I held back on publishing it, so I am doing so today (2024/4/8). My firm now has a content management system that will upgrade families to future versions, but I still think this is a handy node.

A huge shout out and many thanks to John Pierson for the Batch.UpgradeFamilies node in the Rhythm package. Have a large number of family files to upgrade to a new version of Revit? If you do not have a content management system that handles that chore for you, open the target version of Revit, fire up Dyanmo, pop in the Batch.UpgradeFamilies node, feed it a text string of the path to the root folder for your content, and select the Run button. You can then sit back and watch Revit background open, upgrade, and save every RFA family in that folder and all of the folders below it. Or, more likely, get on with some other task while that is taking place. The best part? It also deletes the backup files, leaving you with just the upgraded file.

It will tie up that version of Revit while it processes the files, but it will do it much faster than you could do it manually, and without the strain on your hands, wrists, and - most importantly - head. It does not get any better than that.

ACA: Deployment for ACA 2022 - Cannot Remove Custom Profile

Finally had some time to start preparing for the creation of a deployment for AutoCAD Architecture 2022. This is the first deployment for an AutoCAD-based product that I will be creating on the new, web-based system, as we typically only deploy every other year. I worked my way through the limited options under Customizations and came to the last section, Custom Profile. We have multiple custom profiles, one for each discipline, and did not try to include those in the deployment previously. I wanted to see if more than one could be added. I exported profiles to two test ARG files, and added one of them, then tried to add the other.

I quickly found that you can only add one; attempting to add another replaces the first one with the second one. All well and fine; all of the text related to custom profile is singular. What prompted this blog post, as a note to my future self, is the fact that there does not appear to be a way to remove a custom profile once you add one. So it looks like I will be trashing what I have done so far and starting over.

Revit: BIM 360 Model Synchronization Error

A user had a curious synchronization error today, on a model hosted on our BIM 360 hub. He emailed me the screen shot below.

I did not know what to make of this - of course the [insert ridiculously long GUID here].rvt file already exists! That is the file he was synchronizing, and had been synchronizing successfully all day, up to that point. And why ask the apparently rhetorical question, "Do you want to replace the existing file?", when there is no opportunity to respond to it? I was perfectly willing to trash the backup versions, as we have not had need to try to pull backups from someone's local cache on a BIM 360 project. (And thank goodness for that, as it is a royal pain just figuring out which [insert ridiculously long GUID here].rvt file is which.) A quick Google search did not generate any useful leads on how to proceed.

I walked over to the indivudual's workstation, repeated the error for myself and got lucky. After dismissing the failed Sync With Central dialog, Revit displayed the ever-popular "You have not saved your model recently" nag dialog. Before I could utter the snarky thought that immediately came to mind, I chose to click on Save. I got another dialog, with the same question about losing backup versions, but this one had Yes and No buttons. I said, yes, save it, and it did. Then I tried to synchronize again, half expecting that Revit would tell me the local was now incompatible with the central, but it synchronized just fine, resolving the crisis.

Dynamo: Pin All Revit Links

I have been setting up projects that have a larger than usual number of Revit links in them, and to save myself the bother of having to remember to pin each one after placement (and the bigger bother of repeatedly checking to make sure I did not miss one), I created a graph to pin all of the Revit links in the current model. The graph is rather simple, if you have the Orchid package installed and can use the Element.Pin node contained therein. I was using Revit 2020; those using other Revit versions will likely need a different version of the Orchid package.

This runs nicely in Dynamo Player. No need to select the Edit Inputs tool, as there are no inputs to edit.