September 30, 2009

Revit Rant #2

The project on which I am working has a Model Group for a pair of patient rooms, which is then repeated multiple times on two floors.

When making changes to the Model Group, you enter a special mode. When the edits are done, you "Finish", and the edits are propogated to each instance of the Model Group. When it works, it is really great, and most of the time it works.

Today, I ran into a problem that I had encountered previously. There is another team member working on the project, and when I tried to save the changes I made to the Model Group, I got an error message stating that the other person had possession of an element that needed to change as part of my Model Group save. The error message indicated that the other person needed to Save to Central, and then I needed to Reload Latest.

Getting the other person to Save to Central was no problem, since we sit in adjacent cubicles. Unfortunately, the Reload Latest function is disabled when editing a Model Group, so I still can not save the Model Group changes! That in itself is infuriating (I just love redoing work), but to have the error message tell me to do something that can not be done is simply rubbing salt in the wound.

So, you need to strike a balance between saving Model Group changes so often that you waste too much time waiting for the save to occur and doing so much work in a Model Group edit session that, should you be unable to save because you can not Reload Latest, you lose too much time discarding and redoing the edits.

Revit Rant #1

DISCLAIMER: It may very well be that the issues discussed below have a solution, of which I am unaware, due to my current level of Revit experience.

I am finding it very difficult to draw/model with any accuracy. The lack of an exposed coordinate system (let alone a user-defined one), and simple things like insertion points for linked Revit files or Model Groups is maddening. Modeling anything, in place, where you want it when you first place it is extremely difficult. The fact that the project on which I am working has multiple weird angles does not help.

I am also frustrated by the number of items in the program that can not be done with accuracy or repeatably. Clipping a view and placing a view on a sheet are, so far as I can tell, a total "eyeball" situation. It becomes rudely apparent when you change from one sheet to another, and what should be aligning plans on adjacent floors (or aligning plans of different types of the same floor) ends up being an animation, with the plan moving up and down, side to side or both.

Side Note to Self: The next time someone asks me to work on a project where adjacent rooms are rotated at 1.53 degrees, just say no.

September 14, 2009

Update 1 for ACA 2010 Released

Update 1 for AutoCAD® Architecture 2010 was released today. Get the proper version for your operating system type (32-bit or 64-bit). Be certain to read the "readme" before installation, where you will find installation instructions as well as a summary of the AEC and AutoCAD issues resolved.

September 05, 2009

2010 File Format Change

This post may be somewhat on the late side, but given the continuing confusion in the Discussion Groups, it may still be of value to some. The 2010 release of AutoCAD® and the related "vertical" products, such as AutoCAD® Architecture, introduced a new AutoCAD file format (the 2010 format). ACA files created in 2010 as well as files created in a previous release and opened and saved in 2010 will have 2010-format AEC objects, which are NOT compatible with previous releases and CANNOT be saved back to a previous release format.

As this Knowledge Base article states, there are only two options for going back to a previous release. Exporting to AutoCAD will explode all AEC objects to AutoCAD objects. SaveAs to a previous release will result in un-editable proxy objects representing the AEC objects and new AEC objects will NOT be able to be created in the file.

So, if you need editable AEC objects, there is no going back from a 2010-format file to an earlier release. Keep that in mind when planning a deployment of ACA 2010. And, for the record, this is exactly the same situation as occurred with the release of ADT 2004 and ADT 2007.