Revit - Contextual Ribbon Fixes for 2012 & 2013

Those still using Autodesk^® Revit^® products from the 2012 and 2013 releases but who have installed a 2014 or later release product from Autodesk or have in some other way had .NET 4.5 installed on their computer will find that this creates issues with the contextual ribbons in Revit. Due to the recent overhaul of the Autodesk website and the introduction of the Autodesk Knowledge Network, old links to the required updates (2012 & 2013) and hotfix (2012 only) may no longer work. To save others from the effort to search for the reuqired files, here are the current URL's:

2012 - Make sure you have Update Release 2 for your product installed before applying the hotfix.
Revit Architecture 2012 Update Release 2
Revit MEP Update Release 2
Revit Structure Update Release 2

Hotfix - Autodesk Revit 2012 - Ribbon behaviour due to .Net 4.5 installation


2013 - Install the correct version of Update Release 3 for your product. Note that the "one box" version that ships with the Building Design Suites has a different update file than the Revit Architecture, Revit MEP or Revit Structure versions.
Revit Architecture 2013 Update Release 3
Revit MEP 2013 Update Release 3
Revit Structure 2013 Update Release 3
Revit "One Box" (Building Design Suite) 2013 Update Release 3

ACA 2015 - Style Import

A new way to import AutoCAD Architecture^® styles into a drawing has been added in the 2015 release. When you start the "Add" command for or select one or more instances of certain style-based AEC Objects (Wall, Door, Window, Door/Window Assembly, Curtain Wall, Structural Member, Slab, Roof Slab, Stair, Railing and Space), a new pane has been added to the Design tab of the Properties palette, under the General category, between the Description and Style properties, that shows a preview of the currently selected style, and which is labeled Search....

If you click on this panel, the Select Style dialog displays, allowing you to select a style from the source files for that object type.

From the Select Style dialog, you can do a number of things:

• Select a style from the list box, using the scroll bar, if necessary, to examine the entire list of available styles for import.
• Hover your cursor over one of the styles in the list box, to get a tool tip listing the style name, style description (if any was provided) and the source file.
• Use the Search edit box and the Go button to limit the list of styles to those matching the search term entered. In the image below, the list of Wall styles has been limited to those with "GWB" in the style name.
  
  Click on the "X" at the right side of the Search edit box to clear a search.
• Use the Drawing file drop-down list to limit the list to the styles in a single source file, or, having previously done so, to select different file or return to All files.
  
• Use the Browse button to modify the list of source files from which styles are shown in the list box.
  
  The Add and Remove buttons allow you to control the list of the source files. You can save a default list by checking that toggle and then selecting the OK button. You can restore the last saved list (after making "temporary" changes) by using the Restore button.
• Select the Settings button (wrench icon, in lower left corner), and use the Preview option to modify the way the items in the list box appear. For None, there is no preview image, just a listing of style names and descriptions. The other options control the size of the preview.
  
• Select the Settings button (wrench icon, in lower left corner), and use the Background Color option to choose between Default (which is white) or the Drawing Window background color.
  

Once you have found the style you want to import, select the style in the list box and then select the OK button, or double-click on the style in the list box. If you change your mind about importing a style, select Cancel. The Select Style dialog will be dismissed and you will be returned to the drawing.

If the "Add" command had been used, it will still be active. If you chose to import a style, that style will be set as the current style (and, if it came from a source file, the style will be copied to the current drawing).

If one or more instances in the drawing had been selected, the imported style, if one was chosen, will be copied to the drawing and applied to the selected instance(s).

NOTE: If a style is selected from a source file other than the current drawing, and the current drawing already has a style of the same name, the current drawing's version of the style will be used. If the source file version is different, and is the version you want in the current drawing, use the Style Manager to copy the style from the source file and overwrite the style in the current drawing.

A default folder for source files can be specified on the AEC Content tab of the Options dialog, in the Architectural Object Style Path edit box.

For those using AutoCAD MEP, this feature can also be used to import systems. Source files for systems can be specified in the same manner as noted for style files above, and you can set a default folder for them on the MEP Catalogs tab of the Options dialog, in the System Definitions item in the Style-Based Content Paths.

ACA 2015 - New Look

In the 2014 and prior releases, there were two different themes offered, a Light theme and a Dark theme. The difference between the two was minimal, as seen in the image below.

In 2015, the Dark theme is truly dark, with a dark background to the Ribbon and various palettes. The goal was to provide a lower contrast screen, when used with a traditional dark drawing background, reducing eye strain.

If you prefer, a Light theme is still available.

When you first start AutoCAD^®Architecture, you will be presented with the "New Tab," starting on the "Create" page, with options for starting a new file from a template, opening a project or re-opening a recently open document.

You can click on "Learn" to go to the "Learn" page, where you can access videos and other educational resources.

You can control the behavior of the New Tab with a new system variable, NEWTABMODE, which is stored in the Registry.

• 0 - Closes any open New Tabs and turns off the display of the New Tab on subsequent clicks on the "+" at the right side of the drawing tabs, as well as on future launches of the program.
• 1 - Displays the New Tab on launch as well as every time you click on the "+" at the right side of the drawing tabs to open a new tab (drawing).
• 2 - Displays the New Tab when the program is first opened, but for the balance of that session, clicking on the "+" will start a new drawing.

When the New Tab is disabled under values 0 or 2, the default template specified for QNEW (Options dialog > Files tab > Template Settings node > Default Template File Name for QNEW) will be used to create a new drawing. If no template is specified for QNEW, then the Select Template dialog is displayed, so that you can select a template for the new drawing. The initial value for NEWTABMODE is 1; if you typically use one template file for new drawings, you may want to consider setting that template as the default template for QNEW and changing the value of NEWTABMODE to 2 or 0.

There was also an effort to "clean up" the interface, particularly the Application Status bar. All of the items are now right-justified on the bar. A few things have moved, a few are gone, and a lot are now initially off, as you can see in the image below.

The Annotation Visibility, AutoScale and Annotation Scale tools have moved from the Drawing Window Status Bar to the Application Status Bar. The Layout/Model (only shown if model/layout tabs were turned off), Quick View Layouts, Quick View Drawings, Display Locking and Drawing Status Bar tools have been removed. Isometric Drafting, Selection Filtering, Gizmo and Units tools have been added. You can control which tools are present by selecting the tool at the far right (three horizontal lines icon), to display a list of the available tools. Select one without a check mark to add the tool; select one with a check mark to remove it.

The function of the Layout/Model, Quick View Layouts and Quick View Drawings can be replaced by displaying the File Tabs (hover over one to get the equivalent of Quick View Layouts) and the Model/Layout Tabs. If you choose to turn off one or both, the QVLAYOUT and QVDRAWING commands are still available.

If you choose to display the model and layout tabs (Options dialog, Display tab, Layout elements area, Display Layout and Model tabs toggle), in 2015 these will appear below the Drawing Window Status Bar, rather than above it. You also have two options: they can be set to appear above the Application Status Bar (good if you typically have a lot of layout tabs in one drawing file)

or in line with the Application Status Bar (good for gaining a sliver of screen space, especially if you usually only have one or two layout tabs.

A "+" tool has been added at the right side of the model/layout tabs to make it easy to add a new layout; you can also right click on the tabs to access a context menu of layout related items, including the docking location.

New to AutoCAD Architecture users, but familiar to those who have seen the "vanilla" AutoCAD interface in recent releases, is the ability to add the Workspace selection drop-down tool to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT). This is turned off in the initial setup for both AutoCAD and AutoCAD Architecture, but can be turned on in the QAT and off in the Application Status Bar, if you prefer.

A new feature of the Ribbon is the addition of Galleries. These replace certain drop-down lists for AutoCAD blocks and style-based objects, and include a graphic image for each item, instead of just the name. In the AutoCAD Architecture interface, these are available for inserting blocks (Insert tab, Block panel, Insert tool), text (Home tab, Annotation panel, Text Style tool), dimensions (Home tab, Annotation panel, Dimension Style tool), multi-leaders (Home tab, Annotation panel, Mleader Style tool) and tables (Home tab, Annotation panel, Table Style tool). Dimension and Text galleries are also available on the Annotate tab. In the AutoCAD interface, table cell styles also have a Gallery.

Select More Options at the bottom of the Insert gallery to open the Insert dialog. Select Manage xxxx at the bottom for the style-based galleries to open the associated style dialog.

ACA: Double Click a Tag to Edit Property Data

I had a request today to be able to double click on a Schedule Tag, such as a Room Tag, and have the Edit Property Set Data dialog open, so that the Property Data attached to the tagged object can be edited, without having to go to the Extended Data tab of the Properties palette. I was able to grant the request; here is what I did.

The out-of-the-box ACA.cuix file already defines a Double Click Action for Multi-View Blocks (which is what Schedule Tags are), but it is set to edit the Multi-View Block definition.

As it turns out, the CUI does not have a command defined that runs the AECPROPERTYDATAEDIT command. But it is easy enough to add one.

1. Type CUI at the Command: prompt. (Or, on the Manage ribbon tab, on the Customization panel, choose the User Interface tool.)
2. Verify that the CUI dialog is fully expanded (arrow button in the lower right corner of the dialog points to the left) and that the Customize tab is the current tab (as seen in the image above).
3. In the Command List panel (lower left side; expand the panel if it is "closed"), select the Create a new command button.
   
   A new command, named Commandn will be created, where n represents an integer, most likely 1 unless you have done this before and not renamed the added command(s).
   
4. In the Properties panel (lower right side, expand the panel if it is "closed"), edit the properties of the new command as shown in the image below. I was not intending to use this command on a ribbon panel or a toolbar, so I did not create a custom button image, but used the out-of-the-box one for Property Set Definition edit. The Element ID will be automatically generated; yours may vary from what is shown here.
   
5. In the Customizations in... panel (upper left side, expand the panel if it is "closed"), expand the ACA node (if necessary) and then expand the Double Click Actions node under the ACA node.
   
6. Scroll down in the Customizations in... panel, if required,to find the Multi-View Block node under the Double Click Actions node and expand the Multi-View Block node.
   
7. In the Command List panel, left click and drag the Property Data Edit command up to the Customizations in... panel and drop it on the Multi-View block node.
   
8. The Property Data Edit command replaces Multi-View Block Edit as the Double Click Action for Multi-View Blocks.
   
9. Select OK to dismiss the Customize User Interface dialog and to register your changes.

Now when you double click on a Schedule Tag, the Edit Property Set Data dialog will open, for the object to which the Schedule Tag is attached. Note that if you double-click on a non-tag Multi-View Block, you will also get the Edit Property Set Data dialog and will be able to edit Property Data attached to that Multi-View Block, as well as add Property Sets that apply to Multi-View Blocks or remove any of the Property Sets that are attached.

If you want to edit the Multi-View Block Defintion, you can still select an instance and, on the Multi-View Block contextual ribbon tab, on the General panel, select the Edit Style tool, or right click and choose Edit Multi-View Block Definition from the context menu.

Having edited the ACA.cuix file, you will want to back up the modified version so that you can restore it later, should the CUIX file get reset by a reinstallation or lost/corrupted through some catastrophic event. Also, as always, you can click on any of the images to see a full-size version.

ACA Rant

Having spent the last few days neck deep in Display System edits, including style-level override edits, I really wish that this add-on had become commercially viable and was available for AutoCAD^® Architecture 2014.

Or, given that that did not happen, I wish that the functionality it provided had been incorporated into ACA itself. I am making the same edits over and over again, and I fear that my brain will soon implode. This is the sort of drudgery that computers were supposed to save us from, not create more.

ACA: MNL Files Have Moved in 2014

AutoCAD^® AutoLISP^® Menu Source files have long been used to enable the loading of AutoLISP code and support files used by an AutoCAD Customization File (CUIX) and, if you go back far enough, the old AutoCAD Menu files. All that is required is that the file name (other than the file extension) of the MNL file match that of customization file and that the MNL file be found in the AutoCAD search path, and when the customization file is loaded, so is the MNL file.

In previous releases, the MNL file was kept in the same folder as the associated CUIX file, so if you knew where the CUIX file was, you knew where the MNL file was, as well. The default installation location in Windows 7 was under C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\ACA 20xx\enu\Support, where [USERNAME] is your user name and xx represents the last two digits of the release year for the version being used.

In ACA 2014, this has changed. The default installation location for the CUIX files remains the same, but the MNL files are now installed in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2014\Support\en-us (Windows 7).

Why should you care? If you are running ACA more or less out-of-the-box, or at least using the ACA.cuix file as your main customization file, you probably do not need to care. But if you choose to make a copy of the CUIX file and give it a different name (in anticipation of making customizations for yourself or your office), then you will also want to copy the ACA.mnl file, renaming it to match the name of your copied/renamed CUIX file. ACA uses the MNL file to undefine and then redefine several AutoCAD commands, including the FILLET command (which is redefined to run the AECFILLET command, enabling it to work on Walls as well as the usual AutoCAD objects). If you want that to happen for your renamed CUIX file, then you have to be able to find the MNL file in order to copy and rename it.

ACA: Transferring Display Representations Between Drawings

Once you have your Display System set up the way you want it in your template file, you generally do not have to spend a lot of time or effort with it. There are occasions where you need to copy display system settings from one file to another, and the Display Manager comes in handy here. We are preparing to deploy AutoCAD^® Architecture/MEP 2014, to replace our current 2010 versions, and I am taking the opportunity to review our current AutoCAD Architecture/MEP 2010 display settings to make certain that we maintain desired customizations while not losing any new features introduced in the more recent versions. I am planning to rebuild our settings, starting with the out-of-the-box 2014 Display Representations. To do so, I want to start with the 2014 Architectural settings, and add the MEP settings that are not present (including additional object types). While the Display Manager will allow you to copy Display Configurations and Display Representation Sets between file, it will not allow you to copy object types or individual object Display Representations. It will import Display Representations referenced by a Display Representation Set being copied that are not already present in the target file, and I used this to do what I wanted done. Here is what I did.

1. Open the source drawing, or create a source drawing by starting a new drawing from a template file that has the desired Display Representations. (In my case, I used AMEP to create a new drawing, using the out-of-the box Aecb Model (US Imperial Stb).dwt template file.) Also open the target file to which you wish to copy the Display Represenations.
2. Open the Display Manager (on the Manage ribbon tab, on the Style & Display panel, select the Display Manager tool) and select the Sets node under the source drawing file in the left pane of the Display Manager.
3. In the right pane, in a blank area at the bottom, right click and choose New from the context menu (the only choice), and name the new Set Transfer Display Representations (or any other unique name of your choice; Transfer Display Representations will be used in the example here).
   
4. In the left pane, select the new Set.
5. In the right pane, choose the Display Representation Control tab.
6. In the upper left corner of the Display Representation Control tab (in the rectangular area labeled Objects), right click and choose Select All Display Representations from the context menu. This will put a check mark in all of the boxes in the Objects/Display Representations matrix in the right pane.
   
   
   NOTE: If your task is to copy some of the Display Representations from the source file, but not all of them, then you will need to select just those that you want. If you are copying more than half, you may want to use this technique to select all of them and then clear the ones you do not want.
7. Select the Sets node under the source drawing file in the left pane, then scroll the left pane, if necessary, to bring the target drawing into view.
8. In the left pane, expand the target drawing node and the Sets node below it, but do not select either of these nodes.
9. In the right pane, which should still show the Sets from the source file, left click and drag the Transfer Display Representations Set from the right pane over to the Sets node under the target drawing. You should see a "+" icon next to the cursor. Release the mouse button to drop the Transfer Display Representations Set, copying it to the target drawing.
   
10. The copied Set should appear under the Sets node of the target file. All of the selected Display Representations will also be copied. If you select the Representations by Object node under the target drawing, the right pane will display a matrix of Objects and Display Representations that are now defined in that drawing. If Display Represenations for objects not previously defined in the target drawing are copied, the new objects will appear in the matrix. The object list under the Representations by Object may not update immediately, but will after exiting and reopening the Display Manager.
11. Select OK to register the changes you made to the drawings and dismiss the Display Manager.

As always, click on any reduced-size image to see it full-size.

Revit: Restricting a User-Input Value to a Specific Increment

There are times when you are creating a family to represent an object that can have multiple values for a particular parameter, such as a length, that you would prefer not to create a type for each possible length. Using an instance-based parameter allows you to do so, as this allows the end user to set the value as needed on each instance. But what if the object you are modeling only comes in specific increments? How can you prevent the end user from entering a value that is not available? You can add another instance-based parameter and by entering a formula, you can round the user-input value to the desired increment. If the user could enter values that would be invalid, such as zero or negative values for a length parameter, or a value outside of the range available for the object, you can add one or more additional instance parameters and use a formula to assure an invalid value is not used.

As an example, I created an upside-down "T" shaped Generic Model Family, where the length is restricted to 6" increments, while the width can be any value.

The rounding functions in Revit^®, Round, Roundup and Rounddown, require a unit-free number as an argument, so in the formula for the LengthRounded parameter, the user-input value is divided by 6". This value is then rounded (up in this case) and that result is multiplied by 6" to restore the units and get the rounded value. The LengthActual parameter then checks the rounded result and passes that value through if it is greater than 0 feet; otherwise the minimum value of 6" is set. The Length Actual parameter is what drives the family geometry.

Since formula-driven, instance-based length parameters will not generate stretch grips in Revit, I added an additional reference plane, UserInputEnd, and assigned the LengthUser parameter to a dimension between it and the Front reference plane so that stretch grips for the length would appear in a project. None of the family geometry is locked to the UserInputEnd reference plane. You can see the family and the family in a project in the following Chronicle.

ACA: Custom Drawing Scales, The Movie

I was trying out the new version of Project Chronicle and decided to base my first video on my previous blog article. So if you prefer watching video to reading text with the occasional screen shot, take a look at the video below. You may notice a "jump" in the video after the first custom scale is added. I figured that after seeing one scale added, there would be little interest in watching me type in the five other scales, so I cut that part out of the video.

ACA: Custom Drawing Scales

The easiest way to add drawing scales that you want available for all drawings is is to use the SCALELISTEDIT command (on the Annotate ribbon tab, Annotation Scaling panel, Scale List tool; or on the Drawing Window Status Bar, use the Annotation Scale control and select the Custom item on the popup list) to add these scales to your drawing template files. This will not, of course, affect any existing drawing files that you have.

"Vanilla" AutoCAD^® offers the ability to customize the default scale list, with separate lists for Metric- and Imperial-unit drawings, by selecting the Default Scale List button in the Options dialog, on the User Preferences tab.

These lists are stored in the registry and are used by the Reset button in the Edit Drawing Scales dialog. If you use this feature to put additional scales in the default list(s), you can then use the Reset button to get these scales in an existing drawing using the SCALELISTEDIT command.

AutoCAD^®Architecture, on the other hand, does not offer the ability to edit a default scale list,

and even if you run ACA as AutoCAD, changes made to the default lists then will not be honored when later running ACA as ACA. You can still use the SCALELISTEDIT command to add drawing scales to your template file(s), so that new files created with that(those) template file(s) will have them.

In order to avoid having to add the additional scale(s) manually to existing files, you can start a new file from your edited template file. Set one of the added scales current, and add an annotative MText object. If you have more than one added scale, select the MText object, right click, and choose Annotative Object Scale > Add/Delete Scales from the context menu.

Use the Add button in the Annotation Object Scale dialog, and select the additional scales in the Add Scales to Object dialog.

Select OK twice to add the scales to the MText object. You can now either save this file or use the WBLOCK command to create a file that containes the MText object. Use the INSERT command to insert this file into any other file in which you wish to add the custom scales, and the scales will come along for the ride. You can even cancel the INSERT command when prompted for the insertion point for the block, and then purge the block definition from the file - the added scales will remain.