Friday, July 28, 2006

Revit Books-Reviews

The list of Revit instructional books is growing as Revit is steadily being adopted as the industry standard. Each book seems to have it's strength and it might be necessary to have a couple on-hand.















Mastering Autodesk Building
Author: Paul F. Aubin
Thomspson Delmar Learning/Autodesk Press

My Impression:
Overall, this is a very comprehensive book although I would have to say that the name is misleading. It gives the impression that if you read this book you will master Revit. Not so, there's nothing on rendering or creating camera views and very little is said about materials. In-depth tutorials and explanations are given for most of the main topics and example files are provided on a companion CD. It's over 700 pages so get ready for a lot of reading.
















Introduction to Commercial Design Using Autodesk Revit Building 9
Author: Daniel John Stine
SDC Publcations

My Impression:
As an introduction, this is a good start. The reader is taken through a very basic project to demonstrate the funamental tools and what Revit is capable of. There are lots of architectural drafting explanations as to why Revit behaves the way it does. You will finish this book learning the basics and wanting to learn more.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Section Bubbles disappear

Problem: When you change scales in a view the section marks disappear.

This is a setting in the properties of the section mark. This is intended to prevent HUGE section marks at scales like 1:1000 or 1/64"=1'-0". Here's how to change that parameter:

1. Click on section mark
2. Open Properties
3. change the 'Hide at scales coarser than' parameter

This applies to one section annotation at a time.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

View Levels or Sections in 3D




















Let's pretend that you have a 20 storey building and you only want to show level 3 in a 3D isometric view. Or you want to make an axonometric projection of each floor. Or you want to see a 3D version of a 2D section. How do you do this? You could use the Section Box feature alone but sometimes it can be slow, depending on the model. And this is not always precise. Here's an alternative:

1. Go to a 3D view
2. Turn on Section Box (this is automatic, see comments)
3. Pulldown menu View-Orient-To Other View
4. Choose one of your Levels or Sections
Your 3D view will look like it turned 2D, but it didn't. If you use the View-Orient-Northeast tool you will see the results. You could also use the Spin tool.
If you want this to be an axonometric than you will need to do this for each floor and then drag and drop them onto a sheet.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Revit Content Wishlist!

Please take this opportunity to submit your content wishlist items. As an example ; more steel sections, or more furniture etc. I can assure you that every entry will be seriously considered!...


You can comment on this thread or just email me your list :jpoldingATcadmicroDOTcom