Revit Architecture 2009 Extensions

You can now download Revit Architecture 2009 Extensions from the Autodesk Subscription Center. Some impressions:
Freeze Drawings: create a 2D drafting view of a plan, elevation or section view.
Text Generator: A few more bells and whistles for text. A temporary solution I hope.
Grids Generator: This is a step in the right direction for creating and editing levels and grids.

One thing of note, you can choose to display your grids in 3D. This will draw unconstrained model lines on top of the grids.While I like the idea of these extensions, and in some cases they are badly needed, I find them disappointing. They seem incomplete as compared to the Revit Structure extensions.

Curtain Wall Louvres

The easiest way to make louvres on/in curtain panels is to do the following:

Make a mullion profile of the shape and offset desired. Load into project.
Make a (louvre) curtain wall type which includes above mentioned mullion profile and desired spacing.
Using the TAB key Insert louvre curtain wall type in place of panel at desired locations.

Credit to Daniel Friesen from the AUGI forum.

I would like to add one more thing to this...
If you would like to have a single panel of glass behind the louvres you may need to do this:
Make a curtain wall with the conventional mullions and glass panels.
Make a curtain wall that only contains a modified mullion that acts as a louvre. Its panel will be the empty panel type.
Draw this curtain wall in front of panels that need louvres. You may lock/constrain it to the backing curtain wall.

IES Plugin and Phases

You can now set the phase to export to the IES plugin analysis. Here's how:

Settings-Project Information-Energy Data-Project Phase

Show Light Cone

Nice post from Mike Hardy-Brown's blog...

http://reviteer.blogspot.com/2008/07/revit-arch-2009-lights.html

Neat little trick with lights.
Instead of rendering to see where your light source definition will render lit portions, go to your visibility graphics (VG), show the lights on in shaded or hidden line views. Switch on Light Source. Also nice to have an override here. I used a blue overhead line. Sectional Elevation representation of light source definition.

Export as Polylines

When exporting to AutoCAD you can export Room and Area boundaries as polylines.

1. File-Export CAD Formats

2. Options

3. Click Export Rooms and Areas as polylines

3D Details

To make a 3D Detail of an existing section or elevation:

1. Make a 3D view and name it
2. Turn on Section Box in the View Properties
3. View(drop down menu)-Orient-To Other View...-Pick your view
4. Orbit 3D view to desired location