January kicks off with two new productions... Director J.Zeus, a director on our Cortez, Jr. roster, helms a spot for AARP while Argentine directing team Doble Nelson shoots Fruit of the Loom in Spain. Fruit of the Loom comes to us by way of Grupo Gallegos, with whom executive producer Ed Rivero and Mexico City-based García Bross shot Tecate earlier last year.

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The Cortez Brothers opened its doors this month, settling into our new offices in Santa Monica. Production manager Nicoline Storey joins us directly from RSA, better known as Ridley Scott and Associates, where she leaves a position at Latin American-division La División to join executive producer Ed Rivero.

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Reloading Families of a different Name

Have you ever renamed a family and then wanted to load it back into a project without having to swap out your families of a different name and risk losing tags and dimensions?

Well its possible.

In your project browser (where all your sheets/views are list at the left of screen) scroll down to the families section and expand the list.

Now find the family you want to overwrite.

Right click and select reload.

Now navigate to the family you want to overwrite it with. Amazingly it doesn't need to be the same name or even the same family category

Once reloaded revit will swap out all your families of this type in the project for this new version.

This is good for keeping file sizes down and avoiding excess loaded families.

Hope this helps :)

Comments are welcome as always.

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Export to DWG Known Issues

This is a compiled list of DWG export problems. Hopefully this list will see some of these issues ironed out in subsequent releases. If you have any further issues that you think should be listed or comments on how some of these issues have effected your productively please post them.

1. Elements that have used the linework tool on certain category families do not get exported.

2. When the linework tool is used on an underlay to show the roof and the underlay is turned off, in the resulting export the roof hatch is typically exported also...

3. White, no pattern fills created in annotation families or any family for that matter export to AutoCAD and print as solid black making the annotations unreadable. FIXED

4. Elements in sub-categories are not exported to their subcategories even though they have been mapped to a seperate layer in the export layers file. THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN RESOLVED WITH A LATER BUILD OF REVIT. ELEMENTS ARE STILL EXPORTED TO THEIR CATEGORY LAYER AS BLOCKS, HOWEVER PARTS OF THESE BLOCKS CAN BE TURNED OFF USING THE SUBCATEGORIES. FIXED

5. Crop Region translations when exporting sheets directly correspond to those in Revit. The issue being is that an AutoCAD viewport crops text and annotations where is Revits doesn't...

6. When Override host layers is enabled for walls etc, the resulting export places these lines using an unpredictable color which doesn't correspond with the export layers file. Typically Color 10 or Color 50 so these need to be assigned in your CTB file.

7. Dimension and text should create new styles upon export rather than using the STANDARD style as this creates issues with older versions of AutoCAD commonly used by clients and consultants.

8. When loaded generic models are used as an in-place floor when a callout of them is exported the entire floor comes across in the result export. This is an issue as if the setting is used to export out to a single sheet often this floor then overlaps the other details on the sheet making them appear incorrectly.

9. Linetype translations are still unpredictable. Often the linetypes used in revit don't translate through into the export. A solid line is the result. For instance overrides applied using a filter to select specific wall types to display in a particular manner.

10. The penultimate would be for an exported titleblock to export with attributes created for the parameters. Some of our clients have database systems they use for managing drawings (checking in and out etc) that link with these attributes. As the various consultants do not currently use Revit the only deliverables are DWG and DWF/PDF. As such these resultant exports need to be perfect and useable in order to work appropriately within a system such as this.

11. Text leaders somtimes get exported with an uncontrollable overridden color. Color 10 or Color 50...

Feel free to add comments

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Revit 9 Filters Explained

Filters are a very powerful new tool available in Revit 9.

They give you the ability to control the visibility of any group of elements you define. Including their line colour, line style, and lineweight as well as whether that particular group of elements is visible.

They give the user the ability to control elements in way where previously mistreating worksets was the only method. Personally I still feel the need to control elements with worksets sometimes.

Before I begin with a quick tutorial, filters cannot be used on annotation elements such as section markers (unfortunately...)

Being by going to your visibility settings for the view you wish to add a filter.

Click on the filter tab.

Click Filters down the bottom.

Click New, to add a new filter.

Name it accordingly. Best to use something descriptive so you'll be able to use it again in another view at a later stage.

Select which element categories you'd like it to filter through... You can select multiple or single categories.

Select filter by... This enables you to filter from all the shared and project parameters available for these elements.

Then select the way you want to filter it (contains, equals etc)

Then type in the condition you require. (you can repeat this to set multiple conditions in a single filter)

Now insert this filter into the view.

Now all elements matching this criteria can be manipulated independently, either by turning them off, giving them a different line style (for example fire rated walls or structural walls...)

You can also access you filters through you settings menu.

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Object Styles Explained

Object styles are located both in the project and in families. Every family, system and annotation category has atleast one object style. They are used to control globally how an object is displayed with regards to lineweight, colour and type. These can be overridden per view or changed throughout a project either in your "visibility graphics controls" or your "settings->Object Styles" respectively.

In a family:

When you are in a family going to settings->Object Styles can create new subcategories for elements that will enable them to be turned off or their display manipulated without changing all elements in that category. For example:

Say we have a generic model family and we create a new object style by going to our object style settings, clicking NEW and selecting sub-category of generic models and name in "Signage". We could then select individual solid geometries located in our family and go to their properties and set their subcategory to "Signage". Now if we were to load this family into a project we could turn off signage in our visibility settings and it would just turn off these geometries whilst keeping on our other generic models.

The other items that are created when adding a new object style are new linetypes (this is where some people become confused as in families you do not create new linetypes you create new object styles). If we were to select symbolic lines in our family you'll note that two new linestyles are now selectable. That is, Signage (cut) and Signage (projection). Similarly lines drawn in this object style can be turned off or manipulated independant of all generic models as previously outlined.

In a project:

In Settings->Object Styles in a project we can change how a particular sub-category or category is displayed globally throughout the model by editing its properties. You'll note we have multiple tabs, for model, annotation etc for the different classes of elements.

These can also be overridden per view to enable exceptions to the graphical display of these elements for paricular views.

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Nested Arrays & Formulas

I have recently updated my tutorial for nested arrays and formulas which was getting quite old. The tutorial is available here: Nested Families & Arrays

Just in summarisation though, best practices when creating parametric arrays:

1. Always use nested families for elements that are to be arrayed

2. Always constrain the two defining elements of the array in all 3 axis. (defining elements are either the first and second or first and last depending on which option you've selected when creating your array)

3. Always constrain your arrayed elements by dimensioning to their origins. (their origin is the intersection of the three "defines origin" reference planes - THIS SHOULD BE LOCATED AT A LOGICAL POINT THAT YOU WANT TO CONSTRAIN TO, TO AVOID EXCESSIVE DIMENSIONS AND PARAMETERS)

Hopefully this quick cheat sheet can be used to diagnose issues with malfunctioning arrays.

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