The Cortez Brothers is pleased to announce we've somehow managed to get one foot in several continents these last two months... Director Angel Gracia did a Verizon shoot in Mexico City with Global Hue, a Toyota spot in Dubai and a Falabella campaign for Group Films here in L.A. The Falabella shoot involved animatronic gorillas, which needs to be mentioned simply because we like saying 'animatronic gorillas.'

In Barcelona and Madrid, Doble Nelson shot a Burger King spot for Crispin Porter; our other directing team, Plástico, went a little further southwest to shoot the same fantastic burger chain in an entirely different environment (Mexico City, to be exact) and with a slightly different (yet no less beloved) agency, Bromley. Director Magaby García successfully wrapped a stunning Ikea spot for Anita Santiago in Los Angeles, which (we like to think) gives both Ikea a foothold in the Spanish-speaking world and Cortez Brothers bragging rights in Sweden and the Netherlands.

In other creative news, principal photography on Alfredo de Villa's feature film "Humboldt Park" has already started... The Storytelling Department lends its expertise to feature film scripts in South Africa and the US, as well as Spanish-language trailers (care of our strategic alliance with new friends AEM) for the Owen Wilson flick "Drillbit Taylor" and "Stop Loss," the feature followup for "Boys Don't Cry" director Kimberly Peirce. And yes, her name is spelled "Peirce."

Next up on our calendar? A Budweiser shoot with Fernando Arrioja in our own SoCal backyard. We'll bring the beer and fireworks, you bring the BBQ...

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Join Geometry Secrets

This is an interesting little trick that I've taken for granted for some time now and didn't realise a lot of people weren't aware of it.

If two adjacent walls are within say 25mm of each other and you use join geometry between the two walls (they don't even need to touch) the two walls inherit the openings of the other.

This is very handy when you are forced to model finish layers separetly in some situations. Saves you doing the unthinkable and using the evil "edit profile" option...

HTH.

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January, 2008 means the start of multiple productions in multiple cities. Simón Bross did a three-day Tecate shoot in Mexico with New York-based agency Adrenalina, the newest and only Hispanic member of the MDC Partners network. A little more south of the border, Karina Taira shot an entire General Market campaign for Nivea in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the agency and creative team behind the three-day shoot was TBWA Chiat NY. Slightly closer to home here in Los Angeles, director Quim Lorente shot a Verizon spot with Global Hue while, mere miles and one golf course away, Angel Gracia got all bobblehead on a Jack in the Box spot with Orci. We're currently gearing up to welcome our Cortez sister Magaby García later this month as she shoots an IKEA spot filled with all the little details and products that make us love both Magaby and IKEA. Additionally, we're happy to report on our return from Buenos Aires that directors Nes Buzzalino, Ale Ruax and Rama Martínez (AKA Plástico) are just as charming in person as they are in their treatments and on the phone. On the other side of the creative coin, Simón has just returned from Sweden's Gothenburg Film Festival (this year's highlight a retrospective tribute to Ingmar Bergman) where "Bad Habits" got more than its share of lovin' with the Audience's Choice award. In another snowy film festival, Ricardo de Montreuil's feature "Máncora" made its bow at Sundance in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. And if you've been following "Variety" lately you'll have seen that director Alfredo de Villa is adding lots of talent to his feature "Humboldt Park," with Jay Hernandez, Alfred Molina, Mercedes Ruehl and Luis Guzman joining John Leguizamo and Freddy Rodriguez in the cast.

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2008 brings new offices, new jobs and new faces. We've settled in at our new spot in Marina del Rey, radically increasing our size and scope. If you happen to be in the area, stop by -- we boast a nice retro/Art Deco Cuban flair and some really great artwork from the Caribbean. Not to mention a lounge area for our newest directors, whose names and bios will appear on our updated website shortly. Work-wise, we're just returning from the Havana Film Festival and enjoying the New Year glow. We've wrapped a fun spot with Simón Bross that, contractually, we can't mention yet -- except to say that it involves a burger and a red wig with braids (assume what you may). We've also done a Toyota spot with the same director but an entirely different artistic bent, shooting in L.A. and learning the exact location of every hill and incline in a 200-mile radius of the city. Finally, our Mexican director Fernando Arrioja airs an AT&T series this month that was shot jointly between Miami and Mexico City.

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In Place families when should I use these?

In place families trip up a lot of new revit users. Sometimes its just so quick & easy to create a family on the fly in the project.

Unfortunately though they have some real negatives. For instance they typical have a big hit on your file size especially when you start making them reference surrounding geometry in the project. Also, one of the worst things you can do in Revit is start copying around the in-place families in the project...

Many new users don't realise that unlike a normal family all the copies are actually completely new families. That is, changing one, will NOT update all the others. If it repeats it needs to be an external family.

So what in-place families do I create?

Generally the only things I'll model in place occassionally are floors, stairs & ramps. Modelling monolithic stairs and ramps as floors is a great idea as you can then attach walls to them and get those connections to floors correct. This is also because of the current limitations of the stairs & ramps.

I prefer to model complex floors as in-place purely because they don't adjust when you move walls, causing sketches to occassionaly become invalid and delete your floor. This also gives you absolute control over footings, and various beams through the slab.

Another trick is with High-Rise buildings where you have complex floors that are typical over a number of levels.

1. I'll model the first one in-place,
2. Then whilst still in edit family mode, copy all the geometry and paste aligned into a new external generic model family and save it as say "Floors 3-9".
3. I then switch back to the project and delete the inplace family i just made.
4. I create a new in-place Floor family called "Level 3 Floor" and load the generic model family "Floors 3-9" into it and place it on level 3.
5. Then finish the family.
6. Revit then understands that this family is a floor allowing you to attach walls to it.
7. You can then copy and paste by level to levels 4-9 and rename in the inplace families as per the level they are apply to. Yes we did just copy and inplace family, but because its contents is purely an external family there is no real overhead in doing this. Plus if we make a change to that generic model and reload it, it will update all of our floors!

Let me know if you'd like me to post any other examples...

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Revit Referencing Sheets on View Tags

Do you use the Referencing Sheets parameter in your view tags?

If you do then I bet you've had times when you thought why on earth is Revit choosing to reference from some bizarre view instead of the one you want.

Well its really quite simple -

It uses the drawing sheet numbers to determine which view to back reference.

For instance, lets say you have a sheet set as per the following:

010 Site Plan
020 Existing Plan
030 Demolition Plan
040 General Arrangement Plan
050 Elevations
060 Sections

etc.

Now lets say you have your section and elevation markers turned on in all those views and they haven't had the "hide at scales coarser than" parameter assigned properly.

In this case your Elevations & sections would display their referencing sheet as 010. This is because when you are looking through the set its the first drawing you would come to (logical hey).

Now if we go to the Site Plan and turn off the sections/elevations or charge our "hide at scales coarser than" parameter so as to effectively turn them off in this view. Our sections and elevations are now magically updated to reference back to 030 (this is assuming that they are new construction phase sections and elevations). Again because its the first drawing you would see the markers when looking through the set.

If you're anything like me, I want mine to back reference to the General Arrangement Plan (040). So our dilemma is do we turn off the section & elevation markers in this view? (probably the obvious choice) or the alternative and probable wrong solution would be to adjust our set order so the general arrangement plan comes before the demolition plan in the set...

I look forward to a setting in Revit where we can override this behaviour in special instances. But understanding this may help you identify why sometimes a view is being referenced from a strange place.

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I've also noticed some strange circumstances, usually when dependant views are involved where views reference back to a sheet that has the markers turned off. Hopefully this bug will be fixed or maybe it was just related to my file being corrupt?

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Mr Spot's 5 Golden Rules for Revit

I had an anonymous user request my 5 golden rules which I thought was a great idea!

The hard part is trying to prioritise what I think are my top 5 rules, so hard in fact that I think I need to break it down into 2 categories. Project & Family:

PROJECTS

1. Work in multiple views. When you are working on your model make sure you completely understand the extents of what you are editing. I don't believe this can be done from any single orthogonal view. Working in 3D is great and should be done as much as possible as you can quickly see how the elements you are manipulating interact with elements around them (make use of section boxes to do this also). Too many times I see users trying to make changes only in a plan and then a week later discovering all the issues they have made for themselves in their sections...
2. Setup your template effectively and continually update it & customise templates at the beginning of new projects to suit that project. If you find you have to make graphical changes to your project everytime you want to print something or once it reaches a certain stage then there is a good chance your template file isn't setup appropriately. The earlier you do this and the quicker you update your templates the less redundant work you'll have to do updating the many revit files you end up with.
3. Plan your project! Sit down with pen and paper first, especially for large projects or projects of an unfamiliar type, and work out exactly how you are going to document it. Are you going to use groups or links or design options? If so what are the issues in doing this and how are you going to resolve these? How is the project team going to work? Important questions that need to be resolved as soon as possible, preferably before the model is started.
4. Develop a system of control for your Library. Family naming conventions, parameters (what do I want to show up in my schedule?), displays at various scales...
5. Make use of your model as much as possible for drafting and details. If you use your model as the basis for your details then you can identify issues before they get to site. Yes of course you should still draft over these for details, but using the model as the basis you know when your details need to be updated or re-looked at.

Hmm, most of these are standards based which shows my position as CAD/BIM Manager. But really having your standards and protocols in place is one of the MOST important tasks in maintaining an effective Revit working environment.

FAMILIES:

1. Setup Reference planes first! I can't stress this enough. It makes creating parametric families so much simpler. Place them in and give them names and appropriate strengths (ie: Centre Front/Back, Bottom or Weak)
2. Give your family an appropriate ORIGIN point. This is especially important when using arrays as I've spoken about previously.
3. Do all families as non-hosted (there are some exceptions) first. Then simply nest them into the hosted template. This way its very simple to constrain them to their host.
4. Fill out and add parameters & types for all your families. As a good friend of mine says, Wesley Benn, leverage as much data as possible. Info entered once here is info that doesn't need to be entered 10 times in your next 10 projects...
5. Minimise numbers of families by making them as flexible as possible. Less families means, smaller project sizes, quicker load times, less things to change and things are easier to find. Refer to some of my previous posts to see some methods of doing this.

Well that's my list. I'm sure I could easily have a top 100...

As always your comments are most welcomed.

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