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Thanks to David Mills of the Revit team who walked
me through some of the changes in Revit 9. I asked
him when Revit was going to allow users to add
ASCII characters to linetypes (like --W--W-- to
indicate a Water line) and that still is off the radar
for the Revit team. I have been asking for this for at
least four releases and I am close to resignation that
it will never happen.
In Release 7 and below, I used worksets to organize
my entities inside of Revit...I would put walls on one
workset, furniture on another, lighting on another,
etc. This allowed me to set worksets Not Editable
and then I wouldn't accidentally select a workset and
modify it when I was working in a file. In Release 8,
they changed the way worksets behave. They
added "invisible element borrowing"....this means if
nobody has put their name on a workset and you
select an entity assigned to that workset, you can
modify it. So, my method no longer works.
David advised that I use File Linking to accomplish
my work flow issue. This is similar to creating an
external reference in AutoCAD, where you basically
work on top of an underlay brought in by a link. The
problem with that method versus the way I used to
do it in R7 and below was that I could change my
worksets on the fly to be editable/not editable
(similar to locking and unlocking a layer)...that won't
work if you use File Linking.
The assumption that worksets are only used in a
multi-team environment was a bad one on the part of
the Revit development team...or they did not
anticipate how a single user might leverage the
worksets feature. Either way, they took away a
feature that worked really well for the single user
while they added muscle to the team approach.
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Overall, I have not been overwhelmed by the Revit 9
release. I just couldn't see a lot of new features or
anything whiz bang. This actually was pretty close
to my entire impression of the 2007 line-up from
Autodesk. AutoCAD 2007 boasted new 3D solid
modelling tools that hardly anybody wanted or
needed and ignored the loyal customer base that just
wants solid 2D drafting tools that make drafting
easier and faster.
Revit 9 did add some new shortcut keys.
You can locate the keyboard shortcuts file in the
Program folder under Program Files\Autodesk\Revit
Building 9. It is a txt file that you can print out and
use as a desk reference...and, of course, you can
modify it and add your own shortcuts using
Notepad. Make sure you do not open the file up or
save it in Word as that will add formatting that will
corrupt the file.
David Mills tells me other big feature enhancements
in Revit 9....The ability to perform sun studies...that
one should be a big winner among users;
improvements to the Room Object; and the
expansion of the Detail Library to more than 500
files. Ah, but what I wouldn't give for the ability to
put ASCII characters in linetypes. (sigh)
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Elise Moss
Moss Designs
email:
elise_moss@mossdesigns.com
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