Using Multiple floors in Revit

Here's a sample wall section. It's showing nothing but model elements, as you'd find in any section cut around the model.

• There are 3 walls above the footing.
  • You can have duplicate type marks in walls so that if you tag the brick ledge segment instead of the upper segment, it will still display a consistent wall type.
  • use Join Geometry to remove the lines between the 3 wall segments, or create a stacked wall of the three types.
  • Don't include footings in stacked walls, they add too much complexity to wall joins. Instead create footings with the structural footing tool.
• The perimeter insulation is a wall sweep that's included in the current template. you could also make it part of the concrete footing wall.
  
• The isolation joint is a slab edge sweep that's included in the current template.
• There are 2 floors - the concrete slab, for the whole building, and finish floors per room.
  • the architectural, concrete slab is a single continuous floor. You can use multiple floors to produce floor joints where they need to be shown.
  • The finish floor should be placed with an actual thickness, and an offset above the floor level equal to it's thickness. (VCT that is 1/8" thick should have a level offset of 1/8".) Drawing the finish floor around walls as its actually installed will make scheduled areas more accurate. Using real thicknesses will help with ADA and finish-alignment coordination as well.
• the Pad is compacted fill, and is included in the template. Use this to place it under the floor, to show compacted fill in sections, and cut away any topography that may otherwise spill into the building (cuts a hole in the ground for a basement).

Working Files and user names

Every working file made from a central file is assigned to a specific user.

Your user name is set in Revit options.

Once you've made a working file with your user name, nobody else can use that working file.

If you do not save to central after editing anything (that includes views and sheets, even just the view you panned across)

Using Revit in Live meetings

When you open a working file on a computer other than your own, you’re still linked to your central Revit file. Likely the other computer will have it's own user name set. Using Revit in there is just like using Revit anywhere else; if you open a working file and do not save to central when you’re done, items will remain checked out and non-editable to everyone else.

Solutions:

If someone's already opened a file and left it locked - see Releasing worksets from someone else below.

Make a working file for your meeting

If you’re planning on keeping the changes you make in a meeting, you must make a new working file for the conference room computer, name it something that identifies it as different from your normal working file. When you're done with the meeting you must save to central. If you decide to not save the changes;

1. Close your working file without saving to central.
2. Re-open the central file
3. Re-save the working file
4. Close with saving to central and relinquishing worksets.

Detach from central

There's a checkbox you can check when opening a file that says detach file from central. Check that box and you've separated your current file from the central file. No changes can be saved back, and you won't lock anyone out. You can save this file as something temporary, or not save it at all.

Releasing worksets from someone else

It goes like this - Joe Smith worked on the model, or opened the central file to view something, and is now on vacation, or unavailable, and they never checked in their worksets, or closed the central file, locking a view.

To fix:

1. Open Revit (have all other files closed)
2. Open Settings/Options
3. Change your username to the one who you see has the elements you need borrowed (jsmith)
4. Open the central file
5. Save as a new working file. It'd be a good idea to append the user's initials to working file names to help keep them straight.
   
6. Save Joe's working file to central and close it.
7. Go back into your Settings/Options and change the username back to you.
8. Open your working file and continue your work. Joes stuff should now be available again.

NOTE: If Joe Smith is working from home, or somewhere else, you will have just invalidated all of his work, so be careful to communicate with your team before taking this step.

Revit Interface Speed Tips

Visibility and view

• To turn of the visibility of a category, simply select the object you want to switch off and type VH on your keyboard. (you may need to edit your keyboard shortcuts.)
  
• While holding the middle scroll wheel button, tap the space bar to switch to Zoom mode, tap it again to enter Spin mode. Tap again to scroll back to Pan mode.
• Hold down the key and hit the tab button to cycle between open windows.

Object Selection

• Hit TAB to cycle between different objects under your cursor BEFORE you click the button to select.
• If you are editing an object or group of objects and get out of the command you can reselect them without having to go back and pick them individually by using the CTRL + back-arrow key.
• Select an object, right click and you can "Select All Instances" of the object in the model, or just type SA for the same action (regardless of whether they're visible in the current view.)
  

Object Creation

• When selecting lines you can pre-lock them by checking the "Lock" Check box in the Option bar.
• Hitting the space bar flips the orientation of a wall while you're drawing it.
• The Join Roofs tool (next to wall joins tool) will join the face of a gable end roof to an adjacent vertical wall. This is great to do the condition where one lower roof eave "tucks under" the eave of a higher gable.
• Hold the control button while clicking/dragging something to copy it.
• Select an object and type CS to create a similar object. (If selecting a wall it will start the wall command with the same wall type.)
• Hold SHIFT down while moving something to constrict it to Vertical or Horizontal, like the AutoCAD ORTHO command.
• Hit Space while placing doors to adjust the swing direction.
• When placing a component you want to align with an angled wall, hover over the wall and hit space to align the component to the wall.
  

Object Modification

• After selecting an object, you can nudge it around your screen with the arrow keys (provided it's not hosted or attached to something that restricts it in certain directions. Each tap of the arrow key moves it 1/2 your snap distance. Shift+ Arrow key moves it 10 times as far with each tap.
• Hit the space bar while placing a component and it will rotate that element by increments of 90 degrees around it's origin.
• Simply select a door / wall / component (or select multiple objects all at once), then hit the space bar and watch them flip, rotate etc

Adjust temporary dimension size in Revit

In the new build 20070810_1700 Web Update Enhancement List, there is a point mentioning: "When temporary dimension text too small to read, user can adjust the size of the font through Revit.ini". Our Autodesk Support team is currently in the process of creating a Knowledge Base solution that explains how to modify the Revit.ini to adjust the size of the temporary dimensions. However, the following are the steps to do so:

1. Open Revit.ini file in Notepad. The file is typically located in C:\Program Files\Revit Structure 2008\Program.


2. Add the following line to Revit.ini in [Graphics] section:
   
   
   
   • TempDimFontSizeInPoints=16
   
   
   • Where 16 is a number larger than 8 (default hard-coded value). Good starting point is twice the default size (i.e. 16-17).
   
   


3. Save Revit.ini.


4. Restart Revit. You should see the change.
   
   
   
   • If the size of temporary dimensions is still small, repeat from step 1 with larger number.