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Door and Window Tags

October 12, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

Tags is also annotation. This time, we are going to create a view with less details to show door and windows tag. To do this, we need to create additional view. Revit doesn’t allow us to put a view to sheets more than once. So if we have different representations, we need to create several views.

Open your training file. On your project browser, right click on 1st floor in floor plans group. Select duplicate view>duplicate. Revit will create a duplicate named Copy of 1st Floor. The active view is also changed to this new view. Right click on the view name, select rename from context menu. Give it name something like 1st floor door schedule.

Pay attention that we don’t copy dimensions to this view. If you also need the dimensions, you should choose duplicate with detailing. But we don’t need them right now. Now let’s tweak the visibility a bit. Open view tab on your ribbon. Click visibility/graphics in graphics tools group.

Uncheck under visibility column for these following items:

casework
entourage
furniture
furniture systems
planting

Now check halftone column for these items:

floors
railings
stairs

Still in visibility/graphics dialog, click the annotation categories tab. Uncheck visibility for sections and elevations. Click OK to apply changes.

Open your original 1st floor plan, and compare to this one. This is how you represent different views for your model. Either in plans, elevations, sections, etc.

Now let’s add tags. You can manually add tags one-by-one by using tag by category.

But instead of selecting objects one-by-one, let’s just tag all our doors and windows. Activate Tag All.

First, let’s check if we already have our tag families loaded. Click tag group title to expand this panel. Select Loaded Tags.

Check if door tag and window tag are already loaded. If it’s not loaded yet, click load on the right side of this dialog. You can find those tag families in annotations>architectural folder. Click OK to close the dialog.

Click Tag All. Hold [ctrl] and click on door tags & windows tags. Make sure both of them are highlighted. At the bottom of this dialog, leader section, check on create option. Use length 10 mm. Left the orientation to horizontal. Click OK.

Your tags may obstruct each other. You can fine tune tags placement by turning off the leader or change the other options on option bar.

You can also click and drag your to new position.

And of course, you can arrange the tag leader!

Here is the finished door and windows schedule plan.

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Source: CAD Notes – Door and Window Tags
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: click, door, floor, furniture furniture, furniture systems, plans elevations, project browser, tag, tag group, View No Comments »

by CADcaster

Creating Revit Family from 2D Drawings

October 6, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

If you have used Revit for a while, you must love the ability to create plan, elevation, and section view easily. Of course, you have to create your model properly. And it might be annoying when you realize that you don’t have the family for a certain component. Do you need to create 3D family so you can get the plan, elevation, and section? Not always!

Here’s the situation. Many times we don’t really need to have 3D model. You might need to represent some areas in a very nice perspective view. But many times you don’t. For example, how many times you need to show toilet in perspective view? For interior design, you might need it. But I never saw anyone do it for commercial buildings. So, as long as you can report it as a family, you can show it in plan, elevation, and section, it would be ok, right?

Now let’s say we have 2D drawings of a toilet seat. Let’s try to create a family from it. You can download the file here.

Open your Revit. Create a new family. Select Metric Plumbing Fixture.rft as template. Click open.

In your project browser, double click floor plans>ref level to activate it. This is how your family would look like in a floor plan.

Open insert tab on your ribbon. Activate import CAD.

Find toilet plan.dwg. Change these options at the bottom right of the dialog box: Positioning: Auto – origin to origin. Then click open

Select the toilet, then click visibility settings on your ribbon.

We only want this drawing appear on plan view, but we don’t want it to obstruct any other view. So turn off Front/Back and Left/Right View.

Click OK.

Using the same method, import toilet front.dwg to your elevations>front view. And toilet side.dwg to your elevations>left view. Don’t forget to change the visibility settings for each view. All of them using origin to origin for positioning.

That’s it! Now save your family, load to your project and try it.

Try to place to your plan, try to see it in your elevations, sections. And also try to generate a schedule. It works just like 3D family, minus 3D visualization. If you don’t need 3D viz, why bother to create a complex 3D model like it?

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Source: CAD Notes – Creating Revit Family from 2D Drawings
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: 2d drawings, click, D Drawings, Don, family, perspective view, plan, plan elevation, plumbing fixture, project browser, toilet, View No Comments »

by CADcaster

Controlling Annotation Scale Further

September 30, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

In my previous post, I’ve introduced annotation scaling for dimension. We have added two scales to all of our dimensions automatically. In this post, we will discuss how we use annotation scale for hatches. We will also discuss how we can control annotation scale further.

Two questions popped up when I first time learn about annotation scaling:

Can we selectively show objects in a certain scales, but not in other scale?
Showing annotation in different scales is great. But sometimes it can obstruct my drawings on relatively large scale. But I need it there in small scale.

To answer these questions, let’s open our drawing again. Select any wall, right click, and select block editor from context menu.

Here’s what we are going to do: We want our brick pattern will be not too large in 1:50. And we don’t want this pattern shown in 1:200 scale. Let’s assume we only use those 3 scales.

First, we need to tell AutoCAD this is how we want it look like in 1:100 scale. Change your annotation scale to 1:100.

Now we need to add annotative behavior to this pattern. Select it, right click, select hatch edit. In the options area, activate annotative.

Click OK to close this dialog. Now try to move your pointer above this pattern, you will see annotative symbol right next your cursor.

Now we need to tell AutoCAD to also show this pattern in 1:50. Select the pattern. Look at your properties palette. If it’s not opened yet, right click and select properties.

In pattern section, click on text field next to annotative scale. You will see … button next to it. Click it.

This will open object scale dialog. You will see 1:100 scale listed here. Click add. Select 1:50 and click OK. Now this pattern will show only in 1:50 and 1:100 scale! This is how you can add scale manually to your annotations. Save this block and close block editor.

Turn off annotation visibility. It’s the button next to your annotation scale list. Try several scales. You should see your pattern only in 1:50 and 1:100. Try to compare how it looks in your layout, different viewport scale.

Now let’s back to our dimension. Add some more dimension using 3mm style like this.

Now, here’s a challenge. Can you show all dimensions in 1:50 scale, but only some in 1:100?

After you finish, here’s the last one on this post.

Activate 1:100 viewport. Let’s pretend that our dimension too far from our drawing. But we feel it’s OK for 1:50. Select a dimension. You will see your dimension showing two sizes: On 1:50 and 1:100.

Drag your dimension closer to your drawing. Pay attention to your other viewport while doing this. It’s only adjusted in your active viewport, but not in the other scale! Amazing isn’t it?

Basically that’s all you need to know about annotation scale. But I’ll cover a little about blocks and text on my next post.

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Source: CAD Notes – Controlling Annotation Scale Further
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: annotation, brick pattern, click, context menu, dimension, hatches, pattern, scale, scales, select properties No Comments »

by CADcaster

AutoCAD 2010 Sticky Ribbon Panels

September 28, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

I found about this earlier today on Shaan blog. Now we can tear off ribbon panel and floats in your drawing area. Similar to toolbars.

Having ribbon interface sometimes so annoying when we have to move to different tabs frequently. So I can just tear off some panels I use frequently, and stick to home tab.

This feature is also available in Revit Architecture 2010, and I believe all Autodesk product 2010.

How to tear it off? Just click on panel title, hold and drag it to your drawing area.

There are some options available in this ribbon panel:

Click on your ribbon tab title will expand and show all tools available in that panel.
Return panel to ribbon
Toggle orientation. By default the panel orientation is horizontal, you can change it to vertical by clicking this button.

You can also drag and drop the panel to return it to ribbon. This panel will be placed back to where it belongs. For example, palettes panel will be placed on view tab, no matter what tab is active. We can’t move a panel from one tab to another with this trick. You have to do it through CUI if you want to do that.

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Source: CAD Notes – AutoCAD 2010 Sticky Ribbon Panels
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: area, Autodesk, autodesk product, click, home tab, panel, paypal, ribbon, ribbon panel, Tab No Comments »

by CADcaster

Creating Different Drawing Representative

September 25, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

We have created our floor plan. We set several layers when we created wall and column. Why? We are going to create different drawing representative for relatively large and small scale. How? We are going to create two layer states.

Open your drawing, or download this file. The drawing look like this.

This is going to be how it look with all the details. Let’s just save this layer states. Click from your ribbon, home>layers>unsaved layer state>New Layer State.

Give it name ‘high details’ and give the description something like given below.

That’s it! You’ve just save a layer state!

Now we are going to define another layer state. Open your layer manager.

Freeze these layers:

A-Column-Structure,
A-Wall-Pattern, and
A-Wall-Structure.

Now change the lineweight and color for these layers:

A-Column: 0.15, blue
A-Door: 0.05,red
A-Wall: 0.09, black.

No particular reason why we change the color, only I want the changes easily be recognized. We change the lineweight so it’s not going to be too thick when we plot it in large scale.

Now save another layer state. Give it name ‘low details’ and give appropriate description. There you go, you already have two layer states!

How can we use it? Easy. Just click your layer states in Layers section. You should see those two layer states there: high details and low details. Try to change it and see the difference.

Now you have high details representation and low level representation. Just like Revit, isn’t it?

Now open layout. I’ve provide one layout for this tutorial. Both of them look the same, aren’t they? They both have all layers on.

Now double click inside the right viewport. After your right viewport activated, change the layer states to ‘low details’. This should change the right viewport to low details, while the left viewport still showing the high details. However, I found this doesn’t always work. Sometimes, both of them will change their representation to new layer states. But don’t worry, if you have this problem, you can follow these steps.

Restore both of your viewport to high details. Activate your right viewport again. Now from layer state list, select ‘manage layer states’.

In the layer states manager dialog box, select ‘low details’ state, and click restore at the bottom of this dialog box. Now you’ll have your right viewport with low details, while your left viewport showing high details!

Now look at these viewport. You see same drawing in different viewports, and both showing different colors and lineweight. How is that possible. Well, that would be explained on other post. That’s how ‘layer properties per-viewport’ works.

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Source: CAD Notes – Creating Different Drawing Representative
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: click, floor plan, layer, level representation, open layout, representation, Representative Go, State, viewport, wall structure No Comments »

by CADcaster

Creating Floor Edge Slab and Custom Component

September 16, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

We have created ceiling in our model. Now let’s take a look to our void in stair area. There is a gap between floor at 2nd story and 1st floor ceiling. In the real world, of course this is not right. We have to close it.

There are several ways to do that, depends on your actual design. In this tutorial, we will add floor slab edge. But since the gap is too big, it can’t close all the gap. we are going to close the rest of it by creating custom ceiling component.

First thing first. We need to define what’s our floor slab edge look like. We are going to define it by creating a family.

From Revit menu, select new>family. Find Metric Profile-Hosted.rfa, and use it as template.

Let’s create a profile like this. You can use your own shape and size if you like.

After you finish with this profile, save it. Give it a unique name so you can easily find it later.

Open the project that we’ve created. Load the profile to that project.You can do it from ribbon>insert tab>load family.

Now we are going to define a floor slab edge. Open 2nd floor plan, then activate floor slab edge tool.

From contextual tab, activate element properties>type properties. Click duplicate button. Give it a new name.

For this type, change the profile to your defined profile.

Click OK.

Now click on your floor edges at the void. You will see slab edges added. See this image below as your guide.

Who said 3D is difficult?

But it’s not done yet. We still have gap from ceiling to our floor slab edges.

We are going to close it with custom component, a ceiling edge (I really don’t know what it’s name but I hope you know what I mean).

Let’s open 2nd floor plan again. make sure you have a section that cut the void. If you don’t have one yet, create it.

From ribbon>home tab select component>model in-place.

Revit will ask you, what is this family category? Select ceiling, and click OK. Give it name ceiling edge then click OK.

We are going to create a solid sweep. Activate it from your ribbon.

There are two components you have to create to define a sweep: path and profile. Let’s create path first. Click sketch path from your ribbon.

Create a path at your floor edge. You will see a dashed line with red point on it. That’s where you are going to draw your profile. If the dashed line is not in front of your section, drag it until you can see it on your section view.

Click finish path.

By default, contextual tab will open modify profile. Click edit profile on that tab. Revit will ask you a question: which view do you want to use to draw your profile? Select your section view, click open view.

Now, draw your ceiling edge profile. draw a closed profile, similar too this. If this one looks too ugly for you, create it as you like, as long as it close all the gap.

Shouldn’t sweep profile and sweep path coincident? Apparently not. My path doesn’t coincident with my profile, and it still works

Click finish profile. Click finish sweep. Then click finish model. That’s the object hierarchy. Inside your model, you have a sweep. Sweep is created from a profile (and path). Your need to click finish several times to end this.

Now take a look to our floor slab edge and ceiling edge.

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Source: CAD Notes – Creating Floor Edge Slab and Custom Component
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: ceiling, click, custom component, edge, edge tool, element properties, family category, floor, floor slab, Profile No Comments »

by CADcaster

Creating Your Own AutoCAD Palette

September 5, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

Autodesk has introduced palette since a long time ago. If I’m not mistaken, since AutoCAD 2005. Palette is a very easy way to manage (and create) your reusable content. We will place every blocks we’ve created to our palette in this step.

Later, this palette will be used to access the reusable contents when we draw.

Understanding Tool Palettes

Snipped from help file:

Tool palettes are used to manage blocks, hatches, and other custom tools.

If you see the palette that’s included with AutoCAD installation, you will see a collection of blocks, hatches, and other tools. This is a great way to you who want to customize your own workspace without a lot of work. You can access your blocks quickly, without having to use insert tool, find where your blocks are. It’s just a click away.

It’s not just blocks that can be managed by palettes. You can manage lines with different line type, line scale, etc dimension with different dimension styles, hatches with different scales, etc. That’s what I love about tool palette: simple but powerful.

Take a look at this example, I use 2 icon on palette to manage same pattern, but different scale. We don’t have to activate hatch, find the pattern type, or make adjustment to hatch scale. Simply 2 clicks: activate, and click on boundary.

You can also use it for dimension, lines, etc.

Creating Our Own Palette

Make sure your tool palette is opened. Right click on tool palette title bar. You will see a list of palettes group on your context menu. Select architecture to activate palette group. This will activate architecture palette group. By default, this sample group only have one palette in it. We will add new palette here.

Right click again on your palette title bar. Select Customize Palettes from context menu. You will see customize palette open.

There are two column in this dialog box. The left column, consist all the palettes available. On the right column, we can see how we group our palettes. Architectural group still only have one palette. We will use it as our tool group.

Right click on left column, then select new palette from context menu. Rename it to something like ‘My Architectural Objects’. Find Architectural group on the right column. Your new palette should’ve already been placed here. To your active palette group. If it’s not, drag and drop your new palette under Architectural group.

Close this dialog box.

Adding Objects to Our Palette

Before adding objects to our palette, let’s discuss about objects, blocks, files, and tool palettes.

For objects like lines, dimension, hatches, you don’t need to keep your file. But if you intend to insert blocks to your palette, don’t loose your file. Let’s say it this way: That file is your library, and tool in palette will load that block. So plan where you will put your file. If you want to put it on server, do it before you start placing tool to your palette. Now we can pretend our previous file that has our wall, column, and door has been save at appropriate place. Open it.

Let’s create a new layer. Name it ‘A-Centerlines’. Use magenta as it color, and lineweight 0. For linetype use ‘center’.

On command line, type LTS then [enter]. Enter value 10 then [enter]. Set A-Centerlines as current layer, then draw a line in your drawing area. Size doesn’t matter.

Now, click and drag the line to our palette. By default, it will be named Line. Right click on that tool, select rename. Give it new name: Centerline.

If you want your tool palette to look more informative, you can change the ugly line icon with an image (jpg, bmp, etc)

Drag and drop all your blocks to this palette.

These tools will be named after blocks. There you go. Easy right?

Testing Our Palette

If you have more tools and blocks, you can arrange your palette further. You can create more palette if you need to. After you’ve done, try to create a new file.

Check on your layer manager, make sure you only have layer 0 (by default).
Draw using Centerline tool we’ve just created. It will be created using A-Centerlines layer, with it’s properties! You don’t even need to create a layer! Check your layer properties now. Tool palette can be very useful for maintaining your CAD standard.
Place all other blocks to your drawing.

Very easy right? Next, we will discuss about template, cad standard
. And finally using them all in our design.

I would like to know your opinion about this tutorial series. If there’s anything you would like to add, i wrote something wrong, yours doesn’t work as expected… anything… feel free to write in comments form.

Source: CAD Notes – Creating Your Own AutoCAD Palette
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: click, dimension lines, dimension styles, Group, line, Palette, reusable content, Tool, tool palette, tool palettes No Comments »

by CADcaster

Using Info Center to Notify RSS Update

September 4, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

Have you noticed that you consistently see a pop-up message on the top right of your Autodesk Applications? Either it’s Revit, AutoCAD, Inventor or others. It’s the communication center. If you are connected to internet, then communication center will automatically check if there’s any new information available.

This is not my original idea, I saw someone (sorry I forgot who it is, so I can’t give him credit for this idea) tweets saying that he is enjoying seeing news update from info center. Why not? CAD users spent most of their time on their CAD apps. Seeing updates without opening other apps will be fun!

Click on communication center.

The communication center will open. Click on InfoCenter Settings. It’s on communication center title bar, right next to close button. There are some settings that you can play around. But let’s go straight to RSS Feeds.

You will see a default list of RSS subscriptions. You can add, remove, or simply turn off subscriptions you don’t want to follow. And you can add new subscription. For example, you can subscribe to CAD Notes blog RSS. Click add, and paste RSS link to the text field.

After you finish, you will be notified if there are any updates on blogs you are following. Or, you can click on communication center, and it will show you latest posts from those blogs.

How can you get the RSS link? You can open a website you want to follow. Find the RSS icon. Almost all major sites and every blogs have RSS link. Right click on the icon, and select copy link address (may be different for different browser, I use Chrome).

Now you can still following updates from your favorite blogs and websites without leaving you CAD application! I hope you add my blog

Source: CAD Notes – Using Info Center to Notify RSS Update
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: Autodesk, CAD, cad users, center, click, communication, communication center, link address, news update, RSS No Comments »

by CADcaster

5 Steps Preparing Your AutoCAD Plot

August 26, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

Plotting your drawing can be tricky for some people who just learn AutoCAD. Saw several posts in the forum saying they are confused how to do it. Why the plot result is not correctly scaled.

Plotting is actually very easy. Simple. Just click plot or publish then you’re done. But there are some rules and steps you have to do when you draw and arrange your model in layouts, it’s already started when you create your file!

1. Set Your Units!

The first rule is set your drawing unit correctly, and draw with that unit. I’m saw that many AutoCAD users actually don’t care about units. When they insert blocks with incorrect unit, it’s kind of messy. They have to rescale it manually. And this might sound weird, but some of them actually draw it by scaling it, just like drawing it manually on paper. Use appropriate template for your drawing. If you use metric, then use ISO templates. Or you may change the units after you draw.

Basically AutoCAD only recognize two units in plotting: inch and mm. So the easiest for you is drawing in those units. Of course you can draw in meters, feet, or other units. But that’s a different story. Let’s talk about the basic first.

Draw the object original size, not scaled. Draw all your objects. For annotations, there are two choices:

Draw all your objects in model and annotation in layout
Or you can annotate in your model and use annotation scaling (for AutoCAD 2008 or newer). We will discuss about this on separate post.

2. Set Your Page/Layout

Next thing you should do is setup your page. Open your layout. We should already have a viewport. Delete it, we don’t need it at this time. We will create a new one, this one might will be seen too small or too large after we set our page.

Open your page setup manager. You can open it by right clicking over the tab name, then select page setup manager. Or by right click over quick view layout.

On your page setup manager dialog box, you can see a list of your layouts. Let’s create a new page setup. Click new, give it name such as ‘My A4 layout’, then click OK. This will open page setup dialog box.

Set this values below:

Your printer/plotter type and sheet size.
On what to plot, select Layout.
Ensure plot scale 1:1.
Plot style table you want to use.

We created this layout with real paper size. So we use scale 1:1. The only scaling we will do is scaling our objects view inside viewports. Click OK.

Now click set current to apply the changes to your active layout. Your layout1 is ready.

Open your layout2, then open page setup manager again. Select your previous page setup, then click set current. I believe there is an easier way, but can’t find it. I usually already have it setup in my template, or simply make a copy from existing layout. Do you have any suggestion how to apply the page setup to multiple layout?

3. Setup Your Title Block

Now you should see your real paper size. The dashed rectangle is the area where your printable area. Place your title block here. You can insert existing title block if you already have one, or draw a new one. Remember, this is 1:1 scale. So if you want to have 3mm height text, use 3mm as it heights.

4. Place Viewports and Set the Scale

Now we are ready to place our viewport. You can place it by clicking new in view tab, viewports section, new icon.

In the opened dialog box, select single standard viewport, then click OK. Draw your viewport as you desired. You should see all your drawing inside it. Or in the old way, I prefer to type MV then [enter]

Next, set the scale. Select your viewport, and select the scale you wanted. You can do it from viewports toolbar or annotation scale bar.

5. Plot it!

Just activate plot by hitting [ctrl] + P or typing PLOT [enter]. Or of course, from menu or ribbon. Everything should be ready now, but check it first by seeing the preview.

Not so difficult now, right? I’m looking forward if you have other plotting tips you would like to share.

Source: CAD Notes – 5 Steps Preparing Your AutoCAD Plot
Go to Source: CAD Notes

Tags: annotation, autocad users, click, layout, page, page layout, Plot, setup, two choices, viewport No Comments »

by CADcaster

Adding Command to Your Right Click

August 13, 2009 in AutoCAD, CAD, Revit

We have discussed how to add new command to AutoCAD. We added our new command to Now let’s discuss how to add it to context menu. We want this command appear when we select particular type of object. This is what a contextual menu all about, right?

This time we will create a command to automatically convert line(s) to polyline. This is not something new. I’ve seen a lot of people have discuss it in forum or blogs. One of them is in Autodesk evangelist, Lynn Allen blog. But we are going to do it slightly different: put it to our context menu.

Open your CUI browser. You might want to read the previous post about creating a new command before you continue.

Right click on command list area, select new command from context menu. Rename it. Let’s call it Line to Pline. Or if it’s sound ridiculous to you, you can use another name that suit you.

Now in properties area, macro field, type this value:

^C^C_pedit;;;^C

A little explanation:

^C is similar to pressing [esc], pressing [esc] twice will cancel a running command (if any).
PEDIT is activating polyline edit command
;;; means you press [enter] three times. ; will execute [enter]

In Lynn’s blog she use ^C^CPEDIT;y;; It would work fine too. What’s the difference? Let’s compare to what we do.

^C^C is just the same to what we do.
she use PEDIT instead of _PEDIT. Mostly using either one of it works fine. Adding underscore is an AutoCAD convention so this command can be used by AutoCAD in any other language. If you use English, then there’s no difference with or without underscore.
She use Y after the first ; If you activate PEDIT and select a line or arc, then AutoCAD will ask you: Object selected is not a polyline Do you want to turn it into one? <Y>
By default the answer is yes. So pressing [enter] without typing Y will return the value of Yes. She decided to make sure AutoCAD will accept yes as the answer, so add Y then [enter] to do this.

Not different at all, aren’t they?

Now we have done with creating command. Now we have to define a new shortcut menu. Look at customize section. Find shortcut menus group. Right click on it, and click new shortcut menu. Rename it to Line Object Menu.

What are we doing? We define a condition, when this menu should appear. We want this menu appear when we select line. But it won’t appear when we select other type of objects. We have created the menu, but haven’t define the condition. Now we add this condition on properties section, aliases field.

Click ‘…’ button on this field. Use it, don’t type directly on the text field. Type on each line as follow:

OBJECT_LINE –> this will enable your menu appear when you select a single line
OBJECTS_LINE –> this will enable your menu appear when you select multiple lines

Adding both of them will enable your menu to appear on both conditions.