Project Vasari

Autodesk has introduced (sometime back) a, kind of rival to Sketch up. It is free and can be downloaded from here or
http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/vasari/
Really nice program. You can keep it in your thumbdrive and take it whereever you go. It does not have to be installed like traditional apps.
Even creating a sphere or a dome is a pain in sketchup. Vasari can do it very easily. Also it has levels, from which you can get all the floor areas and can be directly imported into Revit. In fact, the file format is RVt and so can be directly OPENED in Revit. Very nice.
(I hope autodesk keeps this software FREE!!!!)

Project Photofly from Autodesk

Autodesk labs has refined their interesting program Project Photofly. It is a free dowload from autodesk. Basically it creates a DWG / or FBX (can be used with Revit / 3DS Max) out of photos taken of the building using your typical digital camera.
You take a series of photos of the building from all angles and the project photofly stitches these photos to make a 3D model. Autodesk has a detailed shooting guide. I suggest you read these before starting.
Something to look for:

1. moving objects in photos (cars, humans etc.)
2. too much background or foreground disturbances

We are starting on documenting a structure in a couple of weeks and will update this post!

AU 2010 - Virtual Classes

The Autodesk University fever has started and this year around, Autodesk is offering virtual classes for those who cannot attend the event during Nov 30th to Dec 1.
Autodesk has issued a list of classes that can be attended for free.  You can pay $139 and get a premium pass. (Even this is free for subscription customers) You will have to register for both the programs here: http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=registration_landing

Recover erased data from disks

This tip is not about Revit.
Sometimes we erase (and also empty 'recycle bin') data by mistake. There are lots of commercial programs available that can bring back these erased data. "PC Inspector smart recovery" is available free from download.com and can bring back data from SD cards, thumbdrives, etc. too. Very hand tool.
Recently I visited an architectural site, and even though the CEO had allowed me to photograph the building, the stupid security guard got hold of my camera and erased all the pics. Luckily I found this program and was able to unerase all the photos!

AutoCAD 2008 Scale list and copying & pasting issue

This is more of an AutoCAD 2008 scale list issue. In some of our Acad 2008 files, copying and pasting even a simple line took more than 10 minutes. The copy operation was quick. But the pasting operation went on and on. This is because of a bug in Acad2008 scale list, which the service pack 1 didnt fix. If you are on subscription and you are on AutoCAD 2009 or up, you are good!
There is a scalelist popup menu in autocad (typically) at the lower right corner. 
Pressing this menu button shows the scale lists used in the drawing. Typically the number of list are less and shows like this:

However, autocad 2008 tries to bring in scalelist from any xrefs / blocks imported from other drawings and over a period of time the number of scale list can reach 1000s and makes the dwg really slow. The worst offender is the paste command (because acad is looking for ways to bring in MORE scale lists!!!!) The screws up with Revit whenever such a DWG file is inserted into Revit.
The scale list of the corrupted file looks like this:

This image filled up the whole screen.
To remove all these scalelist, you can use the "-SCALELISTEDIT" command. Typing the comand without the "-" crashes AutoCAD. Using the "-" forces the command to use the command line. You can follow the command line prompts to 'reset' the scale list. You will have to keep doing this if the DWG files gets corrupted again.