Make section tag visible in Floor plan but not in enlarged plans!

When you create a Section in your enlarged plan, Revit puts the scale of the parent view in the "Hide at scales coarser than" parameter in the
View Properties. This helps in such a way that if you create a section in a 1/4" plan, the section tag won't be visible in 1/8" plan. If you create the section in the 1/8" plan, the section tag will be visible in all 1/4" plans.

However, if you want the section tag to be visible in the 1/8" plan and NOT in 1/4" plans, Revit does not have any inbuilt options, yet. The following workaround (use it at your own risk) might work for you:

1. Select the section tag that you don't want to see in enlarged 1/4" floor plans. Go to its properties and change its Discipline to say, Electrical (It should be architectural to begin with)
2. It should disappear from ALL views.
3. Go the the view property of the 1/8" floor plan and change its Discipline to Coordination. The section tag will be visible only there.
4. I don't know what else this change will screw up.

Windows live writer

I started using Windows Live Writer ever since I read about this in James Van's blog. Allows me to embed pics, from different accounts. Very good.

View Templates in Revit 2009

The view template upgrades in 2009 is one of the best. Previously one had the all or nothing option with View Templates. For instance, you cannot apply the same view template to views of different scales, because the scale factor is built into it.

In 2009, Revit allows you to select or deselect aspects of the View Template that you want to apply.

Memory overflow, Fatal error and 3GB switch

Revit 2008 is a 32 bit application. And so windows allows Revit to access only 2GB of RAM. 32bit Windows can only see 4 GB. If the revit project becomes bigger than 150MB, then the project must be teasing the max memory. You can check the memory used the Revit and the total memory consumed by right clicking on your Windows task bar and selecting "Task Manager"

If you start getting fatal memory errors, you can activate the 3GB switch in your computer. More info from autodesk website. If you activate this switch, Windows will allow Revit to use upto 3GB. But your computer will be little slow. Revit uses lots of memory while printing and while upgrading the project to the latest version. More info on Windows 32 bit memory.

Some machines dont like the 3GB switch and give a lot of head ache (cannot access the internet, display issues, unpredictable Windows, etc.) In such a case, we use the USERVA switch along with the 3GB and it works great. Microsoft help on this issue here.

Windows 64 bit version can see Terra Bytes of RAM. (However this is limited by the motherboard capacity) If you install Revit 32 bit version in Windows 64 bit, Revit can use upto 4 GB. If your project needs more than 4 GB, currently there is no option.

Revit 64 bit version will be able to handle TBs of info when it is released by Autodesk! More info on memory allocation and address spaces here at microsoft website.

Comparing schedule changes in Revit 2008

Scheduling in Revit is very good and at the same time it is the worst. It does not allow copy and pasting of whole rows. Hardcore Revit fanatics claim that Revit has enough tools like filter / group to achieve the same, but this is far from the truth.

There is no easy way to highlight the changed cells. Revit 2008 does not allow to bold / strike through / color individual cells. This is really a problem when you need to highlight changes for revisions / addendums.

Clouding the cells in the schedule is worthless because if a scheduled item (like a door or room) gets deleted or added, the scheduled data is pushed up or down in the sheet, whereas the revision cloud stays put! (and so clouding the wrong cell!!!!)

If you don't keep track of the changes manually (yellow highlighter!) it becomes very difficult to check the parameters (for eg. in room finish schedule) that have changed since the last revision later. We do a work around that helps us.

1. export the schedule from the archived revit project. (1.xls)
2. export the schedule from the revised revit project. (2.xls)
3. Copy and paste the contents from 1 to 2 on the same sheet but to the side, but maintain the same rows. In the picture below, the yellow vertical column divides the old and revised.

4. Create a simple "conditional format" in excel.

5. This should highlight the changed cells. If any new item is added or deleted in the schedule data, then all consequent room numbers will show highlighted. Usually tweaking data in one excel row corrects it.

6. Now you have lost all the links from the revit model. You have to either print from excel or export this as an image and insert it in Revit to print from there!!!!!