Inside the Factory

Short Family Content Survey (Closed 6/3/11)

Autodesk is working to improve the organization of Revit family content and looking for Revit customers to participate in a short online survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/revitcontent (Closed 6/3/11)

The survey has two parts:

In Part I, you will be asked to review three proposed options for organizing Revit family content, select the option you like the most, and tell us why you chose that option.

In Part II, you will be asked to try a few tasks using the best option you chose.

The two-part survey will take about 20 minutes to complete and will only be used by the Revit product team. 
Thank you in advance.  Your involvement helps us make Revit better fit your needs.

_erik

 

My First Revit Plug-in

Are you a Revit power user with an interest in automating and extending the capabilities of Revit.  Are you also new to computer programming?

“My First Plug-in” is a self-paced tutorial guide for a smooth introduction into the Revit programming world. This is a “one-stop shop” learning path for users who know Autodesk products but are new to programming. In this guide, you will be working with the Autodesk Revit .NET API and the C# programming language.

The supported product version is Revit Architecture 2011 and latter versions. This guide assumes no previous programming knowledge and helps you build your first plug-in quickly. You’ll have a working application within an hour of starting this material, irrespective of your current level of programming expertise. The guide starts by reviewing the benefits of customizing Autodesk software then progresses onto lessons covering the use of the Revit API.

Ready to give it a try?  Here is a link to the guide developed by the ADN Revit team.

_erik

 

Off Topic: Engineering Stuff: Fast 14

For the enjoyment of my engineering audience...

"The bridges are coming, the bridges are coming" blinks on a portable LED construction sign.  What's this about?  It's a play off "The British are coming" evoking Paul Revere's Boston to Lexington ride of yore and refers to the replacement of 14 highway/freeway/motorway bridges north of Boston not far from my home.  During some recent government stimulus road paving it became evident that many of the bridge road decks were falling apart - stark evidence of the failing grade the American Society of Civil Engineers assigns to most of our nation's infrastructure.  After some emergency shoring up of the decks they proceeded to plan.

Potholes that swallow cars and motorbikes whole - not a myth

No problem.  "Fast 14" to the rescue.  All the newfound dangerous bridges will be replaced over a few weekends this summer starting June 3.  The plan is to redirect one direction of traffic at a time to the other side then swap out the old bridge sections with new ready-made modular sections using cranes.  More official info is listed here

Swap Process

 

Crossover

I'll take a photo or two next month.  Meanwhile back in Waltham, near the factory on I-95, there is a bridge they have been building since the time Revit was born.  They should just stop, cut their losses, and try this new technique.

_erik

2012 Little Things: Dialog Launchers

A very subtle change yet one more crossed off a list of places we know of that can benefit from this type of UI:

In the type properties of views you can specify tags.  In previous releases you would see a list of tag types but if you wanted to make a new type you would have to exit the type dialog and go to the Manage tab to create a new tag type there.  Not convenient.  in 2012 you can jump to the Tag Type dialog directly from the View Type dialog.

 

View Type dialog and new launcher control

 

Destination: Tag Type dialog

 

Previous Single Access to Tag Type Dialog

_erik

2012 Little Things: Shortcuts

Introduced in 2011 keyboard shortcuts got a graphical UI and with it the ability to define shortcuts on the fly. The commands exposed to the feature were also expanded to include contextual commands, application menu and other areas.  In 2012 we came back and picked off a few more items on the punch list.

Single Shortcuts

In 2011 expert shortcut users noticed something they didn't like.  The shortcut feature displayed all matches and allowed the arrow keys and spacebar to make a selection as before yet single letter shortcuts used to always sort first in the order.  When there were multiple matches but in 2011 they appeared last in the sort order.  Clever to the end you discovered that by manually editing the XAML file and write protecting it the issue could be mitigated but I am happy to report in 2012 this workaround is no longer needed.  The pre 2011 sort behavior is restored.  You can now define a single shortcut like "Z" for zoom and it will appear first even if there are other matches like "ZA", or "ZF".  Type "Z" then spacebar and voila.

Duplicate Shortcut Warning

In 2011 if you define a shortcut that creates a duplicate we post a warning.  Duplicates are still allowed  and can be found by sorting the list by the "shortcuts" column header.

Note: For some time we have been making an effort to ensure that warnings are reworked to be more informative.  The dialog below could have said "Warning! Duplicate Shortcut Created".  We now try to provide more information to help you understand what was done, what will happen, and the names of related elements so you can make a better decision - in this case the offending shortcut letter and command it is assigned to.  The more a dialog communicates the less you have to remember - the system is less cognitively demanding. We also try to not to be too verbose, yell at you, or use a condescending tone.

Export all commands (including undefined)

This is one for those of you that want to define everything free of a friendly yet slower graphical interface.

In previous versions we allowed export but only of defined commands.  This allowed commands to be easily transferred but didn't help if the aim was to make the definitions in excel or a XAML editor.

While I don't expect the calls for a command line to completely stop we've come a long way from R2009.

; )

_erik

2012 Little Things: Type Selector

Now that 2012 is out of the bag I can take time to cover some of the smaller interface and design changes that made it into the product and might otherwise be overlooked. Today I'll review the type selector.

TS in Ribbon

When the type selector moved to the modeless properties palette some expressed a desire to get it back in the ribbon.  More choices for you.

 

TS Graphics

A small change in type names now align under the family name in the type selector drop down.  Previously type names were justified under the center of the image which created issues when trying to quickly scan the list.  This is very subtle but was easy so we knocked it off in the spirit of any positive change is good no matter how small and we should take opportunities when they present themselves.

TS in Sketch Mode

Saving best for last the type selector is now enabled inside sketch mode.  This was a very old behavior fixed.  I'll spare anyone the technical reasons why the button in the property dialog was disabled in 2011 but it was the same in pre 2011 releases though we did have a special property button that would bring up the type dialog then.  Now in 2012 the normal type button is enabled.  Kudos to the UI team for coming back to remove this inconsistent behavior that I know was source of annoyance. -erik