AUGIWorld Magazine November/December 2007

Share and Share Alike Editor’s note: This issue of AUGIWorld will be handed out at Autodesk University 2007. For those of you attending AU to learn more about Autodesk® Revit®, whether new, experienced, or in between, welcome! For those of you reading this anywhere else in the world, if you send me your spare folding money, I promise to put it into the slot machines in the Las Vegas airport at AU 2008! The Revit platform continues its march into the mainstream of modern design, with Architecture, Structure, and MEP rapidly becoming the building design applications of choice at firms all over the world. We at AUGIWorld will keep you informed of the latest developments and techniques for effective use of this new technology, and that’s a real promise. –Chris Fox, AUGI Revit Editor Revit’s one-building-per-project-file structure by no means forces designers to work in isolation. Worksets provide a way to divide projects so that teams can work concurrently. Enabling Worksets does complicate file structure permanently and provides a formal structure for safeguarding file integrity. There is a simpler way to share project file information, the link. Revit’s linking capability, nearly a twin to external references in AutoCAD®, allows the user to place and look at external files within a project. You can do more than simply look at a link. Eric Wing’s article in the September/ October issue of AUGIWorld covered the Copy/Monitor and Coordination Review functions—ways to track changes in shared files. This is ideal when architects and en28 gineers need to have conversations about adjusting building elements per each other’s particular requirements. If your reasons or desires for dividing a project are less rigorous, team members can always copy/paste between project files. Paste Aligned is quite useful here, but you may end up with bits of cleanup and adjustment. New functionality with both links and groups in Revit 2008 now lets you share and swap parts of project files quickly and precisely, without having to resort to the locks and keys of Worksets. Grouping and Links in Revit 2008 Group, don’t grope The missing links Let’s take a look at groups first. You can create a named group of nearly any combination of model and detail objects by selecting items and clicking Group. You can also click Group with nothing selected to open the Group Editor, where you add or remove model objects separately from detail objects. Since detail elements are view-based, if you want a group of, say, walls plus furniture plus a room plus text, Revit attaches a Detail Group to the Model Group. When you place a model group, you can select it and place attached details groups in appropriate views. The original use for groups was to take advantage of repetition: as with AutoCAD blocks, you can place many instances of a group and update them all by editing any one. In 2008 Revit, changes in groups make them very effective for taking project content “outboard,” working on it, then bringing it back in. Saving a group to an external file now creates a standard project (rvt) file rather than the more limited rvg format. You can also create a separate file from a Figure 1 – Group Toolbar icon, Create Group dialogues, Model Group Editor, Attached Detail Group Editor group by selecting the name in the Project Browser (where groups and links now have separate category listings) and rightclicking to Edit. This puts you in a new file that you can change and save where you will. What really puts the wheels in motion is the new ability to convert a group to a link. Select any model group and the standard options include Link. You can save the group as an external file and link it back in to your project in one step, or you can replace the group with an existing external file (such as an updated version of the group worked on by another team member). Either way, you can port project content in and out by making groups. w w w. A U G I . c o m http://www.AUGI.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AUGIWorld Magazine November/December 2007

AUGIWorld Magazine November/December 2007 Table of Contents The CAD Manager Education & Training Finance Training Google Earth: Now Showing in AutoCAD Civil 3D Get Your Input Here A Good First Impression, Part 2 Share and Share Alike Who's Using Revit MEP? Ready… Get Set… Properties! On the Back Page: The Brazilian Model

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