Thursday 25 April 2013

Revit 2014 Family Parameters - Sneaky Sneaky

I can't seem to find anything that lists this change, but this is a new one on me and could cause some upset generally, which is why I'm giving a heads up

Up until now, it has always been possible to mix different case parameters of the same name in a family. You could have a parameter called 'T' and one called 't' and it would sit very happily.

It now appears to be a different case in Revit 2014 and this has been swept away. It's not actually apparent with existing families until they are loaded into a project, taking you from this:





 
 





















 
 
to this:
 
 
 
 
 
 
In hindsight, it's probably not best practice to have parameters named in this way. I'm guessing we'll just have to take our medicine and get on with it!


Thursday 11 April 2013

Worksets Hopping About a Bit?

When using a workshared file, we've found that on occasion, the active workset seems to change itself for no apparent reason. This particular quirk has always stumped us. Recently however, we have got to the bottom of this. I'm not entirely sure if this is a bug or by design, but the following is the behaviour that causes this to happen

In this scenario. Worksharing is enabled and 'Workset1' & 'Shared Levels and Grids' are created automatically. In addition, I have added a workset called 'A'

















'Workset1' is the active workset. Note the following rules:

  • On opening the workset dialogue, the Active Workset combo box always has initial focus
  • The Active Workset combo box can only be populated by open worksets
















Now we decide that we want to close 'Workset1'. On leaving the Workset dialogue, everything is normal and 'Workset1' is still listed in the main Active Workset box at the bottom of the main screen















Now we want to re-open 'Workset1', so we go to the workset dialogue. Under the two rules above, Revit jumps straight to the active workset combo box and says "Hang on, 'Workset1' isn't open, so it's not in the list. Therefore I will leap quick smart to the first entry in the list, in this case 'A'". 

















Because the user's focus is on re-opening 'Workset1' in the table below, this sleight of hand by Revit is easily missed, resulting in the following















So the moral of the story is to remember to set back the active workset immediately after. Hope this helps