Building Constuction

Archive for January, 2010

Wall Openings in Revit

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Are wall openings in revit really the way to go? That has been a question asked by a lot of the members in the Architectural Industry. I know of a few firms that create their walls using layer by layer instead of a single wall. The reasoning behind this is having more functionality of the layers of the walls. When doing this they use a curtain wall as their exterior windows and use the wall opening command to cut the walls behind the window system. Once this is done they group the window, mullions, openings and any other items so the group can then be copied to other portions of the building.  The problem with this is, when the group is copied to a wall on a different axis or mirrored to a different portion of the building the wall openings disappear. If a new opening is placed then the other groups then have 2 openings located in the same place. So it appears that wall openings and groups do not play nice. The way around this is to create a component family of a wall opening. It should be a wall hosted family to have it cut the wall. The height and width should be instance parameters so they can be adjusted inside the project (without having to duplicate each opening for a new size).  By making them instance parameters this enables you to select on the opening and receive grips on the 4 sides so you can flex it in any direction to make it the desired size just by pulling the sides of the opening. The opening can also be aligned and locked to maintain the dimensions of a window. Once these are grouped there have been no reported problems in copying this to a different location.

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Inventor and Fusion New Beta Releases

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

By, Dan Banach

For those of you who want to be on the cutting edge of technology and want to experience what Autodesk has been working on, you can sign up to participate in beta programs for Inventor and Fusion at: http://myfeedback.autodesk.com. Through the beta program you get access to the software and can give Autodesk direct feedback. I believe that you will like what you will see, Autodesk has been very busy.

Enjoy the technology.

Dan

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Working with Civil 3D Files Just Got Easier!

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Autodesk Civil 3D has changed the design process for civil engineering projects from a 2D paradigm to a 3D paradigm, a shift already made in most near every other industry.  While this has helped out the civil engineering community by creating 3D models of their work, those models could not be directly addressed for visualization purposes as there was no direct path from Civil 3D into 3ds Max.

Earlier this month, Autodesk announced the acquisition of Dynamite VSP.  Dynamite VSP is an intermediate software package that allows a Civil 3D user to export their design in full 3D into a format that can then be imported into 3ds Max.  This is a dramatic leap forward for both the civil engineers and the design visualization artists, providing a more direct, accurate and efficient method of importing the data.  Dynamite VSP brings in all geometry data and provides automated tools for road striping and other features.  In adition, it has tools to assist in animating cameras along the road as well as placing and animating vehicle traffic.

Autodesk has not yet announced how Dynamite VSP will be incorporated or distributed so keep an eye on the Subscription and other Autodesk news sites for updates.

 

Stephen Gabriel

Senior Application Engineer

Posted in Civil | No Comments »

Windows 7 and QTO

Friday, January 8th, 2010

With the recent release of Windows 7 we are starting to see which software is compatible with the new operating system. With QTO being created before Windows 7 it is not supported by Autodesk and does not function without a work around. When you start QTO everything appears to work fine until you go to open, or create a new project. You will receive an error that says “Could not load file or assembly ‘ADOX, Version=2.8.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified”. Once you press OK the software will either crash or your workspace will be blank.  The reason behind this is the ADOX file is needed to run a VBA application for Vista and XP, but one does not exist yet for Windows 7 in the installer for QTO. So we can use the one for Vista by:

  1. Make Sure QTO is closed
  2. Inser tthe installation disk and go to the path: \x86\Autodesk\QTO\Vista\ADOX.DLL
  3. Copy the ADOX.DLL file to the installed QTO use directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\Autodesk Quantity Takeoff 2010 (you will need ADMIN rights for this)
  4. Restart QTO and open any ATO file or create a new file. The program will have full functionality.

This should be fixed by the 2011 release but for now this is the only way to get it to work.

 

 

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