Smart browser - Free family browser byTools4Revit is a useful tool which can be used to organise and sort your Revit families into categories. If you are anything like me and store all your families in the same folder in a rather organised way, then this tool is definitely something which you should look into. Over the course of about 5 years I have built up a huge catalogue of over 1000 families.. You can imagine how hard it can be to find what you want, especially if you weren't so careful naming it in a way it could be easily recognised. The Smart browser will arrange your families into the following categories: Generic models, Furniture, Windows, Curtain panels, Detail items, Mass, Specialty.

If there is anyone out there following my blog that hasn't seen this series of Revit vidoes from Zach Kron who runs the Buildz blog concerning the 'Repeat and Divide' functions in Revit / Vasari - I would strongly recommend you visit his blog and follow his video tutorials which you can find below. These videos continue to show the boundaries of Revit being pushed. Usually when people say: "You can't do that in Revit" it's not true, there's almost always a work around!

In this post I will be showing you how to create a door family in Revit 2013 which can open and close as well as being fully parametric. If you are new to family creation you may wish to check out the tutorials section of my website and follow the family series from the beginning. Click here to view previous tutorials. 

Autodesk have created a Revit model style guide. In this guide are various guidelines to follow via documents which can help you to develop and quality assure your Revit models. The following information was taken from the Autodesk Seek website. I have been roughly following this guide while developing my Revit families for a while now, and just wanted to share this information with anyone who may be looking for some direction.

Autodesk labs have recently released IBM Maximo integrated for Revit. In short, Maximo is an asset / building lifecycle management process scheduler. The current release, IBM Maximo Asset Management 7.5 is scalable and coded for easy integration into third party programs, such as Revit. 

There is often confusion around the Copy/Monitor command in Revit. There are many useful, time saving actions that this tool can perform, but there are also other actions which can complicate your project if you are not aware of the best practices for using the Copy/Monitor command.

As you have all probably heard Autodesk's Project Vasari has finally been released in beta format - "graduating" from Autodesk Labs. It has become a very popular tool with AEC professionals and has been downloaded over 60,000 times in an 18 month period. I have been using Vasari since the initial release for conceptual energy analysis of buildings as well as using the massing tools and formulas for graphical representations.

Today I am posting a small tutorial about creating dormer / dormer openings in Revit Architecture. It is a very simple process but has a few steps, so if you are having problems with dormers or interested in learning, continue reading.

The first step is to create some temporary walls as shown in the image below, indicated by the red rectangle. You should place these walls on the level under your roof, if you only have 2 levels, that's fine, they will be cleaned up later and will not be visible. As usual take note of which wall type you are using. 

So, we heard the news yesterday that a new version of Revit has been released by Autodesk. Nothing to get excited about if you are already an owner of a full vanilla Revit installation, but possibly something to look forward to if you are a small business trying to get your foot in the Revit door. 

When designing Revit families, you have to always keep in mind the level of detail you are putting in to your families, and the affect this will have on the performance of your project. When you have a large project with numerous families you may notice that your Revit starts to run slower, even when you are doing tasks unrelated to the detail of the project e.g. printing. One of the reasons for Revit "under-performing" could be the visibility settings setup or level of detail of families in a project.

I have been looking through the AEC(UK) BIM protocols over the weekend - especially at the Revit protocol. The protocols outline some good practices and rules for working in your Revit project. You should download the AEC(UK) BIM Protocols HERE if you haven't already done so. 

I have just noticed after over 5 years working with Revit that if you press the 'ALT' key on your keyboard, you will see a new list of 'key tips' above certain tools in your Revit ribbon as seen below. The list will change depending on what tab you're in - meaning there is a shortcut for almost every tool! Not sure how that one has slipped past me for so long!