Have you ever had a duct fitting seemingly calculate the area significantly under what it really way? The answer may be right under your nose.
The following two properties dialogs are for the same fitting. For simplicity, connectors and seams were set to “None“
Notice the properties window on the left says 4 sq/ft and the one on the right is 20 sq/ft. You’ll notice a little lower the “Cost Units“
Today, Autodesk announced their acquisition of PlanGrid. You can read the press release from Autodesk here…http://adsknews.autodesk.com/pressrelease/autodesk-to-acquire-plangrid.
This doesn’t really seem like a surprise. PlanGrid has a large and active user base where as competitor Fieldwire seems like they’ve had trouble competing and gaining significant market traction.
What is a surprise to me, is that typically these types of “big” announcements are typically given in Las Vegas during Autodesk University, not the week following. I suspect that in this case, an announcement of this type would have distracted from the other BIM360 related messaging Autodesk was trying to deliver.
What made PlanGrid strong in the market is the ease of use and field adoption of their platform. Plain and simple, field personnel liked it and used it, It doesn’t really matter what something costs if it doesn’t get used. PlanGrid had a platform that was used. My guess is they sold because what better way to finish than on top. In the end, what were they doing that Autodesk couldn’t do, or soon do with their BIM360 Docs platform? I know several companies that pay more annually for PlanGrid than their entire Autodesk product lines. In some cases PlanGrid renewals were double Autodesk. And for what? Storage and viewing?
As Autodesk continues to build out their BIM360 platforms, and users increasingly adopt services like BIM360 Design (formerly Collaboration for Revit), it wouldn’t take long before people started asking why they were paying so much when BIM360 Design published to BIM360 Docs already and seemingly did the same thing?
Where would PlanGrid differentiate itself? When we take an intelligent model and publish it to a PDF, we’re loosing a lot of information. Any more intelligence PlanGrid would try to add is attempting to recreate what was once there but lost. Not to mention, adding more functionality would start to move PlanGrid away from the core principals that made it strong…simplicity. In the end, I think PlanGrid chose to end on a high note before an eventual decline.
When Autodesk acquires a company, they do it for one or more of the following reasons…
For Autodesk, I don’t really think they care about PlanGrid’s technology or development teams. Not that they aren’t good tools and people, but Autodesk has their own. Instead of having to OCR PDF’s to automatically hyperlink them, you should be able to create the PDF from this intelligence already in Revit. There’s really no point in trying to recreate lost intelligence (PlanGrid) when you already have it captured (BIM360).
Instead, I think Autodesk wanted the user’s. It’s the quickest way to increase your BIM360 Docs usage which is where I think the users will be migrated to. If not BIM360 Docs, perhaps a more streamlined tool for field communication that uses BIM360 Docs as it’s storage platform.
Lower software costs. I know, I know. They’s not something you typically get from an Autodesk acquisition but paying double for a PDF sharing platform than all your other Autodesk services certainly won’t continue. I predict the price will drop, they’ll then “realign” duplicate platforms and move everyone to BIM360 because PlanGrid no longer “makes money” and they’re done. That’s what happened in the past in similar situations like Autodesk Fabrication being acquired from MAP software. We in the MEP world know how that worked out…new development halted, fixes released at a glacial pace and updates almost non-existent. Move to Revit or fall behind. I think you’ll see that dynamic play out w/PlanGrid as well.
For now, I’ll enjoy not paying double to share PDF’s because PlanGrid says we have tens of thousands of sheets on a project we use when the reality is we’re only looking and a handful of sheets for a project team that’s using PlanGrid. While a good product which we do use, our usage numbers have never been what they’ve suggested. I wonder if Autodesk fell prey to some of those technically accurate but misleading usage stats as well.
This warrants a little explanation. Many companies have multiple locations and need to sync Fabrication configurations between those sites. Other companies have their Fabrication configuration copied locally to the users system from a central network location.
To keep from having to manually keep different sites or local computers up to date, it’s natural to look so some of the many technology solutions like Microsoft’s One Drive, Box.net, Dropbox, Google Drive, DFS Replication etc.
Here’s the problem….most of these solutions sync files in their own order and time frame. You often can’t control when they sync. When using CADmep, ESTmep or CAMduct, just using the software can cause the program to read back from the database files. Many of the database files reference each other using indexes. Take for example, the Specifications and Materials….both of those database areas refer to each other.
When changes are made, what happens is the files get updated where you make the changes, but the two files that get changed, may sync somewhere else at different times. As you’re using the software, if it happens to reread some of the database files when some are sync’d and others aren’t, this can cause unspecified problems.
One of the more common issues is when a system you’ve drawn changes to a completely different system. Have you ever had a Cast Iron No-Hub waste line all of the sudden day it’s Supply Air 2″ Positing Water Gauge? This is our of sync syncing issues is often the result.
How do you work around this? Try to find sync solutions that allow more control, like after hours sync. I personally like an old batch file running RoboCopy as it allows a lot of control and I can have it fire up when the user logs on. They can also manually run it during the day if I push our a critical update otherwise the get the update tomorrow when they log in. When syncing servers from different sites, I schedule it to run after hours.
This issue is most common w/CADmep, ESTmep and CAMduct. Because Revit loads and stores your services, it doesn’t read back to the database unless you explicitly tell it to reload the services so it’s risk is greatly reduced to the point where I wouldn’t worry about it.
Now, there are people that are doing local Sync’s in real time. My prior firm, we had some…let say…”creative folks” who would take liberties with the database if they knew it was local. As such, I used Windows OffLine Files to sync a local copy but make it look like it’s still on line. This is a Sync’d local copy and goes against what I recommend above. However, we forced it to rescan frequently so when there were changes, they were small, just a few files and they’d sync quickly about the same time. Larger changes involving a lot of files can open up your risk window to having issues.
If you’re going to use life syncing utilities, proceed carefully and watch for unexplained issues. Making large changes after hours and smaller changing during working hours can help.
And if you’re considering using Window’s Offline Files, prepare for a long learning curve and experiment with yourself first. Offline Files have little control from the User Interface and is best managed with Group Policy.
If you’re an AutoLISP programmer and use Autodesk Fabrication CADmep, you most likely know that there’s a COD Scripting language in Autodesk Fabrication that provides read and/or write access to CADmep properties. The problem with COD Scripts, is that sometimes they’re not powerful enough to do all of the other things you’d like to do and you may want to use AutoLISP.
What you may not know is that you can access the vast majority of CADmep properties from AutoLISP. To so this, you need to configure CADmep’s List Setup dialog which will provide a light weight but similar interface to what you see when you build reports in Autodesk Fabrication.
To access List Setup, right-click in an open area or the drawing editor and then select “CADmep” -> “Setup” -> “List Setup” from the menu.
Configuring List Setup will provide access to the configured properties via DXF codes which are one of the most common ways of accessing object properties in AutoLISP. (You can also access these same DXF based properties via VBA, ARX or .Net)
The following image shows the List Setup dialog before (left) and after (right) being configured. Simply add the properties you want to extract in the order you want them.
Once you’ve configured the properties you want, a simple call to the (ENTGET) function in AutoLISP will return the data you’re looking for. You can see in the following image, that we’ve saved the DXF data to two different variables in the VisualLISP editor. The listsetup-blank variable (left) was done before configuration and the listsetup-config variable (right) was done after the configuration of List Setup.
The code used to extract the data is the following….
(setq listsetup-blank (entget (car (entsel))))
(setq listsetup-config (entget (car (entsel))))
Because the VisualLISP editor does not word wrap it’s results, you can use the Inspect
Now, there are a few things to know about this method….
After a very brief appearance toward the end of October, the Fabrication updates for 2018.3 and 2019.1 are back on line as of today.
Unlike previously speculated, they were not removed due to issues. They were intended to be released later but were inadvertently released early. If you happened to have them from their initial release, you don’t need to download the update again, the build numbers did not change. However, the PDF documentation of fixed issues on some of them did get more information listed in what was fixed. You can review all the issues addressed here…
In CADmep, using the Size command, you can tag the size of a fitting. But on a fitting like a transition, what if you wanted to tag the size of the opposite end?
This can be easily done but the sequence is a little nuanced. Type “SIZE” from AutoCAD’s command prompt or select the “Size” tool button on the CADmep toolbar.
When prompted to Select Objects, select the fitting. Once the fitting is selected, instead of pressing <Enter> to end the selection like you normally would, press and hold the <TAB> key while you press the <Enter> on the keyboard at the same time. Your tag will display the size of the opposite end.
Depending on your AutoCAD and Mouse settings, right-clicking to end the select objects prompt may not work and instead bring up a right-click menu. For this reason, it’s recommended you use the <Enter> key on your keyboard while pressing <Tab>
The following video shows to transitions of the same size side by side. The left transition has it’s size tagged like you normally would. The fitting on the right, the <Tab> key his being held down when the <Enter> key is pressed which results in the tag displaying the size of the opposite end of the fitting.
On October 23 2018, Autodesk released Update 2019.1 and 2018.3 for all the Autodesk Fabrication products. Within a week, the updates have disappeared. This most often happens when a critical issue arises with the update. No word on what it may effect but when this has happened in the past, the issues were often significant.
I have not taken the time to uninstall and reinstall my Fabrication products as I don’t do production work. I would advise anyone that does production work to seriously consider this if they’ve already applied the updates.
So far with the limited Fabrication database administration I’ve done I haven’t noticed anything. I have tested nearly 1-1/2 dozen support issues I’ve logged over the last year and a half and only 1 was addressed. Many of my issues affected incorrect sheet metal pattern developments and require manual fixes each time.
If you’re interested in the issues that were suppose to be addressed, please refer to my Fabrication update page. Links are below. If past history holds true, the new updates will come out a month from now and be new versions which may not list the issues that were corrected.
CADmep 2018.3
CADmep 2019.1
CAMduct 2018.3
CAMduct 2019.1
ESTmep 2018.3
ESTmep 2019.1
Have you ever received a list of coordinates in a CSV file and wanted to place those in AutoCAD? Were you aware this can take as little as 2 minutes?
For a very long time, AutoCAD has supported SCRIPT files. A script file is nothing more than a text file (using only Notepad) that lists the everything that you’d typically type to AutoCAD’s command line.
Take for example the following CSV file. How would we get this into AutoCAD?
To figure out what we need to type in AutoCAD, let’s first start by making sure our Point style is something other than a single dot so it’s more easily visible on your screen. To do this, type “PTYPE” at AutoCAD’s command line. If you don’t get the following dialog, Escape out of the command and type “DDPTYPE” and try again. Select a point style that suites you.
Now that you have a point style that’s more visible on the screen, lets type the Point command and see what input it takes.
You can see from the below image of the command line that once we type “POINT” and press ENTER or SPACEBAR, there’s a little text that displays the current point style and size. You’re then prompted for the coordinates. The points in this example were entered by typing X,Y,Z coordinates for one point and X,Y coordinates for the other. After typing the coordinates and pressing ENTER, the command completes.
To test this theory, we can use Notepad to manually create a Script file. Type the contents you in the below image and name your file with an “SCR” File extension. You’ll want to make sure Notepad’s “Save as type” drop down list is set to “All Files (*.*)” or else Notepad will append a TXT to the end of the file.
One other thing to also note is that the cursor is after the last line, just below it. This is because there’s an “Enter” after the last point…this is just like hitting Enter on the keyboard to complete a command in AutoCAD.
After you’ve created your text file, type the “SCRIPT” command at AutoCAD’s command line and select the Script file you just created. When complete, AutoCAD should have added 2 more points to the drawing.
So, now you know how the basis for a script file (same as you’d type manually) and how to create one (using Notepad), the next thing you need to do is convert the CSV file in Excel to a Script file. That’s actually quite simple.
You’ll use Excel’s “CONCATENATE” function which takes several pieces of text and puts them together. In this example, this is the formula we’re using…
=CONCATENATE("Point ",B2,",",C2)
The first piece of text is the Point command. Remember, we can use the SPACEBAR after a command and it’s the same as if we’re pressing the ENTER key. That’s why you see the space after the “POINT“. Each piece of typed text is also contained in double quotes.
=CONCATENATE("Point "
Each piece of text that is concatenated is separated by a comma. After the command, you start typing the X-Coordinate which is the Easting column in the CSV file. Because we’re not explicitly typing text, we can simply use a cell reference like so…
=CONCATENATE("Point ",B2
When typing coordinates in AutoCAD, we separate them with a comma, so we use another comma for Excel’s Concatenate function, then a comma explicitly typed in double quotes.
=CONCATENATE("Point ",B2,","
Finally, we add the Y-Coordinate which is in the Northing column using a cell reference, again, remembering to separate all the pieces of data with a comma and close the Excel function with a closing parenthesis.
=CONCATENATE("Point ",B2,",",C2)
When you’re done, copy the formula to the other cells. You can see in the image, that we have a line of text similar to what we typed in Notepad manually the first time. The below image, I’ve used the F2 key to edit the first cell so you can see the formula and the cell references.
Now that you’re text in Excel is in a Script File format, you can guess the next step. Copy/Paste the text into Notepad, Save with a TXT extension on the file name.
The last step is to run the script file in AutoCAD using the Script command. Zoom Extents in AutoCAD to see your points. The CVS file, Excel File and Script files can be downloaded for examination from this link.
Here’s a screen recording of making and running the script file. As you can see, it takes a CSV file, gets converted into a Script file and places the points in AutoCAD in less than 2 minutes.
Script files are quite easy. You could easily add more text, and use different commands to do the same thing like Insert an attributed block into the drawing and use the point number as the attribute value. You just need to make sure all your system variables are set to prompt you upon insertion for the attribute value.
The only real downside to Script files is they’re not intelligent. They don’t like extra characters or spaces, the don’t work well with commands that prompt for user input or display dialog boxes and they don’t perform conditional logic to do different things depending what they find. They will however call AutoLISP routines so when I have more advanced work I want to do in a script file, I just have the Script call and run my Lisp as well.
Every CAD or BIM user I talk to is in the same boat. The struggle and fight with their IT department to spend for adequate hardware. IT departments, tasked with keeping down budgets and slowing hardware refresh times simply go to the software vendors web site and look at minimum and recommended specs. Take for example, Autodesk’s requirements for Revit 2019…
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Revit-2019-products.html
What most don’t know is that these specifications are typically based on what most customers are using. If most customers are using low quality hardware, the recommendations will also be low quality hardware. Requirements and recommendation also typically don’t reflect what you’re doing….2d drafting or rendering for example.
Autodesk has gotten better about listed recommendations for large and small data sets, but it’s still doesn’t give you a good picture of what’s going on.
One this you can do is run some bench marking on your systems. This is typically an automated process that runs your system through various activities and ranks it based on the time to perform those tasks.
For Revit, a sharp guy named Gordon Price has helped develop a set of Benchmarking utilities for Revit. They’re posted to https://www.revitforum.org for free download and posting feedback.
You can download the utilities from this page…
https://www.revitforum.org/hardware-infrastructure/35955-rfo-benchmark-v3-x.html
I’ve got to say, I anticipated having to fuss a bunch, re-configuring support folders, repathing files and such. To my surprise, it was very simple. Like, extract the files to a folder, read the README.TXT file to understand what the various benchmark options were then click the shortcut.
You can get a little more advanced and have the benchmark assemble the results to a network location so you can benchmark all your machines and keep all the data on one place. But if you want to just run a simple benchmark, it’s very easy to do so although running the Expanded benchmark can take hours as it’s pretty exhaustive.
When you’re done, you get a text file summary of your particular systems results, Here’s a sample of data from my laptop….not very impressive but it’ not my primary system, just for home.travel use.
RVT 2019 - Full_Simplified set - 2018.10.06 @ 08.23.24 on MYCOMPUTER.txt
RFO Benchmark v3.2 (build 01.05.2018)
RevitForum.org
All times are in seconds, lower is better.
Run on Revit 2019.1
____________________________________________________ Model creation benchmark
16.46 opening and loading the custom template
20.78 creating the floors levels and grids
32.13 creating a group of walls and doors
52.27 modifying the group by adding a curtain wall
19.79 creating the exterior curtain wall
15.05 creating the sections
6.79 changing the curtain wall panel type
25.36 creating area plans
3.61 creating and applying view template
192.24 TOTAL
____________________________________________________ Graphics
7.99 activate View Styles view
4.17 change view to Wireframe
0.21 change view to Hidden
0.67 change view to Shaded
0.87 change view to Consistent Colors
0.66 change view to Realistic
3.01 refresh Wireframe Line view x10
9.24 refresh Hidden Line view x10
9.50 refresh Shaded view x10
8.91 refresh Consistent Colors view x10
10.77 refresh Realistic view x10
0.84 activate View Cube view
5.96 rotate view x1
62.80 TOTAL
Notes:
Graphics benchmark measures the entire graphics stack, which includes CPU and memory.
To meaningfully compare graphics cards, test all cards in the same
machine and use the 'Graphics - expanded' benchmark.
TEST CONDITIONS:
____________________________________________________ Mfr: Dell Inc.
Model: Latitude E5470
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise64-bit
____________________________________________________ CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz
Max Clock Speed: 2.496Ghz
Number of Processors: 2
Number of Logical Processors: 4
Total Physical Memory: 8GB @ 2133Mhz
____________________________________________________ Drive Type: local Disk (NTFS)
Drive Model: SanDisk X400 M.2 2280 128GB
____________________________________________________ Graphics Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics 520
Graphics RAM: 1GB
Driver version: 22.20.16.4836
____________________________________________________ Screen Resolution: 1366x768x32bit @ 59Hz
DPI Scaling: 100%
If you use the P&ID Modeler web services in Revit 2018, you should apply this update. It fixes some vulnerabilities that are exposed when connecting to the P&ID Modeler web services.
You can download the update from your Autodesk Accounts Portal…
Or you can download and install from the Autodesk Desktop App…
For a list of all the issues fixed in the various Revit 2018, check out this link.