Last week I announced some updates to our website, including a set of 5 new sample families available for download. In our excitement to share this new content with everyone, we accidentally posted a draft version of the Pratt Butterfly Valve on the sample downloads page. We weren’t aware of this oversight until a couple days ago, when someone who downloaded it followed up by email to ask about some errors they were seeing.
Transformer Revit Families – Getting More to Meet the Eye
We recently created a Revit family for a dry type power transformer by Powersmiths called the E-Saver-C3. The transformer comes in 10 different models based on apparent power (measured by kVA), and the case size of the transformer varies based on the kVA model being used. There are a number of potential spec configurations for each kVA model depending on the components used in the actual transformer, but for this order we only had to supply the C3L configuration with a primary/secondary voltage of 480/208 and a k-rating of 7.
Family Feedback Mechanisms – Part 1
Revit families are by nature pretty flexible. Even if you build a family to work with only a given range of sizes or in particular positions, a user can often find ways to use the family outside of those intended contexts. So sometimes it’s desirable to have a way of highlighting the fact that a family is outside of an acceptable range, or that it is positioned wrongly, e.g. a face-based family meant for walls that’s being placed on a ceiling. If you can’t stop a user from using a family “incorrectly” —and it may not be incorrect, just not recommended or optimal —then the next best thing is to provide some feedback to the user to indicate what is happening.
See You at AU?
The big show in Las Vegas is on the horizon! Autodesk University 2011 kicks off in less than three weeks, and I’m happy to report that Jose and I will both be attending this year’s event. We’re looking forward to taking the plunge into a sea of Revit sessions during the week, and I’m sure we’ll come up with plenty of riches to share with you through this blog.