A Quick Tutorial on Pen Weights & Revit

[beegee]

More from the desk of Tutorial king - Skisouth.

[zanzibarbob7]

Couldn't get the PDF to open.

[beegee]

It's a reasonable size ( 1.32 Mb ) - takes a few minutes, but does open for me.( in Reader 6.0)

[FK]

That's a really nice tutorial! But, you know, sometimes attention to detail (required for a programmer) turns me into a menacing editor. I hope Skisouth won't get discouraged by my nitpicking.

OK, on to nitpicking.

There's a new tab in 7.0 that deserves justice in this tutotial. A couple of hints right away: it's separate from orthographic pen weights because view scale is meaningless in perspective. When upgrading from pre-7, the default values are copied from annotation weights, and they respect the usual object styles. If you find that after upgrading your a view became unpleasantly bold, you have two options: either realize that you are cramming too much stuff into too little space and readjust the view, or just reduce the values in this tab. You can return to pre-7 look by using thin lines mode (temporarily) or setting all values equal to pen 1 (permanently).

It would be a little more gracious to say that the default values are not "random", but rather what architects at Revit came up with. ;)

You want to make it clear that if you change your template, new projects will be affected, but existing ones will stay as they are (I hope).

You CAN transfer line weights. Check the "Line Weights" option in Transfer Project Standards.

The opposite of "cut" is probably "projected".

The line color goes to printer too (unless you request bw printouts). It's a way to spice up drawings, not distinguish line widths. Line width is actually respected on display, as far as the resolution allows. You are right that in Revit you don't ordinarily need to keep track of line widths - object styles do it for you.

You want to introduce subcategories as subcategories, not as layers. There are no layers in Revit. Subcategories distinguish between different parts of an object. You may then say that the feature is "similar to AutoCAD layers, but more powerful of course". ;-)

When you talk about subcategories of doors, you call projection weights "plan view weights". They affect all views, not just plan. In fact, in plan views you see more cuts than projections.

At the end of the tutorial, you might want to say that no Door Hardware will be visible until you make a door family with hardware in it, but that's a subject for a different tutorial. ;-) Also, once you brought up Graphic Overrides, you might discuss how they affect display in a particular view.

I'm glad I'm not an editor too. ;-)

[beegee]

Thanks for that feedback, Fedor.

That is valuable, and I'm sure Skisouth will appreciate it.

Ski actually wrote this Tutorial some time ago, .. R 5 or 6, I think, and I asked him if we could post it here in this new forum. He didn't review it prior to posting and I didn't worry about getting it updated for 7.0, ... but now we have to do that, so your editorial comments will be put to good use.

[Skisouth]

Hey, this means I've got to go back and REVIEW - Now where's my errors and omissions policy......is a change order in line here?

[FK]

Your policy is between you and your client - when the building dept says no, it's a no. ;-)

[Skisouth]

Fedor,

Thanks for the review. I will update it after Christmas.

[FK]

Thank you, too. Merry Christmas!

[Kevin Janik]

Fedor,

Thanks for the review. I will update it after Christmas.

Has this tutorial been updated?

Kevin

[Skisouth]

no - need to though. Maybe over the holidays, or do you want the task?

[Kevin Janik]

Thanks for replying back.

I just wanted to make sure the information was accurate since there were comments back. If I was to do it, it might not be correct. I could update the information that has been posted but as for adjustments for new functionality, I would probably miss something. It you posted the Word file, I could update for the comments posted with tracking and then you could adjust it finally after looking at what was adjusted and they tweak it for other items.

Kevin