How to see properties of fill patterns in your project

[revitnewbie]

I was going to make a master Fill Pattern file that has all the properties of our standard fill patterns, just to have on hand or if someone is building a family and needs the correct fill pattern. So, I was going through creating screen shots like the one below. And when you look at these, they all say they are at a generic scale of "1.00". My question is, how can I find out what scale that pattern was imported at? I tested the "sand dense" pattern and if you import it just at the 1.00 scale, it's much larger than the one I have set up in our project, so I obviously imported it at a different scale, but I can't see to find that information.

[damon.sidel]

I don't think that that information existed in an accessible manner. It may be available through the API, but as far as I know, it is not available to the user after the fill pattern is created. Sorry.

[revitnewbie]

I don't think that that information existed in an accessible manner. It may be available through the API, but as far as I know, it is not available to the user after the fill pattern is created. Sorry.

Well, that stinks.

[damon.sidel]

I don't think you need to be doing what you are doing; you can just use Transfer Project Standards.

When somebody starts a new family, they will often have a project open. Hopefully, that project was started from your office template. (If they don't have a project open, they could start a new one with the office template.) In the family, go to the Manage tab > Transfer Project Standards and choose to transfer the Fill Patterns from the project to the family. Done! After doing what you want with the new family, you can always delete out the unwanted fill patterns. But the extra fill patterns will probably only add a couple kilobytes (a couple dozen at the most) to your family file size.

[revitnewbie]

I don't think you need to be doing what you are doing; you can just use Transfer Project Standards.

When somebody starts a new family, they will often have a project open. Hopefully, that project was started from your office template. (If they don't have a project open, they could start a new one with the office template.) In the family, go to the Manage tab > Transfer Project Standards and choose to transfer the Fill Patterns from the project to the family. Done! After doing what you want with the new family, you can always delete out the unwanted fill patterns. But the extra fill patterns will probably only add a couple kilobytes (a couple dozen at the most) to your family file size.

Thank you! That makes much more sense! Sometimes I forget about these handy little tools they give us!

[damon.sidel]

It is often helpful to ask the bigger question along with the smaller question. If the question is about the goal, there are often many (and better) ways to get there. Cheers!

[hugh.69031]

But the extra fill patterns will probably only add a couple kilobytes (a couple dozen at the most) to your family file size.

There are some very big hatch patterns. The AutoCAD Architecture 2014 "Roofing_Shingles_DeepShadow" pattern file is 240KB in text format and would require about 180KB to store inside the model file.

Very detailed, "heavy" patterns can be even larger but in some cases the size is the fault of the pattern generator used to create the pattern in the first place rather than inherent pattern complexity. The cited AA2014 pattern contains 3129 elements of which only 13 are needed, the remainder are redundant.

The largest pattern I have ever seen published was called "x-boostedbarcelona" and stood 1247KB on disk. I have not succeeded in loading it to Revit. Again, largely redundant content as it requires 739 of the 19336 elements specified. I keep it around as a test for HatchKit.

BTW if you are looking for a way to purge all unused patterns from a project, try our HatchKit Add-In for Revit from the Autodesk Revit Exchange which can do this.

Hugh Adamson
www.hatchkit.com.au