Best Practice? Dimensioning Corner Joins

[BillyGrey]

I hope someone here has some discovered some creative solution to a problem I am struggling with (preferably Factory).

I have attached an image of a residence that has been modeled with layered/compound walls,
many of which are angled.

It seems to me the only way to force dimensions to snap to the true wall cores on >90d
corner joins is by drawing lines or planes along the two adjoining walls, then spiking the resulting intersection with a tiny line that the dim chain can snap to.

I hope I am doing this the hard way...

Thanks in advance,

Bill

[beegee]

That's the only way I know of to dimension to cores, Bill. :( ( You can spike to an RP though - no need to add extra lines of course )

[neb1998]

i think with revit 8 you could set the exterior non core elements to invisible....perhaps that would help?

[beegee]

Unfortunately no, setting the visibility ( by using white for non-core elements ) does not mean that the dimensions snap to the core ( the other elements are still there )




i think with revit 8 you could set the exterior non core elements to invisible....perhaps that would help?

[neb1998]

yeah i wasnt sure on that, thanks for clairfiying
did not try it

[sbrown]

You are doing it the only way I know how.

[bclarch]

Make sure the joins are mitered and that the dims are set to prefer faces of core. The dims in the attached image snapped to the core endpoints automatically under the above conditions. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but this project is still in release 7.

[Rhythmick]

Make sure the joins are mitered and that the dims are set to prefer faces of core. As stated above, - You may need to "tab" through selection till the "point" is highlighted. Usually "shift /tab" will find it quicker.
This works for non ortho corner conditions, non ortho Intersections (wall channels) I have had no luck with through release 7.

Also for the dim to be an xy length you will need to include it in a string thats already xy directed. If you go just point to point it will give you the diagonal length.

[BillyGrey]

Thanks for all the replies.

Robert (Mike), I attempted to duplicate your condition, and I am wondering if when you say "make sure your corners are mitered" you are over-riding the wall joins and setting them to mitred?

I did this on the attached example, with no success. Revit would not find the cores no matter how I tabbed. It only highlighted the face of wall corners. The wall is a stock Eifs Over Metal Stud.

I did this in both 7 & 8.

Thanks,

Bill

[bowlingbrad]

Hey bclarch,

You've got some pretty exacting standards to follow :-| I don't know if I could get any of our contractors to build to 1/32"! ;)

[sjsl]

This needs to be fixed in the next release. I'm just tired of the little things that don't work as planned.

[Rhythmick]

Bill,

I cannot get the sample wall corners to dimension either, Upon further review of my drawings the dim snap is locating the corner point of the subfloor which is stacked with the wall core. This would explain why it doesn't work on intersections as I stated above!

[BillyGrey]

Yes, it's a very common wall condition and should be a feature that is addressed immediately.
I can't imagine having to do a work-around on something as simple as a dimension chain: spiking wall joins, having to deal with all those little lines during any revisions, etc.

(Alternatively, how did you do that Robert?)

I hope our Friends at Factory can help us out on this one very soon.

Thanks,

Bill

[david.kingham]

Yes this is needed very badly, I have tons and tons of angled walls, not looking forward to dimensioning, and it's going back to the slopiness of acad of not dimensioning actually geometry :( I pray this gets resolved before 9, I can't wait that long

[rodneyf]

Please everyone submit an example of this condition to autodesk so it will get more attention. I submitted mine in March of this year and when I was at the Client advisory board meeting in Feb. of this year I expressed my concern for this then and they asked me to submit a support request to them. So please send in your request to them so they can correct this.

Thanks,

[Joef]

Please everyone submit an example of this condition to autodesk so it will get more attention. I submitted mine in March of this year and when I was at the Client advisory board meeting in Feb. of this year I expressed my concern for this then and they asked me to submit a support request to them. So please send in your request to them so they can correct this.

Thanks,
What response did you get in March? Was it a subscription support request? That is the only kind of request that actually gets logged, as far as i can tell.

Joe

[adegnan]

Make sure the joins are mitered and that the dims are set to prefer faces of core. The dims in the attached image snapped to the core endpoints automatically under the above conditions. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but this project is still in release 7.
How did you do this BLCARCH? Did you use two different walls, joined together, one representing the core and inner portion; the other the exterior? I've never been able to duplicate that behavior unless as I just described. Am I missing something?

[rodneyf]

Joe,
I did get a response back from them and they are looking at adding it into a future release. That is why I asked everyone to place a support request to autodesk and yes I did it through subscription center.

[Martin P]

As far as I am concerned this is a bug and not something to treated as added function - not something for a future release, but something to be fixed now. It has been highlighted for a long time already. they ought to fix it in an build not in a new release.....

[bclarch]

Hey bclarch,

You've got some pretty exacting standards to follow :-| I don't know if I could get any of our contractors to build to 1/32"! ;)

You're just hiring the wrong contractors. :) These dimensions were generated by snapping to internal wall points and rough openings to respond to the problem at hand. The exterior faces of the wall are laid out based on more sane dimensions.


How did you do this BLCARCH? Did you use two different walls, joined together, one representing the core and inner portion; the other the exterior? I've never been able to duplicate that behavior unless as I just described. Am I missing something?

See the attached screen capture. I didn't mention before that pick is set to individual references. Don't know if that is the magic answer. Here's the situation. There is a compound wall with a simple wall below. The wall below is limestone and goes from the foundation to the first floor. The compound wall goes from the first floor to the first floor top plate. As you can see in the screen capture I snapped to the rough opening, the core at the internal corner and the program is ready to snap to the core of the compound wall at the external corner. Just required some tabbing. The force must be with me. Has no one else been able to do this?

[Joef]

I have tried several times to replicate your dimensioning but Revit just beeps when I try to dimension to the core.
The only way I was able to replicate your results was to create a wall on the lower level that was the same width as my core on the upper level and make the lower level an underlay. But that is pure trickery! :-)

[BillyGrey]

Hey Joe,

Ya know he must be snapping to the limestone wall below...

I've been thinking. I'd like to start a gentleman's betting pool:

I'll send off my file to Tatjana to forward to tech support, with a request for a fully dimensioned, editable plan back from them, as the dimension tool appears to be broken.

Then we'll sit back wager on what happens next:
Either I'll get my file back, dimensioned and editable, or
we'll get a new web build with a new dimension tool.

Which do you think will happen first???

:twisted:

[Joef]

Here is what I expect you will hear back if you were to send this to support: "The current implementation of Revit does not support dimensioning to cores of angled walls."
I think that if it were actually possible to fix this it would be fixed by now. It is hard to imagine someone at Revit committing time and energy to "Clash Checking" (was this ever on a wish list?) if they could have been fixing this.

[bclarch]

Ya know he must be snapping to the limestone wall below...

Take a closer look at the screen capture. The dialog box indicates that it is snapping to the compound wall. I have attached a copy of the file for others to experiment with. I have stripped out everything but the walls that I used in my example. Remember this is a 7.0 file. I don't know if converting to 8.0 changes the behavior. It should be an interesting experiment. Don't forget to set the dimension command to "faces of cores" and "individual references". Let the games begin.

[david.kingham]

No matter what I do I can always dimension to the core in your file, but when I paste the walls into my file it doesn't work anymore lol what did you do to this file??

[Rhythmick]

No matter what I do I can always dimension to the core in your file, but when I paste the walls into my file it doesn't work anymore lol what did you do to this file??
When the wall is transfered to a new file I get the message in the attachment.
Both in release 7 and 8.

Other Notes:
The wall will not dim to the interior core non ortho corners.
When the exterior finish materials are removed down to one component it will no longer dim to the non ortho corners. When they are added back in they will again dim. :-?

[bclarch]

When the exterior finish materials are removed down to one component it will no longer dim to the non ortho corners. When they are added back in they will again dim. :-?
Interesting. The outer masonry layer is also a vertically split region. The wall is split at 7'-6" and the upper portion was changed to limestone. Perhaps splitting the outer face exposes the inner layers to the dimension tool. Hey Factory guys, any input?

[Joef]

This is very odd. The wall does dimension properly, but not all of the other walls do. When I try this wall in another project it does not dimension to the angled core. Why would some walls dimension properly and not others? I give up. It would be nice if someone from the factory could explain this. Please.

[bclarch]

No matter what I do I can always dimension to the core in your file, but when I paste the walls into my file it doesn't work anymore lol what did you do to this file??
When you cut and paste are the integral sweep and split regions preserved? I'm beginning to suspect that this might have something to with it. See above response to genuinehomes.

[BillyGrey]

Well, what an odd set of circumstances this is indeed.
One thing is for sure, a non-ortho compound wall that has no split faces
does not snap to face of core in Rel. 8. That much I know for sure, so, I think I am
going to address the problem in the context of a support issue with factory at this point,
and I will report back after I make a direct call.

EDIT:

I just called tech support (Wed. afternoon) and walked a fellow through the problem. He drew an angled pop-out wall, which he tried every which way to dimension to, but he could not fix to the face of core at the intersection. I led him to agree that this is not a wishlist item, and it deserves immediate attention. He indicated he is going to look into a number of areas to determine if, when, and how this issue is being addressed. He also indicated I will receive an email tomorrow regarding how the problem could come to be resolved..

I will report back as soon as I hear something, and then we shall see...

:)

[Rhythmick]

Interesting. The outer masonry layer is also a vertically split region. The wall is split at 7'-6" and the upper portion was changed to limestone. Perhaps splitting the outer face exposes the inner layers to the dimension tool. Hey Factory guys, any input?I had removed the split in the layer, it made no difference. I changed the finish materials - it made no difference. It also did not matter which exterior finish layers were removed as long as it got down to just one it would remove the dims.

Billy, you are a man of action - two mugs up :beer: :beer:

Anxious to hear back!

[BillyGrey]

First, I/many have been aware of this condition for some time, and other attempts have been made to have it corrected, so the best I/we could hope for this time was perhaps some near-term attention to this dillema. Perhaps I was mistaken:

from Adesk:

This is an update to your Support Request. Our development team is unable to address the issue you encountered. As noted previously, not all issues are considered significant enough to address in their entirety; a proposed correction may create significant stability risks; some issues may be impossible to fix due to product architectural restraints. We appreciate your understanding and patience in this matter. Based on this information, your Support Request will now be closed.

I have checked with our development team and they are aware of this issue, and they have scheduled this feature to be included in future releases Revit Building.

I am sorley disapointed that "development" marches on with this program, while so many, many unfinished features that have been discussed time and again in Revit lay fallow.

Thanks,

Bill

(I implore anyone interested in seeing this corrected to, at a minimum, email support, or better yet, Tatjana, Revit Product Manager. She is a good lady, so be nice.
You can find her here:
http://forums.augi.com/member.php?find=lastposter&t=19024
I emailed her with a link back to this thread.)

[david.kingham]

Wow what a huge disapointment, this should be their number one priority to get into a new build, not a release...especially now that it's yearly. This makes me sick and gives me doubts about the development team (maybe it's autodesk holding them back, who knows) Seems to be such a simple feature (I could be wrong, usually am lol)

I'll wait to here from Tatjana before I rant anymore :D

[Rhythmick]

I have checked with our development team and they are aware of this issue, and they have scheduled this feature to be included in future releases Revit Building.


This sounds encouraging. It's not as if we have'nt done and been doing workarounds on other issues as well until they got resolved or will continue till they do.
I think Joef hit the nail on the head with his anticipated responce and the statement that it's propbably not an easy fix or it would have been done by now.
I'm hoping the fix will coincide with a wall core only visability setting, since the two issues are related.
I did e-mail a wish request on these two issues to revitsupport@autodesk.com back in early November.

[Fred Blome]

from Adesk:

This is an update to your Support Request. Our development team is unable to address the issue you encountered. As noted previously, not all issues are considered significant enough to address in their entirety; a proposed correction may create significant stability risks; some issues may be impossible to fix due to product architectural restraints. We appreciate your understanding and patience in this matter. Based on this information, your Support Request will now be closed.

I have checked with our development team and they are aware of this issue, and they have scheduled this feature to be included in future releases Revit Building.

I'll rant on it:

I agree this is a CRITICAL issue. I am in the process of documenting a multimillion$ residence, with angled intersections and I wouldn't want to consider the reaction I'd get if an error cropped up as a result of having to work around the inability to dimension correctly to an angled corner condition. This is real world here and errors are going to cost significantly in money and reputation. Revit is being sold as a do it all program, not "as long as everything is on an X-Y axis" program. "Gee, my CAD software wouldn't let me dimension to that corner, so we had to fake it." "Oh, in that case, I understand, it's no big deal. We'll accept the fact that xxxx won't fit anymore."

This is a basic need - why has it not been fixed? I don't want to lose faith in this software.

End rant

Fred Blome