Revit Online Help and Online Tutorials

[andra.serzans1916]

Hi,


I'm a tech writer with Autodesk and write the online Help and Getting Started Guide for Autodesk Revit. I'd like to get some feedback from Revit users on what you think we're doing well with the help, Getting Started Guide, and tutorials and what we could be doing better to meet your needs. Specifically, are there areas of functionality in Revit that you are having trouble with and would like to see more information made available on them?

You can post here or send comments to Revitdocumentation@autodesk.com.

Let us know how you feel. We want to make the help and tutorials as useful as we can.


Thank you.

[beegee]

Well to kick off with, how about a section on using Journal files and what can ( and cannot ) be done with them.

[gregcashen]

And while we're at it, I have seen a script that can be used to automate the generation of excel spreadsheets from the schedules in a Revit file. I saw the script and it looks like Visual Basic in a .txt file which is simply dropped on the Revit icon to perform its magic. I believe that this is related to the way that journal files work. I would love to see some documentation on what can be done with this, as it is essentially a scripting solution for Revit, which people have been asking for for a long time.

[Roger Evans]

I would like to see a large amount of avi tutorials & demos please

I learn better visually ~ it has more info & technique & it sinks in quicker.

Would also overcome international language problems as well as general technical language problems

Maybe optional pop up notes (translated) if voice over too time consuming to do.

I honestly think this would be of huge benefit to Revit Sales worldwide

Roger

[gregcashen]

I think the question was getting more at content than delivery. While I think delivery is important, it is more important that the information is out there. There are others that have put together video tuts, and I am sure more will come from resellers as uptake is increased. I personally don't think the incremental benefit of changing the delivery method justifies the higher cost and longer time associated with producing\distributing this information. Also, if a release is delayed because of the need to produce a video tut, I think you would see a lot of unhappy customers. Just my $0.02.

[beegee]

I agree with Greg's sentiments, however, it would be good eventually, to have something similar to SketchUp's excellent avis (sketchup.com/training_windows30.php)

[Richard McCarthy]

I agree more with Roger Evans's idea of making AVI, because I think it's actually EASIER and FASTER for the Autodesk tech writer staff to make help this way, just plan how they going to do certain feature, and record.
The traditional way of doing things while write each step down manually (typing it out) then proof reading it again, just seems to take more time to me.

[PeterJ]

You only need look at the bried video tutorials that Chris Yearick produced a couple of years back to see how helpful this tool can be. There was a high level of uptake for what was essentially an amateur approach to producing help materials.

[Roger Evans]

Hi Greg

I don't think we should impose our own limitations on what we would like to see happening.

I think we should aim high & for the best & negotiate compromise after.

The aim is to make Revit improve from being good to a world beater

My thruppeny bit gor blimey guv thankee kindly.

Roger

[pwmsmith]

TO THE REVIT STAFF.
IT WAS THE AVIS AT SKETCH-UP THAT CONVINCED ME TO BUY THE PRODUCT. IT SHOWED ME HOW TO USE THE PRODUCT AND BE PRODUCTIVE WITH IT IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME.

[Cathy Hadley]

I would like to request more indepth information on shared parameters.

Maybe all the info. is there, but I still missed some steps in getting them to work, so perhaps this is one area that could be further demonstrated.

CZH

[Roger Evans]

As a matter of interest SkiSouth has just posted up 2 Tutorials on Revit City.
Both aimed at Novice users & very useful.

Thank you SkiSouth

Roger

[sbrown]

We are doing a campus of about 60 buildings scattered on an island. The site plan is in autocad and so are many of the buildings. We have pulled our hair out trying to figure out the best way to link the project team together. Ie shared coordinates and "origin" points in autocad. The training on site issues and coordination with real world large scale projects that utilize autocad and revit (revit series) is in big demand for us. We have tried many approaches and each fall short. Mainly due to the differences and incompatabilities between the two systems.

I think a senario that is typicall for most of us, is as follows.

1. Site plan and civil data is produced in autocad by a consultant. This data is used as the base for all project development, therefore needs to be easily used in revit and autocad with the ability to easily link and export to and from this data.

2. building models are created and need to be exported and placed in this site plan. Rotated and positioned,etc. the coordinates then shared. This works well if everything is in revit and any dwgs have their 0,0,0, point very close to the revit origin. If this is off you have all sorts of issues to resolve.

3. Another approach which I don't understand fully yet is to bring in the site plan and "aquire the coordinates" I haven't been successful with this yet.

Anyway there is a need for clear instruction on the best method for these types of projects.

[gregcashen]

Hi Greg

I don't think we should impose our own limitations on what we would like to see happening.

I think we should aim high & for the best & negotiate compromise after.

The aim is to make Revit improve from being good to a world beater

My thruppeny bit gor blimey guv thankee kindly.

Roger

Thats is what I was doing. My opinion is that there are a LOT of undocumented features, best practices, tips and tricks, and to me it is much more important to have the information out there than to have it on video.

In response to Richard McCarthy, I think you are wrong about the time it takes to produce these. If a change is made to the railing tool, they simply open RobotHelp or whatever help editor they use and add/delete some lines and republish the help files. If done in videos, the video really needs to be redone. And video production, even at an amateur level, has a higher cost associated. I am simply stating that video tutorials are not a priority for me. I would rather they spend the money on marketing so that they can get more users on board so the product doesn't die. Let resellers make the video tutorials and sell them to users...that would show the resellers that there are income opportunities for Revit, which is one thing a lot of them fear; versus ADT, which can have high services contracts associated with it.

[SkiSouth]

As a matter of interest SkiSouth has just posted up 2 Tutorials on Revit City.
Both aimed at Novice users & very useful.

Thank you SkiSouth

Roger

One is posted here under Families - Topic - Family Line work Help. :lol: Please feel free to offer suggestions for improvements.. The tutorial families are also included.

[trombe]

Dear Tech Writer.

Two areas of importance lacking in Help / Tutorials, are the wide / use of reference planes and how they can be used for many things.
HOW they can be employed is pretty much missing, so some practical and worthy content on this area would be greatly appreciated - especially for roofs or other elements where you are trying to align 2 elements or gropups of elements created at different times - such as multiple ridge roofs with skillion / raking ceilings or exposed eaves or exterior steelwork members.

The second area is the use of Family / shared Parameters in terms of the structure of formulae and compounds.
The Help is no help.

Some forum members here have posted some excellent explanations, however, to more novice users like myself, it is somewhat daunting to grasp how to construct and implement formulae in Families / In Place families and get things to work properly / flex, or even at all !!!

Thanks for asking.
trombe

[Vincent Valentijn]

I'd like to stress Scott's request..
The shared coordinates - even just for revit files alone - is still a bit dark for me. :( I recently tried to think of a method to determine if I could schedule or output data about model location AND orientation. I'm not really a novice I thought :? but I got no further than concluding that this is not possible?

Other thing I'd like to see is 'you've got a model and now what'
- I get this question from customers very often, they are a bit in the dark about producing the construction documents. I can explain allright but still.. in first instance people seem to miss the ideas on how to get on with this.

my € 0,01 [=$0,02?]

[Wes Macaulay]

Revit is one of those crazy programs that has so much potential depth to it that writing a manual of all the things that you could possibly do with the software would be an endless task.

Like shared parameters. There's gotta be a gazillion ways you can use them. And families! It's dizzying.

I've been spending a lot of thought trying to figure out a way to teach Revit to our clients... some way and order of presenting concepts to them so that they will accept and understand the software in the least possible time with the least amount of confusion.

Obviously, you start with the overview and get into the specifics. You've got to start at 50,000ft and then zoom in. You've got explain the process. You've also got to explain the usability basics: Revit is generally noun-verb -- you pick the object, then the command -- unlike in verb-noun AutoCAD where you normally pick the command, then the object.

People often don't like help manuals because they don't fit the process they're currently in -- it doesn't tell them how to get the work done, and it doesn't tell them what to do next. If new Reviteers can have a process oriented manual that takes them step-by-step thru the creating of a drawing set for a building, that would be great. Obviously it's not exactly the same for everyone, but there are common elements:

- create the project
- setup coordinates (Xyz)
- add levels and grids
- create site / terrain model
- draw walls in
- draw floors and roofs
- add doors, windows and other stuff
- annotate and detail
- create schedules
- plot
- take money bags to bank

And lots of "best practices" with tips and rationale behind the tips (e.g. "be careful when using locked constraints... too many and you can lock up your model!").

A sort of "Start to Finish with Autodesk Revit" tutorial would be great. The one that's there takes you thru a specific project, but it doesn't explain WHY you're going the steps in this order... the point of a manual isn't merely to take thru the steps of a given task, it's to help you understand how the software works and what the process is all about. It explains things like the fact that it makes sense to draw the walls first so that they can be used when creating the floors and roofs.

And I could go on, but I won't. :D

[Steve_Stafford]

Here's an "easy" specific thing to fix. Help command buttons in dialog boxes launch "help" related to the dialog that is open. That's great!

When you browse this help document there are no links to return to the previous pages. I can query help about something, get the help page, read, click on a link nested in the text and go there...but now the only way back is to click on the help button in the original dialog box and start over...