R9 and the office template

[Wes Macaulay]

Each time a new version comes out, I wonder if I should

a) start with the default.rte template shipping with the new version and transfer project standards to it
b) simply open/upgrade the office template, resave and keep going
There's a ton of under-the-hood stuff that got changed in this release (anyone looked at the new parameters for labels for room tags?) and I'm just wondering if the Factory, or anyone else, could comment on this.

Cheers

[MRV]

Yesterday, I tried to make a new residential template (using the Revit v9 residential template) by transferring standards from our old v8.1 template. NONE of the line weights in Object Styles would transfer... this takes forever to manually enter. I put in a support request for this one.


Michael Vaughn
BWG Architecture

[Martin P]

I had problems with stairs and railings in our template before, new functions were added to these objects - but the old stairs and railings in my template didnt update till I duplicated them. I have often wondered what else is missed out when I simply open my template and saveas. I have also had issues with families. Upgrading is not something I relish the process of at all.....

[cphubb]

Since Release 6 we always take the Revit default template delete all the stuff we do not want and transfer standards from our old template. While we have noticed this is not 100% a majority of things transfer just fine.
I did this with 9 last week and looked over many of the areas and the object styles lineweights dimensions text etc. came over correctly

[dhurtubise]

i also did import standards from 8.1. Everything transfered coorectly

[patricks]

I have always just opened the template in the newest version, and re-saved it.

For 8.1 I did actually create a new template from scratch, which took quite some time. Should I do this for 9 or can I just open our current template in 9 and re-save it?

[John Anderson]

Ideally, opening one's existing template in a new version and importing standards from a new version template into an existing one, if desired, would be the easiest thing to do.

What we really need is input from the factory as to why this would not be a good idea.
Else a statement that this does not compromise one's template going forward.

Then everyone could be crystal clear as to best practices in this regard, instead of having to rehash the issue at each release.
And the factory would have a standard for increasing automation of upgrading templates in the future.

[Arnel Aguel]

Has there been any comment from the factory on this issue?

[jeff.95551]

I ended up doing a hybrid-- looking at the old template after it came in and re-working it peice by peice as necessary. One interesting thing - all the drafting views, like my basic electric panel one-line, were completely garbled when I upgraded the template. Strangely, when I selected all the information in the view and copied it into a new drafting view, it came in correctly. My biggest issue is usually operator sloppiness, and I can hardly complain to anyone else about that. Since I am a one-man shop, the latest job usually becomes the template for the next project. In a perfect world I think it would be worth setting up new templates whole taking advantage of the new features.

[anthony.67953]

If the factory ever changes the Library I hope they tell us because I never upgrade my library. It seems to remain constant.

[Steve_Stafford]

Big changes to the library this release. There are changes to the content in every major release to support new features when they apply.

[Wesley]

There can also be changes to some library families from build to build. I would recommend doing a full rebuild from the web (including libraries) with every third or fourth build that is released.

Wes

[Steven Campbell]

If the factory ever changes the Library I hope they tell us because I never upgrade my library. It seems to remain constant.Almost every release there is updates and bug fixes to the content. For example the structural beams have changed considerably since the were first release in version 4, we added structural material properties, shape handle to aid in coping, beam rotation angle to name a few. Along with bug fixes and tweaks that we may come across over time. We also add content to support new features as required in every release, as other Steve mentioned...

Steven Campbell
Autodesk Revit

[david.kingham]

Why are these fixes not documented? It makes it extremely hard to know what has changed and what hasn't. I've created a fairly extensive custom library and modified lots of the content that comes with revit. Right now I download the new families from each release but I don't give my users access to them. So we may be missing out on new content because I simply don't know it's there! I've always looked at the new content and it looks the same so I assumed nothing had changed, I had no clue there were fixes to the content until you posted this Steven.

[Wes Macaulay]

It would be too major an undertaking to document all that I suppose... even still the Factory families still have minor bugs. Like the double kitchen sink - one of the symbolic circles for the taps isn't locked to the 3D tap, so when you change the sink's width, this 2D circle doesn't update properly. No big deal to fix, tho.

[patricks]

Yes I noticed the open-web joist family is much improved. I already had it in 8.1 because I copied it from our structural engineer's Revit file (it may have been there before and we just never installed the content before). Anyway, I had modified the joist family to allow different chord extension lengths at each end of the joist, so I'm not sure if I should copy that to the family directory on the server for everyone to use, or should I use the joist family from 9 and do the same modifications as I did previously?