Monthly Archives: May 2013

Revit

Revit – Cut Line Styles override

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Short lesson for everyone learning Revit about how to change graphical appearance of walls, floor and roofs in plan and section.

Imagine that for structural engineer you want to emphasize the structural core of your building. What you need to do?

Go to Properties panel of your view and open Visibility/Graphics Override window. It should look like on the image below. Walls by default have thick outline.
Lines - no override
Notice that there is a tick box called Cut Line Styles in an area named Override Host layers. Check that box and hit Edit… button. New window will appear where you can adjust line styles individually for all functional elements of your wall, floors and roof.

For purpose of our task we need to make thicker only the structure [1] – the core elements.

Images below will explain you differences between options for Core layer clean-up.
By default there is no line between core elements of the same kind.
Lines - no edge

Change to Use Function to see thick line between all structural elements.
Lines - Use Function

Change to Use Common Edge style to see connection and be able to adjust it by changing Common Edges style.
Lines - USe common edge style

You can change Common Edges style in Object Styles window on Manage tab
Lines - common lines style
or override it in your view in Visibility/Graphics Override window.
Lines - common lines override

Thank you for learning with PabLab šŸ™‚

Photoshop

Photoshop: Vanishing Point Tutorials

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Hello everyone,

Today I want toĀ encourage you to deepen your knowledge of Photoshop.

Architects sometimes need to correct or amend visuals of their design. Visuals are in perspective (usually) and there is special tool calledĀ Vanishing Point which allows many kinds of modifications in perspective. You can easily put 2D images in perspective, copy and even clone in perspective and between different perspective grids!

First watch this video tutorial by Howard Pinsky (~8 min.)

and if you still need more information maybe try that one by tutvid (~18 min.)

The tool is present in Photoshop since version SC2.

Sketchup

Sketchup – Soap Skin & Bubble plugin

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Hello everyone,

Today something exiting and extraordinary for all fanatic of Sketchup and especially for those who love to build organic and non-linear structures.

This plugin will throw you from your seat !!! šŸ˜‰

Soap Skin & Bubble

You can download it here: Software download page

It allows you to span membrane-like surfaces between any kind of edges* in closed loop and then…
BLOW THEM UP !!!

Soap-buble-tool-anim1

*some restrictions apply: Lines can not overlap!

There are 6 buttons in a toolbar:

  1. Skin – allow you to create a surface (look below how).
  2. X/Y – allows you to stress the surface between X or Y direction.
  3. Bub – allows you to blow up a surface in both directions.
  4. Play – allow you to resume modification process after Stop.
  5. Stop – allow you to stopĀ  live modification process.
  6. Help – it’s a link to a developer website.

I created small tutorial explaining how to create a surface:SOAP-BOUBLE-SKIN

Ā and an explanation what impact have X/Y Ratio on the membrane:SOAP-BOUBLE-SKIN-TENSION-X-Y

It’s definitely an inexhaustible source of ideas for creative people. Moreover after you create a structure, after you play with it, you can modify it with other Sketchup tools and plugins and still be able again to blow it or tense it up!

Here you can see how behaves a previous surface after inflating it, moving half of it and deleting some faces:VOULT1

TIP: You can blow up a surface using ether positive (+) or negative (-) values. Positive values will blow up a surface from a back side of faces. Negative from it front side.
What will happened when reverse normals only on a part of a created surface?

EXPERIMENT!!! šŸ™‚

Autocad

AutoCAD – Separate Existing Hatches

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Still in AutoCAD subject. Did you ever had many areas hatched with the same hatch any you want to get rid off some of them?

Another useful button is present in AutoCAD since version 2011. It’s accessible only from Options Panel on the Hatch Editor contextual ribbon tab. When you expand it you will find a Separate Hatch button. It’s active only when a hatch composed from more the one hatched areas is selected. (I couldn’t find any information about if there is a keyboard command triggering that function.)Hatches

Attached image illustrates also functions accessible at the origin point of the hatch and on its boundary points.

When you select a point press Ctrl to cycle between those functions. It works similar as for polylines.

Autocad

AutoCAD – system variables and PaperSpace

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During one of the lectures on the Technical University the Professor said “Someone who use only Model Space in AutoCAD isn’t worth to be an engineer” šŸ™‚
So I decide to share some useful tricks about PS (Paper Space) in AutoCAD:

When you insert a viewport in PS and you see, that all linetype scales are dramatically changed…. don’t panic….
Just use a variable PSLTSCALE and set the value to <0>. After REGENALL you will see, that all the lines have theĀ scaleĀ from the Model Space.

In Paper Space each layer can have aĀ special configuration (visibility, color, line type, opacity and thickness). When you double-click on the viewport areaĀ you can set in the Layer Manager specialĀ  parameters for that viewport.
DVNT_21 May. 18 11.15When you need to transfer setting from one viewport to another… you can simply use the MATCHPROP command (the small brush icon).

Contours on all polygonal viewports can be edited with the same procedure as Polylines – with the Ctrl key you can modify all the vertices (add, remove, convert to arc).

If you prefer to read this post in polish, click here.

Autocad

AutoCAD – Wipeout command

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WIPEOUT – This by many forgotten command can save you a lot of time and effort.

A Wipeout is an image type object. Most commonly it is used to “mask” part of a drawing for clarity.

I’ve rediscovered it recently and found it useful when creating louvers. With hundreds of them I didn’t need to cut and trim additional few hundreds lines of windows behind them. And reposition of them was so easy. I also used it for window tags and handles in elevation view.

The Wipeout command can be used for 3 different operations.

It can be used to draw a Wipeout object, as you might expect (only without arcs), but it can also be used to convert an existing closed Polyline (only without arcs) into a Wipeout. Additionaly it can be used to control the visibility of Wipeout frames.

Wipeout

You can also changeĀ Wipeout frames directly from WIPEOUTFRAME system variable. The result of available value is below.

Value Result
0 Frames are not displayed or plotted. Frames are temporarily displayed for object selection and selection preview.
1 Frames are displayed and plotted
2 Frames are displayed, but not plotted

Value no.2 exist since AutoCAD 2013.

wipeoutframe

Personally I use value.1 to not duplicate the lines and when I need to make a particular frame unvisitable I change it line type to thin doted line with a big scale (like 1000). Only corners then are visible as dots. I use this method to create hollow objects like window frame.

Revit

Revit – elevator plug-in

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Check that guys –Ā ElevatorArchitect free plug-in for Revit.

“DigiPara Elevatorarchitect provides free optimized Revit families to easily create elevator models inside Autodesk Revit software. Start the plug-in directly inside Revit and find the correct size and number of required elevators within seconds.”

It helps a lot. Watch the tutorial on Digipara website.
You can choose manufacturer real existing lift and easily implement into the model.

ElevatorArchitectElevators3D

ElevatorArchitectElevators3D window

Sketchup

Sketchup – Creating Arrays

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Today something basic – You all should already know that but I there is always someone knew who needs some knowledge šŸ˜‰

Arrays in Sketchup we create with a Move tool for Creating multiple copies (linear arrays) or Rotate tool for Creating multiple rotated copies (radial arrays).

Procedure is simple. Create a copy of an object and after that type a multiplier value to create additional multiple copies after the copy or a a divisor value to create additional objects between the copy and the original object.

For example, typing in 2x (or *2) will create one additional copy (or 2 copies total, the one you manually copied plus one you automatically copied using this step) instead of just one.

For example, typing 5/ (or /5) will create five copies evenly distributed between the original and the first copy. You can enter distances and multipliers until you perform another operation.

This is the trick.

Here is a nice tutorial presenting how to create a screw with a use of this trick.

Autocad

AutoCAD – Isolate Selection

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Another post in the series of Isolate Selection. A friend asked me is it also possible to isolate any object in AutoCAD?

It is since AutoCAD 2011 and it was even in earlier versions of Architectural Desktop.

The ISOLATEOBJECTS and the HIDEOBJECTS commands hide specific objects.
The UNISOLATEOBJECTS command restoresĀ hidden objects .

These commands are found in the right-click menu…isolate-menu

…or near the right end of the status bar.
isolate-button

It is also possible to add toolbar icons allowing to isolate and end object isolationĀ  to any toolbar with Customize User Interface window.

Information acquired from CCAD.

 

3DS Max

3DS Max – Isolate Selection

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Isolate selection in another program – 3DS Max. How it works?

There is a keyboard shortcut: Alt+Q = Isolate selection

In 3DS Max 2012 and previous versions while the Isolate Tool is active, a dialog labeled ISOLATED SELECTION appears.

Exit Isolation ā€” Click to end isolation, close the dialog, and unhide the rest of the scene. The views are restored to what they showed before you chose Isolate Selection.

In 3DS Max 2013Ā  the “isolate selection” was changed.Ā Alt+Q toggles the isolation. Dialog window doesn’t appear and itā€™s impossible to use isolate selection one after another to get deeper in complex models with many objects how it was possible before.Ā  There is also icon on the bottom of the viewports which do the same as a keyboard shortcut.

isolate selection

In 3DS Max 2014 as I heard the possibilityĀ to use isolate selection one after another was restored.

Note: Isolate Selection works only at the object level. You canā€™t choose it while at the sub-object level. If you go to a sub-object level while working with an isolated object, you can click Exit Isolation, but you canā€™t isolate sub-objects.