Keynote Manager by Revolution Design

Revit's keynote system is a powerful way to integrate data into Revit families, reduce errors, and streamline documentation. The text files, though, are cumbersome and difficult to work with. Keynote Manager was created to provide a simple, efficient interface to edit keynote files.

• Edit keynotes in a tree view instead of a long list in Notepad or Excel
• Automatically sequence keynote numbers
• Add & edit new notes without worrying about tabs or formatting
• Locate keynotes quickly with the find/replace function
• Multiple users can work on a single file concurrently

More information on Keynote Manager here.

Thanks to Clay Hickling of GHD and his presentation at the Revit Technology Conference USA 2011, "10 Free Revit Add-ins You can't Live Without"

Section Your Models By Floor with DPR Model Slicer

DPR Model Slicer is a free Revit plug-in which facilitates the creation of 3D Building sections from a Revit model. Inherently within Revit, the only way to separate a model by floor is to filter it by reference levels. Unfortunately, this often results in a product (shown below), where items modeled as multi-floor elements, such as walls or columns, become associated with only one floor despite occupying space on many floors.

During the construction coordination process, this can be a limitation, so it is often desired to have the building model separated into individual floors. DPR Model Slicer makes this process faster. The end result is a model which is sectioned by floors.

More information on DPR Model Slicer here.

Thanks to Clay Hickling of GHD and his presentation at the Revit Technology Conference USA 2011, "10 Free Revit Add-ins You can't Live Without"

reviTTools

With reviTTools you can expand the brilliant functionality possibilities of Revit Architecture, Revit Structure or Revit MEP software products. These new capabilities fitting to the integrated BIM philosophy will speed up your daily tedious tasks and will allow you to have less errors.

Tools included are:

• Schedule and tag real from room / to room properties of doors
• Schedule and tag real door swing property
• Count elements
• Manage imported and linked CAD files
• Update Sheet properties
• One-click customized DWG export
• One-click direct export to Excel
• One-click direct room/area import from Excel
•  Renumber doors, windows and rooms
• Transfer any room parameters to belongings door

reviTTools is free to use in demo mode, and fully functional. Site licensing is mentioned but no price given.

More information on reviTTools here.

Thanks to Clay Hickling of GHD and his presentation at the Revit Technology Conference USA 2011, "10 Free Revit Add-ins You can't Live Without"

Find What Objects are Associated with Levels Using the "Get Level" Add-on

Get Level allows users to quickly see what elements are associated with a level, making it easy to determine if it is safe to delete a level or not. It cal also be used to select all elements on a level, or select and show elements associated with a level even more selectively.

Download Get Level here.

Thanks to Clay Hickling of GHD and his presentation at the Revit Technology Conference USA 2011, "10 Free Revit Add-ins You can't Live Without"

Quickly Isolate Elements of Interest with BoundingBox 3DView

BoundingBox 3DView creates a 3D section box around any objects that are selected when the tool is activated.

How it works: in a model view such as a floor plan or 3D view, make a selection of objects of interest. Run the application through the Add-Ins Tab & External Tools pull down or a keyboard shortcut of your choice, and a dialog is displayed.

If the current settings meet your needs, just hit enter on your keyboard as the OK button has focus by default. If you change the bounding box margin or the 3D view options, these will be remembered next time you launch the command again (in the current Revit session). Once it finishes, open the new or modified 3D view.

Download BoundingBox 3DView here.

Thanks to Clay Hickling of GHD and his presentation at the Revit Technology Conference USA 2011, "10 Free Revit Add-ins You can't Live Without"

Create Custom Hatch Patterns in Revit with Hatch22

Hatch22 allows users to create custom hatch patterns using detail lines in Revit. No code needed. No AutoCAD needed.

Download Hatch22 here.



Thanks to Clay Hickling of GHD and his presentation at the Revit Technology Conference USA 2011, "10 Free Revit Add-ins You can't Live Without"

ADN Plugin of the Month Jun 2011: File Upgrader for Revit 2012

This plugin can be used to batch upgrade previous versions of Revit files to the Revit 2012 format. This utility tool is intended to help upgrade family contents. You can also use it to upgrade project files.

Download the plugin here.

From Autodesk Labs: Bundle Revit Projects and Dependent Files for Transmittal or Archive with eTransmit

eTransmit for Revit is a technology preview of an add-in application for Autodesk® Revit® Architecture 2012, Autodesk® Revit® Structure 2012, and Autodesk® Revit® MEP 2012 software.

For best results, installing Revit 2012 Web Update 1 is recommended. // more

With eTransmit for Revit, you can:

• Copy and detach a Revit model and associated files to a single folder for internet transmission. This removes the typical error messages when you copy central files using the operating system.
• Locate dependent files automatically and include them in the transmittal folder, reducing the possibility of error. All dependent files are automatically converted to use relative paths to ensure that the dependent files can be located by the model.
• Choose to include related dependent files such as linked Revit models, CAD files, DWF markups, decal images, and external keynote files. You can transmit any Revit (.rvt) model that has been upgraded to Revit Release 2012.
• Transmit models that are using file-based worksharing or server-based worksharing. eTransmit for Revit will also work with non-workshared Revit models.

Common uses for eTransmit:

• Internal archiving
• Sending deliverables to clients
• Model exchange between consultants/partners
• Model cleanup
• Sharing models between disciplines

More information here.

From Autodesk Labs: Form-finding for Architectural Conceptual Design Using Project Nucleus

Project Nucleus integrates the Nucleus simulation engine from Autodesk® Maya® into Autodesk® Revit® Architecture and Project Vasari. It allows designers to experiment with "form-finding" in the conceptual design phase by simulating forces directly in Revit Architecture and Project Vasari. (The latest technology preview of Project Vasari includes the Project Nucleus functionality.)

Project Nucleus can simulate a wide range of physical phenomena in real time, like wind, gravity, constraints, and collisions. These forces can help architects generate free-form shapes, many of which would be impossible to model by hand.

More information here.

From Autodesk Labs: Rendering in the Cloud with Project Neon

Project Neon is a rendering service that offers greater productivity and a faster turnaround of photorealistic renderings by leveraging the power and compute capabilities of the cloud. Rendering is a time and hardware intensive process that translates 3D models into photorealistic images that allow the design team to optimize the results they deliver to their clients. By harnessing the power of the cloud, customers no longer have to wait for long periods of time to generate single or multiple views of their designs, The Project Neon service eliminates the need for customers to purchase and maintain expensive hardware for their rendering needs. Providing a realistic view into designs during the entire design process delivers superior results for your customers.

Project Neon now lets you render Revit 2012 projects using the Neon for Autodesk Revit 2012 Add-in that you can download from the Project Neon web site.

More information here.

A More Mature Alternative to Revit Server: ProjectWise

(Contains op/ed content) Want an alternative to Autodesk's Revit Server? For extra-office collaboration and workflow management for multiple office firms or collaborative project teams, take a look at Bentley's ProjectWise.

While Revit Server is a relatively immature (read version 1) product, ProjectWise has been around since the late 90's, and I've heard nothing but good things about it over the past few years.

The very existence of Revit Server is arguably owed to Autodesk's desire to compete with ProjectWise, and not vice-versa as one might expect.

ProjectWise capabilities with Revit include:

• Support for Revit data and managed access, versions, and workflows
• Improved performance of Revit file transfers as compared to the WAN
• Ability to manage Revit standards, families, and templates
• Support for Revit linked-file relationships
• Change alerts for notifications of dependant file changes
• Management of CAD import/export and exchange
• Ability to record custom audit trail events for the central file

More information here.

IMAGINiT Utilities for Revit 2012

IMAGINiT's popular suite of Revit utilities has been updated for Revit 2012, and includes three new tools:

DWF Plus Create DWF files with more BIM information - whether augmenting parameter data in 2D and 3D, adding hyperlinks, or creating new viewpoints to highlight content, DWFPlus will make your DWFs into the deliverables you expect from Revit.

Translate Working with clients in other languages? Powered by Google Translate™, you can use this utility to automatically translate notes and room information from the current drawing language into one of six other languages. Includes additional configuration for special words and words that should not be translated.

ViewSetup Cover all the levels, phases and types of views you want with information presented to you in the ViewSetup utility in a grid, you can easily generate dozens to hundreds of new views with ease.

More information is available here.