Been a little quiet

Posting to a blog is a little like a river, with ebbs and flows.

There, did you like that little adage? Good!

Anyway, the latest news is that AUGI has just entered the nomination period for a special election to be held to fill empty Board of Director seats.

http://www.augi.com/about/default.asp?page=1642

Keep on eye on www.augi.com and vote when the time comes!

RST 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts

I have posted my latest version of RST2010 KeyboardShortcuts.txt to here on AUGI.com.

Vote for Sessions for AU 2009

Dear Autodesk User,

Last year, for the first time, we (Autodesk) asked the AU Community to help us select the best 600-plus sessions for AU 2008, and the response was invaluable. This year we'd like to do it again.

If you are considering attending AU 2009, please take a few minutes to vote for those sessions that you absolutely want to see. Your votes will help us select not only the best sessions, but will also give us some insight into the most popular ones to help us schedule them at the best times and locations.

How to Vote
To vote for sessions, go to the Autodesk University Session Selection page and log in using your AU Online username and password. If you do not have an AU Online account, it only takes 15 seconds to register as an AU Online member.

Topics can be looked up by product, speaker, or industry. You will be able to read the entire submission (unedited) and vote on several criteria. Please limit your votes to approximately 20 sessions.

The voting deadline is Friday, May 8 at midnight PDT.

What's Next?

Over the next few weeks, the AU team will review all of the class proposals. Final class selection will be made based on your input, that of industry experts, and speaker feedback that we received from past AU conferences. We expect class selection to be completed by mid-June and hope to publish AU 2009 class selection by late July.

Registration for AU will start on August 12, and one week earlier for AU members. Class schedules will be available for review by late July.

Thank you in advance for helping us select the most interesting and relevant classes. Be sure to vote before May 8.

The AU Team

Revit 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts Development via excel

I have posted on AUGI forums 3 versions of the this excel to cover the 3 flavors of Revit ribbons. Each has the out-of-the-box settings, removing duplicates, and allows for reduced effort customization.

Revit Architecture 2010
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=100549

Revit Structure 2010
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=100510

Revit MEP 2010
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=100548

RST Keyboard Shortcuts Development via Excel

Since I'm too lasy to figure out how to attach XLS files to my blog, I posted over on AUGI.com in the Revit Structure forums. Join to read - it's free!

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?p=969814#post969814

RST Keyboard Shortcut Philosophy

So I'm working on the RST 2010 keyboard shortcuts - it is work believe me. Every ribbon has its own chunk in the file, and many commands repeat over and over. To begin to develop a plan I had to first beg an Excel expert to lend a hand. He customized a xls to do automatic placement of shortcuts based on the ribbon verbage. In a nutshell, when Refence Plane is defined as RP in one row, all other Reference Plane entries on other ribbons get an RP as well.

So I went through the file in whole, assigning shortcuts. What is my philosophy on it?

Commands that I use a lot (like beam) get 2 letter shortcut and will be moved to the top. So BM will start Beam but also B will as well.

Commands that I use a little less but when used, are used repeatedly, get double letter shortcut if available. For example, Align is AA. It could have been AL and then put at the top so that A fires it - I personally think that isn't needed for double letter commands.

Commands that are used daily but not frequently, two letters based on the wording hopefully. So like Reference Plane being RP. Not the best placement on the keyboard but not a killer. Depending on more frequent commands, it may be moved to the top so that R fires.

Then infrequent commands that by the nature of the lack of use will be hard to remember - first letter shortcuts. For example, Dimension Radial is DRA.

After this it gets sketchy - some commands won't get assigned a shortcut since remembering them will be next to impossible. While others will get assigned and hopefully be intelligently named so as to remember them.

RST2010 Missing Commands

Just noting a few commands are no longer in RST. Big deal? I don’t know but that isn’t typically what software is supposed to do…least not CAD software.

Edit-Select Previous

Tools-Split Walls with Gap (formally turned on with an INI switch)

A whole group of commands related to views…gone. Now the word is you can use the view cube. But that doesn’t make it a great replacement for a shortcut.

View-Orient-Southwest
View-Orient-South
View-Orient-Southeast
View-Orient-East
View-Orient-Top
View-Orient-West
View-Orient-Northwest
View-Orient-North
View-Orient-Northeast
View-Orient-To Other View
View-Orient-By Plane
View-Orient-Save View

Know of more? I have not finished my own look so there may be more, send me comment so I can update this list.

Something very cool in Revit 2010

I don’t think it has been well promoted but a really cool feature in Revit platform 2010 is the ability to Open a central file and in that sequence make a local copy instead. Whenever you use the Open dialog to browse to a Revit central file, the Open dialog will sense the status and give you the option of creating a new local file. The newly created local file will be store according to a setting in your options. I believe the default is under My Documents but it looks like it could be anywhere. Not only do you get a new local file but it also appends your username to it.

For example,

This is the project name - central.rvt

will become

This is the project name - central_username.rvt

Anyway, cool new feature. Good job guys...

RST2010 is available for download

Even if you don’t have an Autodesk Subscription account you can still download and use RST2010 for 30 days. Here is the link to the product web site.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=12856705

Ribbon or Bust!

I mentioned before that I now have ACAD2010 and just downloaded RST2010. Regarding RST, I hope you like the ribbon interface in AutoCAD or MS Word for that is your only choice in RST. Now is that a bad thing? I personally don't think so but it will take time to get used to it for sure.

But what about AutoCAD? You do have the option of menu bar/toolbars as in the past. But should you? I don't think so. If you have MS Word and other applications along with RST all with a ribbon, why would you use AutoCAD with one?

Personally I feel strongly enough that even for the corporate AutoCAD menu WPM uses for the Structural Services group (my area) that I have removed the menu bar and toolbar elements so that the menu is only a ribbon format. The logic is that it will aid in people getting used to the ribbon for RST if that is all they ever see and they can't fall back to the menu bar format. Now I just have to wait to see if the logic pans out.