Tip: Extracting PAT files from a Revit Model

I posted this over at RevitForum, thought I would share it here.

There is a little trick I discovered on how to get pat files from Revit (in case you were not the originator of the pattern file)...

Select multiple views for DWG export that has the pattern you want to get... Don't just select one! The pat files will disappear too fast!
Open one explore window with where your exporting the DWG....open another one to save the PAT files....
What will happen is you will see the DWG being saved, then PAT files, and when the PCP file is saved the PAT files disappear. I copy and paste all the PAT files into my other open window.

Now, open the CAD file you just exported and find the fill your wanting to acquire. The pattern name is FP_(x)...you will find that same pattern name in the PAT files you copied over...

Voila! You have the pattern that you don't have to spend forever trying to recreate...

EDIT: The reason for the multiple files....when you try to copy and paste Windows will lose the info on what is getting copied...but the next view is the same pat files, so you have time to paste.

Nobody is perfect

As many people know I am into gaming big time. Currently all my extra time is spent in front of my computer playing Battlefield 3. I watched a video of a few weeks ago of a guy jumping out of a jet, using a rocket launcher to kill the jet chasing him, then getting back into his jet. Way cool! First thing I thought of is how can someone be so good to do stuff like that? Hacking or what?

Here's the vid:

Pretty amazing right? That's how I feel when creating new families in Revit after attending AU and RTC. OMG! How did they do that!

Well, luckily the same guy that created the video of the RPG shot also posted an extended version. It took practice, lots and lots of practice.

The same can apply to Revit, your never going to get it done right the first time.

Currently I am working on changing out our doors to shared panels and frames, something I picked up from Aaron Maller and Shawn Zirbes. Aaron shared his door families over at RevitForum.org and I have been using them as a sort of guide to apply to my own. I liked how he setup his shared parameters so I borrowed his naming to my own, with a few tweaks here and there.

Here is a tease of what I am working on currently.

Stay tuned for more about this. I have the panels finished and am currently working on the frames. What I really wish I did was start with the frame that had the most constraints, as each shared frame must have the same parameters as a frame with less constraints, else your door frame will error when it can't populate all the parameters correctly. So I find myself adding parameters again to all the previous frames that I thought were finished.

Getting Started - First Post

I have been wanting to start my own blog like everyone else I know in the Revit World. Problem is what can I blog about that hasn't been done already?! I don't want to be like some other bloggers that seem to copy someone else's blog word for word and even use the same pictures just for the sake of populating their own blog. This drives me crazy when reading the Blog Feeds over at Revitforum.org and find multiple feeds about the same thing.

I wanted to be a bit different, but still have something constructive to talk about. Lately work has been a bit slow and I have been trying to update our company Revit Library and try out the new methods I have seen at RTC and AU. Folks like Aaron Maller, Jason Grant, Marcello Sgambelluri, they make things look so easy until you try to build them yourself. It's like, they figured it out, why can't I? Then it hit me "Hey! I have something to share!"

So this blog content is going to be about the trials of attempting new ways of using Revit and sharing it with everyone that might be reading. Besides families, our office is also attempting the idea of the multi-discipline model, both Architectural and Structural in the same model. There's something else I hope to post about.

MP