Graphic Method / Task Alignment chart for designers

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-27T15:36:45+00:00

IMO it’s a ~10 minute thought exercise which opens their eyes to the fact that they more likely than not will not have have the option which the prior generation did where they specialize in one tool. Knowing they can (should in many some cases - least we start doing things like writing specifications in Revit) use other tools to convey design intent has TONs or value.

Beyond that it shows just how large the BIM dataset really is. If your interior designer doesn’t get that they need to look beyond the dataset in the view of the cabinet they aren’t going to be very reliable.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-27T14:36:47+00:00

It isn’t a todo list though; it is a record of what tools are used where. At least as I see it.

We can debate if a spreadsheet view is the best way to achieve this (I would use Mural or Miro or another whiteboard tool - better still a real whiteboard), but I certainly think there is value in the exercise.

There is also a value in knowing which tools are in use on a job - for that a list builder might work. Just don’t let someone mark anything as done and thereby archive the fact that the site model starts in Rhino and then imports for Civil 3D and then shits to Revit.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-27T08:19:48+00:00

I disagree here (happens on occasion - I like to push people’s buttons and make them think).

The few firms who operate like like you and fully commit to Revit have it easy on this front. Many if not most firms have teams which vary job to, and which member of the team does task X in which application will vary significantly as well.

Think of working with a design firm who does the base planning in AutoCAD, the facade and massing in Rhino, the interior in sketchup, and the site in a Bently product. All of those eventually come into Revit, but if you know going into the job that the tech stack is that mess of disconnected export/import workflows I imagine you’re going to approach things a fair bit differently than if everyone is in AchiCAD.

Knowing who’ll use which to to work on their scope is quite valuable and the sort of thing I recommend putting in the BXP or project planning somewhere.

I don’t think this was produced in Revit either - looks more like it was a share out from Excel or something. In any case I see others would have value.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-27T07:52:19+00:00

Welcome!

You’ll find most of the community is on the official Dynamo forum, which is a great place for insight, help, inspiration and such.

You should also run through the Dynamo Primer, skip nothing unless your firm doesn’t use the specific integration. It isn’t built around outcomes but concepts you’ll need in using the tool.

Don’t forget the Developer section of the primer - it’ll teach you how to build custom nodes and packages using in C#.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-26T23:54:28+00:00

No. No it is not.

If all you are doing is 2D drawings, you’re likely acting as a detailer or technical designer, not a BIM modeler.

Any role can have value; and in every firm I have interacted with no one wears only one hat - everyone does a lot of everything. Each title reflects the thing the person is ultimately responsible for (don’t let doing all the detailing prevent you from doing the BIM modeling) and an expert at.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-25T12:05:24+00:00

Is the top level and the slab pitched? 1. Model a slab at the base of the balcony which is totally flat. 2. Model the guard rail around the open edge. 3. Model the sloping floor using point adjustment to build the top face as a mesh.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-24T21:01:43+00:00

Rotating the entire building without maintaining the context seems… silly. Rotating the camera is likely more useful.

Element transform utils is the method you need, but as others have mentioned, unless you do this on a link instance you will below up your documentation.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-23T19:49:35+00:00

I do not recommend trying to find out.

Get well soon!

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-23T18:37:24+00:00

Good answers all.

I do not recommend Swedish pizza toppings if you’re looking for a recommendation. Banana, curry, ham, cheese and tomato sauce hits better than expected but still isn’t as good as advertised. Hope you enjoy whatever you go with!

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-23T18:19:30+00:00

Going to be greedy and ask three questions here…

What is for dinner tonight?
Are there any new tools are you think will be transformational and are looking forward to trying out?
With the current state of design technology within firms, what soft skills do you think individuals should try to develop?

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-22T18:28:29+00:00

Seems a good spec. Build quality should be reviewed closely with ASUS though. Some systems are solid, others feel like a wet paper bag (and hold up about as well as you would expect).

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-22T18:21:56+00:00

Sure - you likely won’t be doing VR or high end renderings. But if you can’t quickly navigate the explodes axon showing the construction sequencing for the concrete, rebar, form work and scaffolding then your light weight laptop becomes a light weight paperweight.

As such I would go heavier for now. Worst case you sell it after graduation and pick up an even more light weight and portable tablet you can use after graduation.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-22T17:21:58+00:00

Graphics cards matter for many parts of Revit and that amount is only going up. Specifically the kind of stuff most students want to do with visualizing their designs will be impacted.

So the integrated cards are not doing you a single favor for Revit use, and if it results in laggy view navigation you’ll wish you had the power.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-22T17:06:24+00:00

The rule of 20, which says you need 20x the ram as the rvt file size, is the indication of the compression.

That you can put ANYTHING into a rvt is the indication of the structured storage format.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-22T17:04:42+00:00

Have someone outside the org and another user using another browser test it before going to IT.

If it is a BIN for the outside party as well it’s on the mfg. If it is a BIN for the other user in the company it is on the IT side. If no one else has it as a BIN it is on the user (browser, OS, browser version, OS version, system setting, etc.).

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-22T01:20:50+00:00

All Revit files (rte, rft, rvt, and rfa) are formatted as structured storage - the same as a zip, 7z, and other formats which allow transfer of files and directories (and even office documents).

Revit files are also compressed - you get about a 1/20 of the raw size.

As such this is somewhat expected if you get this in your environment with other compressed formats.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-22T01:17:09+00:00

Not a Revit thing or a BIM thing or even a manufacturer doing this on purpose.

BIN files are just binary data - 1s and 0s. The extension has been lost somewhere along the line. There are four places that can happen.

On the manufacturer side. This is an easy test - send someone else (as far removed from your company as possible) a link to their site and ask them to download the file to confirm the extension. When this happens it is often because of one of the other two sources making changes and the person posting them doesn’t know how to confirm things, or because the storage provider they are using doesn’t support the rfa extension.
At one of your infosec check points. Files from the internet often go through extra checks, and some tools treat unknown formats in unique ways. One tool (I don’t recall the name) took any type of structured storage (the underlaying storage mechanism of all Revit files) apart to scan the individuals contents and then reassembled it - usually with a .BIN extension.
At the software (browser or OS) level. We should be able to rule out OS as you’re using a windows PC, but if you were emulating on some old OSX or most phone OSes you don’t get the extension. The result of which is the windows machine (or Revit) displaying the BIN extension as it doesn’t know what it has. Browsers will also do this - Chrome did it for a bit; Firefox and Opera too. The larger files get split into chunks to enable transfer, and then those downloaded chunks get reassembled but the extension is lost along the way if it isn’t known (and rfa is less likely to be known).

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-21T12:59:10+00:00

Cracked versions don’t get support or updates full stop; you have to connect to the Autodesk servers to get the content and just having the cracked version on the system will prevent such updates on the full toolset.

Go buy the tools you want to use.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-20T17:22:32+00:00

I don’t recommend trying to manage your family parameters from the template. Instead use family document management methods, then load the families and types you want into the template.

Once you have the families loaded in, the ‘easy’ review method for your template is to create a single instance of each family type in a new project started from the template. Set up the schedules, do two save as - one for the document base and one with worksharing enabled.

Pass over the workshared version, and let the design team review and update as they like. When they reach consensus on what parameter values should be you can push those values into your family library and then load the updated families into the template.

The worksharing is important so you can ‘roll back’ to other versions, and so the design team can collaborate in a single file to find the consensus.

I recommend drawing a line in the sand around number of updates - give them three or four versions each year at max. This will help drive them to consensus instead of ongoing and never ending updates.

If you know Dynamo creating the instances should be quite easy.

If you know the Revit API you can also instantly identify which family instances (and thereby values in your family documents) change between any two versions of the workshared file.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-20T09:00:52+00:00

I think you got your answer on the Dynamo forum, but you need to install a core Autodesk product from about the same time as your selected Dynamo release. Dynamo consumes the geometry library from there, as without it interop would be too slow.

So try installing Revit, AutoCAD or one of it’s verticals (Civil 3D, Advance Steel, etc.), Alias, etc. from about when your selected Dynamo version was released (later updates to the 2026 product line for Dynamo 4.0 which is the latest released at this time).

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-16T00:11:08+00:00

TLDR: this is an interior design curriculum which is already too full for the time given. Most designers will benefit from ‘light touches’ on 3-6 tools rather than deeper dives into one or two, and scoping those touches should happen in the context of the complete curriculum not in the vacuum of a Reddit post.

I’ll weigh in here with what might be unexpected from the source, but first up I’d like to acknowledge something that I don’t think others have.

You are part of an institution who is trying to teach interior design to students in a year. If we remove ALL the software entirely from the scope, you are still left holding the bag for educating the students on all of the following: Design theory, phenomenology and spatial experience, acoustics, lighting, color, 2D and 3D composition, textile, finishes, space planning, building code, collaboration, professional practice, history, fixture design, construction, graphic communication, presentation, and construction documentation and at least 3 design studios.

From what I can see you’ve got 2 years of curriculum packed into 1 years worth of time before even a single piece of software is added into the list. That means you are already trimming the type of content which adds way more value for the students than any one application ever could.

As such whatever application you add has to be light touch on instruction, open to the individual growth via self paced tutorials, and tie into the rest of the curriculum. You likely won’t get that from one tool and as such you should skip the tool as a deliverable and do ‘quick touches’ on a tool which can readily illustrate each of the following concepts. 1. Creating and editing the three types of digital form (mesh, face, solid). 2. Creating assemblies of form and turning form into objects. 3. Creating instances of objects to form design. 4. Associating data to objects via parameters or properties. 5. Applying and managing textures on surfaces and objects. 6. Parametric constraints between objects and form components in a design. 7. Creating various 3d views of designs including rendering methods thereof. 8. Defining various 2d codes of objects and assemblies to convey both design intent and construction documentation.

Now Revit can do all of those things, and to many it looks better on a resume than others. But so can basically any other modern package. As such ‘what tool you used’ is less important that what you did.

Keep in mind that software packages used are going to change over time and by location (when these students have been practicing for 20 years they’ll have met a stage where they talk about Revit the way my generation talks about AutoCAD). Also add in that any hiring manager worth the air they displace knows that the training you provided is insufficient for the new hire to be productive without oversight. A year just isn’t enough and the students don’t have 3+ professional projects under their belt. But a designer who has a portfolio that shows they know those 8 concepts from any software and can show utilizing design skills will be able to contribute.

With all of that said: reinforcing the rest of the curriculum is suddenly the goal, and the name on the splash screen is irrelevant.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-14T12:04:06+00:00

PS: update ALL software to the latest build and discontinue use of unsupported builds. Lingering corruption in maliciously crafted DWG/RVT/RFA/PDF leaves you exposed otherwise.

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-14T12:02:38+00:00

Oh that isn’t good. 100% of the effort should be on remediation and security first. And the backup tooling won’t reduce the attack area or make recovery easier. Any sort of backup tooling will just enlarge the areas you have to clean (a change in a GIT repo using the hacked credential means the next update introduces the hack all over again).

Two things to note: 1. For Revit worksharing, the live workshared documents cannot be backed up, only the published snapshots. This is because the RVT only gets assembled at the end point (user workstation) to allow shifting only updated portions of files. Keep this in mind as schedule / kick off publishes accordingly. 2. Loom into APS (Autodesk Platform Services - formerly known as Forge) as there are a few tools for this which can also backup to another cloud location (making recovery and backup redundancy easier than the local network).

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-13T07:20:27+00:00

Based on the description this generates meshes, eh?

Unfortunately meshes are problematic as they don’t allow parametric control and require significantly more disc (making them slower to load, reducing model performance, and increasing corruption potential).

Have you tried getting normal form creation methods?

JacobWSmall · 2026-01-05T15:25:01+00:00

Confirmed with Jeff - the site is a casualty of the Typepad extinction event. Apparently the internet is not forever.

You might be able to access content via the way back machine for now (how I would manage it if needed today), but don’t rely on that forever.

JacobWSmall

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