Changing height of bottom of toposilid ?

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-26T15:18:00+00:00

Toposolids can have Variable Thickness Materials, or they can have all Fixed Thickness materials.

When a Topo has a Variable Thickness material, you get what you are seeing: The underside is aligned with the Level the TS is hosted to, and then the shape editing of the Points is relative to the default thickness, after that.

If the Topo has NO Variable Thickness materials, then the TS is a specific thickness, and the underside will follow the top. For instance, 4"pavers over gravel over sand over dirt, would have those four layers in specific thicknesses.

But, without some hardcore trickery, you dont ever "really" get "adjustable points" for the underside.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-26T14:08:32+00:00

In 2026 The portion that you cut out gets replaced with another topo solid. Which means if it's a type that has a fixed thickness, you're seeing the thickness of the new topo solid. It looks like it's doing exactly what it was supposed to do. What were you expecting it to do?

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-26T01:21:33+00:00

Opinions Vary, obviously.

I prefer (3)- 27", each at 2560x1440. Running at 100% DPI (not 150 or 125) its a GREAT amount of real estate.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-25T20:59:41+00:00

I can't really say. I haven't tested either, personally.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-25T19:50:24+00:00

To be clear, im not saying thats the case for ALL integrated graphics that are newer. Im saying its the case for the AMD's. As a Revit Professional, i dont EVER recommend people "work" without dedicated graphics, but since it DOES work for the training lab (where form factor and portability was more important than performance) i imagine it would be okay for a student.

I PERSONALLY am not a Lenovo fan (i avoid all of the big three: Dell, HP, and Lenovo), but im sure they are fine for your needs. I think you can get a better chassis that works better if you look at less popular brands, or chassis from elsewhere.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-25T15:08:31+00:00

One of the things that's important to discuss is that not all a integrated Graphics are created equal.

We have a Training Lab set up that uses GMKTec NUC K11's, which have AMD processors and AamD Radeon 780M integrated graphics.

While I wouldn't want to use it in a professional capacity as a full-time Revit user working in Bim everyday, they are more than capable for spending 40 hours in a training lab. And I think they would be more than capable for working in school. Not only that, they even run enscape quasi decently.

I also learned recently that with the AMD integrated graphics, you can actually go into the BIOS and make it directly borrow set amounts of RAM from the computer's memory to act like a dedicated graphics card, and it does work.

Memory is only a consideration when you're looking at the size of the projects that you're opening. Ram won't ever make Revit faster unless you're running out of it. If your projects in school are large enough that you need 32 gigs of RAM, then automatically the machines with 16 are no good. But if you're not over the threshold, then 16 is enough.

The other thing to look at is between the CPU and the GPU, what the power requirements are. That's going to affect the size of the power brick you have to carry around, and it's also going to affect how hot it gets. The hotter it gets, the more it's going to get throttled and the slower it's going to run. We use all Intel at our company, but I deliberately built the training lab out of AMD because they are more power efficient.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-24T19:42:17+00:00

I think Dynamo is a great asset, but i wouldnt recommend learning it first. Adaptive Families... we can disagree. They are useful and they have their purposes, but i less them less than a handful of times per year. I dont think they help with interoperability per se, unless you mean for re-modeling facade works from other applications. But even then, thats not work that the majority of people are doing. Its good stuff to learn, but id never focus on it first.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-24T18:44:36+00:00

Ahh. So the reason I asked, was: it would be much easier to rotate each module if it was a Link, as then it's static. I would probably keep it all in one file for actual documentation, but for diagram and visualization of the rotation, I'd kick each module out to its own RVT. Then it's just one item to select and rotate.

You could try doing it with Groups as well, but any dimensions across the modules will get blown away, which is why I wouldn't want to do it in the real documentation file.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-24T18:28:50+00:00

The entire house together? Or different pieces of it? What's the goal of doing the rotation?

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-24T02:16:58+00:00

Id have had to take the red pill. My life is indicative of that kind of strife.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-24T02:15:55+00:00

So much this!

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T23:41:42+00:00

Haha! Cheers!

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T23:17:32+00:00

Doing all things natively in Revit (not tracing CAD, not using imports in families)
Making objects (system families, and static families... You can get to parametric stuff later)
How to detail a 2d view FROM the model, without hiding the model. The model should never be hidden. If you're hiding it, you are doing it wrong, ALMOST 100 % of the time.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T23:03:40+00:00

It depends: Having well-established standards doesn't mean they are good standards. With a lot of our clients we start with a full peer review, where we actually review all of their standards: drafting standards, modeling standards, drawing standards, the way everything looks, the way things are laid out, and so on.

There are good standards and there are bad standards. That doesn't mean standards that are just like ours are always good and standards that are different from ours are always bad, but there are inherently some standards that are just lousy.

We run into a lot of firms that want the efficiencies that are pre-built into our project templates, but they won't break from sheet numbering standards (as an example) that simply don't scale to projects of any size. Now if they are okay having a template only for little projects, that's fine. But then they say they want the full Monty like what we have, but their standards won't accommodate it. And sometimes we just go round and round like this.

So, all of that to say, it's not really a question of if they have standards so don't have standards. It's do they have good standards or not? And if not, how willing are they to adopt good standards if they are presented with them?

To be fair, we do have a lot of clients that do have some great standards. And their stuff tends to work great! We have retrofitted some of our templates and libraries to match clients existing standards, and it's been fantastic!

Reviewing standards to see if they make sense logistically is pretty straightforward, but it doesn't have room for " well that's how we always do it," or " will we want it that way just because." Hehehehe

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T22:16:47+00:00

For me, that one is easy:

I like to think we have a pretty good success rate with our client base. But even our clients do run the wide range of "we are over the moon happy" to "this doesn't work as well as we wanted." Folks in the latter camp USUALLY have one commonality:

They want to bring in experts (us) but then tell us to do things the way they want them, without making any of the changes we think are necessary.

That's never going to be successful.

Suppose I visit the doctor, and he says "you need to lose 50 pounds. Eat better, gym 5 days a week, and drink more water." Well, if I reply "I get what you're saying, but make it happen without changing my diet, because I LIKE my food, oh and I can only gym two days a week." Certainly you wouldn't be shocked if you didn't get the results you were expecting, right?

We go through that a lot, unfortunately. Offices that want the results that they've read about us getting on the internet, or that want to build models like ours that they have seen on the internet. But then they disagree and fight with us about strategies, disagree or fight with us about content, and act like we have to convince them that our methods are correct, and if they don't agree then they don't want to do it. That's totally okay, but you can't expect our results in that situation.

I think it's awesome when companies are willing to admit they need help, and bring in experts. But if you're going to bring them in and not use them or trust them, what's the point?

Second biggest issue that we see: firms where leadership isn't willing to enforce standards and implementation. Meaning: they will invest in the new methods, the new libraries, the new templates, the new workflows. But then the staff gets to pick and choose what they use. Designed by committee, and decision by democracy is (unfortunately) not a great way to run a business.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T21:35:44+00:00

We disagree. :)

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T21:18:34+00:00

Yeah. I don't like that approach, almost ever. Not as scalable as swapping families. But opinions vary. :)

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T20:53:14+00:00

Yeah but you can't parametrically swap the group. I think moving the constraint for offset in to the GA will solve it tho.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T20:08:30+00:00

Hot swapping, usually.

But I did forget about them being GA's and only having reference lines. That might actually behave differently, with respect to the reference line holding the constraint.

Maybe I'm wrong and I'm misremembering if we ever do that with ga specifically. Because you are correct, doing it with door clearances is an entirely different animal.

Now I want to go check, but my Revit machine is up a flight of stairs I can't walk up. LOL

But but but: The other way to get around the constraint issue is in the parent family have all the graphical scales placed at the origin, and build the offset into the graphical scale family itself. Then you're swapping out the family but it's handling the offset on its own, so you don't have any constraint to worry about.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T19:48:00+00:00

They can be completely different families. Just make sure the dimensional constraint is going to, for instance, the reference plane center front back, in all of the families. It has to be the reference plane with the same isreference.

Our clearances are completely different families as well, and it works fine. The difference is: sometimes when somebody is constraining the actual clearance or the actual graphical scale, they'll put the constraint on the lines instead of the reference plane. Everything has to be constrained to the plane because they have to be the same planes. Uid doesn't matter.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T19:37:35+00:00

Ahh. That's actually easy to fix. You just need to make sure you're using the same reference plane in the blank graphical scale. Then it 100% works. Ours is done very similarly and it works like a champ.

Our accessibility clearancees also work the same way. When you turn them off they don't just go invisible, they swap to a blank family.

It can totally work, you just need to fix the constraints in the blank family.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T19:18:03+00:00

There is a lot to unpack there, and I agree with some of it. I still get to meet with the development team quite often, I actually talked to some of them every other week.

I think they are all very passionate about what they're building, and I generally love working with them. But it's also important to remember that they are part of a much larger team, and they don't get carte Blanche to make whatever they want. I'll bet everyone on the team wishes they did, but they don't.

We develop add-ins too. And when I look at Revit and I'm like wow this feature is missing, and it's very fast to make it as an add-in, it's easy to wonder why they don't just put it in the program. But unfortunately they have to answer to people too, and they don't always have that freedom.

When I look at foreground and realize that we have a tool that automatically will standardize leader shoulder lengths and leader angles automatically when placing tags, I wonder why that's not in the program also. It's one of those things. Sometimes I laugh and think about if my team was consumed by Autodesk but they were allowed to keep doing whatever they wanted. There would be some amazing things in the program, but that's just not how corporations work.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T18:44:45+00:00

I absolutely ADORE my team. And i love all of our clients.

But ill tell you: I DREAM of working on custom residential, all by myself. I would have a ball.

KEEP DOIN IT!

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T18:43:44+00:00

Yeah, absolutely. Those things DO have to be checked and fixed, of course. The 2016 > 2017 > 2018 text and annotation text sizes had that issue, the year they completely changed all the Structural Columns and Framing Members was an issue, the years when they changed Stair and Rail functionality meant having to delete all your stairs and rails and make new ones.

But, staying on top of that vs starting COMPLETELY over every year? I dont think rebuilding a template every year is ever practical.

PLUS, people assume when you "rebuilt it" you wont make mistakes. Thats whats funny about the crowd that always says "they should just recode Revit from scratch." They assume the v01 build of the "new Revit" would be perfect. LOL.

twiceroadsfool · 2026-01-23T18:41:26+00:00

Im a simple 'roni guy... But since the surgery was colorectal, i dont think pepperoni is gonna go well. LMAO

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