Revit and the CadLab – Suggestions for Working with it

First, our apologies for the difficulties of running Revit on the machines in the CadLab. We are in the process of replacing a number of them, but we hadn’t realized how problematic the current ones are for running Revit (it seems that Revit is the program that stresses them the most - most other programs run fine).

Revit

What follows are some suggestions (mostly from Jonathan Eboli) about how to work with Revit. We hope that they help.

• Be sure to read the Lab instructions given on VistaBB.  You must follow these directions for full credit. 
  • People with short last names are welcome to use 100 + 10 x LettersOfLastName as the length of the longest side.
• Save often!  As noted above we realize there are issues with running Revit in the CAD Lab.  For now please remember to save every few minutes while working in the lab.
• Some had issues with the viewports (the views of your model that you drag onto the “sheet”) being too large after you placed them on a new sheet.  There are several ways of addressing this,
  • A suggestion would be to move the elevation symbols on your "level 1 plan" closer to the building.  Then when you drag level 1 back onto the new sheet, the viewport will be much smaller. 
  • You can change the scale and thus the size of your viewport by
    • right clicking the viewport
    • Selecting element properties
    • selecting a different “view scale” from the drop-down box.
  • You can change the “cropping” of the viewport several ways
    • Most likely to work without problems is to change the size of the viewport by specifying its dimensions on the sheet. To do this:
      • Select the viewport by clicking on it – this should change the tab on the ribbon bar (top of Revit window) to the “Modify Viewports
      • Click on “Size Crop” in the crop subsection of the ribbon
      • Now put in your desired dimensions. Play till you get it as you want.
    • You are supposed to be able to drag “handles” on the edge of the viewport to do the same thing, but how to make those handles appear is not well documented – we couldn’t find it – sometimes they appear and sometimes they don’t. Here are some posts from the user sites on the web that did not work for Jim Mitchell, but may for you.
      • According to RevitCity.com: if you want to  "resize the viewport in the window go to VP, turn on annotation crop and pull the grips in to your model limits." 
      • Furthermore, another post states: "If you need to adjust the limits of your views, get into the view & right click to choose view properties.  From there you can adjust your view crop regions."
• To make drawings look professional, you may want to use guidegrids.  These help you line up elevations, plans, sections and schedules on your sheet.  See this video tutorial for more info.  Note this is not required but could help with arranging your sheet.
• In order to plot a PDF, select file, print, and then select adobe PDF.  You need Adobe Pro on your computer to do this.  Each computer at the Lab has this feature already downloaded. 
  • I believe Drexel has a site license that includes students so you should be able to download it from – software.drexel.edu
• We suggest uploading your revit model to google docs as another method of transferring your model from back and forth between your PC and the Lab computers.  This is a good alternative to using a flash drive.  To learn more about this, watch the google docs upload tutorial.
• Lastly, Jonathan Eboli will be available all weekend should you have any questions about your lab.  Please email me at jae46@drexel.edu to set up a time to meet in the CAD Lab.  If you don't have time to meet, I will do my best to answer your questions via email.

Jonathan Eboli & Jim Mitchell

Lab-3 – Bridge Collision – Grader’s Comments

• Specifically state "this was an implication of the lab" or "this was a limitation of the lab" in your memos. 
• Many used the height of the wall =8' instead of the length of the bridge =520' for question 4 when calculating the bending moment.  You needed to use the bridge length instead of wall height for Q4.  This changes your bending moment.  Partial credit was given for this question.
• Please put your first and last name in the title when you save the document.
• Be sure to follow the formatting instructions already in the lab: "Example of making formulas visible - We want you to display the formula for calculating the momentum. We show each of the ingredients. Then we show the formula - highlighted in pink. Then we actually calculate the result. Note that we used named variables to make the actual cells read readily."
• Part of being an engineer involves professional calculations and writing.  Your calculations may need to be checked by other engineers at a later date and thus you should be neat and organized.  If you are completing the labs via hand calculations, please be neat and organized. 
• Instead of only stating what numbers were obtained during the calculations, try to think if the numbers make sense and why.
• If you are scanning in calculations, please combine them into a single PDF. 

Discussion-5 – AE – Grader Comments

• The most common place for students to lose points was in the "most interesting" or "most confusing" categories.  
• A few posts lacked sufficient length.  Please dedicate more time to your posts and reference your articles more.
• Overall, most discussions were very thorough, organized and informative.  Keep up the good work.

Discussion-3 – Bridges – Grader Comments

• As with the past 2 weeks, the most common place for students to lose points was in the "most interesting" or "most confusing" categories, although substantially less points were lost in this discussion.  
• However, the course information available on VistaBB states that the "most interesting" and "most confusing" sections of the post should be one to two paragraphs.  So expand upon one sentence, which typically cannot sufficiently describe the most interesting aspect of an article.
• Simply listing dimensions of a particular bridge should not be the most interesting part of an article.  While the facts are good to include in your post, talk about something new you learned about the bridge or actually found interesting, in addition to their dimensions.  And again, if nothing was confusing, simply state that.
• I had a comment about how VistaBB won't let you indent, if you want to clean up your post so it's easier to read add an extra return between paragraphs to space them out nicer.  And still take advantage of the "preview" function associated with the discussion posts and make sure to proofread and spellcheck! 

Discussion-2 Grader Comments - Materials

• The term "material" seems to have been loosely interpreted. No points were taken off for choice of material, but for future discussions, it would be wise to select a material typically used in the field you are studying.
• Make sure to post your discussion reply under the thread that most closely relates to the topic of your discussion post.  Many students wrote on the same material and used the same sources, but few referred to the posts of other students. Do not be afraid to change the title of the post to represent the topic of your discussion.
• The most common areas that students lost points was in the "most important" and "most confusing" categories.  As previously said, each student should talk about what they found to be the most important and confusing things about both their primary and secondary articles.  If the article was straightforward and not confusing, simply state that.
• The rest of the comments are minor. 
• Take advantage of the "Preview" function associated with the discussion posts.  This way the post can look exactly as you want it to, in an organized fashion and easy to read. 
• Finally, make sure to proofread your discussion before submitting it.

Lab-2 Grader Comments

• Fill in the "Assignment #" on the top of the "Summary" sheet
• Explicitly state the implications and limitations of the lab.  And expand upon these more than just one sentence.
• State the objective of the lab clearly and discuss the results obtained or the trends of the graphs plotted.

Lab 1 – Grader Comments

Overall, the submissions for Lab 1 were good, but there are few things that I would like to stress to the students:

• Please fully read the entire assignment before completing and submitting your solution. There were a few instances of incomplete assignments. Partial credit can not be given if a question is not attempted.
• Students should be careful about using significant figures and scientific notation appropriately and applicably. Answers should not be submitted with multiple decimal places shown and there is no reason to represent 180 cm in scientific notation. 
• Because of the amount of difficulty students had with properly using significant figures, the suggestion of having a tutorial/refresher on significant figures will be contemplated by the teaching team.

My last comment is a suggestion for how the students could help the graders. If the students were to include their first and last name in the title of the file they submit, it would make the grading process easier.

Jim Mitchell for the Graders

L3 Bridge-Tanker Lab Questions #1

Here are answers to some questions I’ve been asked about Lab-3

“In lab 3, should we convert all the measurements to SI units or can we use them the way they are?”

• Please work in US (Imperial) units.  A good guide would be to use the same units that Prof. Dasaro used in his lecture example.

“Is it necessary to 'name' each data cell?  I have found that for this lab it makes it somewhat difficult, since each name is specific to to one cell, and we have many cells throughout the lab referring to the same data.”

• If you reuse the same named cell you can just insert its name.  If, for instance, you’ve named cell A3 “Kinetic_Energy”, then if you want that value to appear in cell g5 (on the same or another sheet) all you need to do is put in that cell ‘=Kinetic_Energy’ and the value from A3 will appear.  You can use that name in formulas just as easily.
• Note that if you start typing Excel will offer a list that includes your named variable.  In this case, just typing ‘=k’ will produce a list of two items, the first of which is Kinetic_Energy.  With the item you want selected hit the Tab key and that value will be entered.
• You are not required to use named variables in this exercise.  I just recommend it.  It’s an easy way to generate the required display formula by creating the actual formula and then copying everything but the “=” sign and pasting it in a cell beginning with an apostrophe.

Jim Mitchell

Cumulative Grade Calculations

There is now a cumulative grade for the course showing in VistaBB, labeled Grade Calc.  I plan to update it every week or two.  It shows your numeric grade (out of 100) including all of the graded elements so far, which are the ones that will be visible to you.

Notes about the Grading Calculation

• Allowance for the “free” (ie. you can miss without penalty) items will be made only at the end of the term.  That means that you will see an increase in your numeric grade at that point if you’ve missed something.  I’ll make that calculation in a separate spreadsheet so the final exact grade will probably not appear in VistaBB, but it will be the same as or higher than what shows in VistaBB.
• Att – stands for Attendance.  What’s shown is the number recorded for you by counting the signatures on the sign-in sheet. This total is multiplied by “5” in computing the cumulative grade.  There are 3/week.
• You can see the weighting of the various components in the “Assignment Weights” page of the syllabus.
  • Note that the Labs were originally going to be 20 points each with a weight of 5.  We changed that to 100 points each with a weight of 0.4.  There is no overall change in the contribution of the labs to your cumulative grade.
• The cumulative grade column may be hidden for periods while we input grades and update the calculation.  Check back the next day it it will probably show again.

Jim Mitchell

Discussion Note – Special Topic

A student asked if for Week-4 they should be writing about a specific bridge type or a particular bridge. My response, whose principle will apply in future weeks is:

“If you can find an entry in AccessScience on a specific bridge you are welcome to use that bridge as the subject for your primary and secondary resources. I had imagined that you would look first at the general topic of bridges and then find a specific one with your secondary resource, but that’s not required.”

Jim Mitchell

Seeing Graded Comments

It’s not intuitively evident how to see what the grader has provided to explain how they graded your lab.  This post explains how.  The issue lies with VistaBB’s idiosyncrasies.

Graded Labs (Assignments)

The grader creates an attachment file that explains their grading.  That file may well be a copy of the file you originally submitted with a different name.

To see that file you need to go to “Assignments” on the left hand menu, and within that click on the “graded” tab.  You’ll then see the files that are related to the assignment, both your own original and the one returned by the grader.

Graded Discussion Posts

For reasons known only to the VistaBB designers you have to click on the “My Grades” menu item on the left.  Now you’ll see a button entitled “View Graded Grading Form” that will show you the grading form with whatever comment the grader made.

Jim Mitchell

Discussion-1 – Grader Comments

Here are the comments the grader made on the first discussion.

• From what I found, most students took the assignment seriously.  There were some really great posts about why they chose the major they chose.  And when people talked about the journal articles and what they found interesting and confusing their responses were serious and appropriate.  From what I could tell people found the readings worthwhile and really related it back to why they chose their major, and things they hadn't thought about in regards to their major. 
• The most common areas that students lost points was in the "most important" and "most confusing" categories.  I'd like to reiterate that each student should talk about what they found to be the most important and confusing things about both their primary and secondary articles.  If the article was straightforward and not confusing, simply state that. 
• The rest of my comments are minor.  Make sure to post your discussion reply under the thread that most closely relates to your major.  Also, take advantage of the "Preview" function associated with the discussion posts.  This way the post can look exactly as you want it to, in an organized fashion.  Finally, make sure to proofread your discussion before submitting it.

Memo for Lab

A student emailed a question wanting to know what should be in the “Memo” for this lab. They said:

Do you want us to present the final calculations or also explain how we calculated it, how we did did the conversions and the data that was given to us? For now I just put, for example,
frontal area = xx sqin = xx sqft = xx sqm = xx sqkm = = xx sqcm = xx sqmi

What the instructions in the lab say is:

Summarize the laboratory and your understanding of its implications and limitations.  Do so in the textbox below, including as many specific numbers and details as possible to support your argument

The emphasis for the memo, therefore, is on your interpretation of the lab rather than the methods used.  Those methods should be evident on the sheets for the individual questions.  The kinds of things that you might discuss on the memo are:

• The US unit system
• The issues relating to unit conversion
• Significant digits
• The relevance of these calculations to professional life – positive or negative
• Why did we choose this lab for the first of the term?
• Are some or all of the calculations oversimplified?
• Does what we calculated here make sense in terms of your experience in CoOp or prior school experience
• The role of Excel as a tool – with specific comments on Excel techniques.
• etc……

Jim Mitchell

Advice & Notes about Lab-1

The following issues came up during the labs.  We’re noting them here for everyone’s benefit.

Use your own dimensions & Name-Length

Remember that even if you worked on a sheet together and shared it you must use your own dimensions and name-length in the appropriate sections of the lab.

Named Variables

We will only be checking that you have created a named variable in the section of the lab that identifies them as a grading criteria.

We urge you to consider using them elsewhere because they’re helpful, but it’s not required.

Memos Are Individual

Remember that each person is to write their own memo.  We will treat copying in this portion as plagiarism.

Rounding

You may round the answers to the appropriate significant digits two ways

• one way would be rounding off each “answer” within a question – from the beginning of the specific question to the end or
• rounding off only the last “answer” in question.
  Both methods will merit full credit.

Note that the “correct” method is not to round until you have “the answer”.  If there are multiple “answers” then each should maintain full accuracy (meaning go back to the source data) until you round the “final” one for each portion.  We’re not insisting on that here.

Question-6 Legend

For question 6 it states in the grading criteria that a legend is required . However for this question the fact that there is only a single “data series” means that a legend is not a requirement so there will be no penalty if a student does not include legend in the graph. A title is required.

Typo in Question-3

Several of you noticed that it should say “volume” instead of area in Question-3.  This comes from not fully checking a “copy and paste” – shame on me.

Jim Mitchell