Category: Personal

“Photobucket” is not allowing 3rd party hosting on free accounts

Hello there. I trust you are having a great day.

Today I’ll talk about 3rd party image hosting. When I started building my Power BI dashboard, it looks cool to have images attached. The 3rd party image hosting website I’m talking about is “Photobucket”.

Please continue reading from here for more info: http://blog.photobucket.com/please-review-latest-changes-photobucket/

My Power BI dashboard really works well-having images on it that links interactively with your data until one time I received an email from “Photobucket” informing me that “third party hosting isn’t allowed” anymore on free accounts, you must pay $400 annual subscription in order for your image URL links to work. I just realized the effect of this when I opened my Power BI file to update the information on my dashboard.

Here is my previous Power BI dashboard I built last month.

Here it is now after 3rd party hosting is removed.

As you can see from the above image, my image URL link is now broken. To make it work, I need to find a place to store my images wherein it can provide me with a URL link. What I’ll do sometime next week is to remove all my images on Photobucket and since I do not have any intention to pay $400 annual subscription fee, I will also close my account.

As a replacement to “Photobucket”, I found a site called “ImgZeit”. Here is the welcome page when you visit the website  https://imgzeit.com/

I hope ImgZeit will give me free subscription by mentioning their site in this article, finger crossed (“,).

I only have 40 images stored on “Photobucket” as of this moment and therefore it does not cost me much of a headache. I imagine how infuriated those who have been using this website to store their images for their blogs that have been running for 2 years, 3 years or some maybe even more than 5 years.

I’m not in a rush to look for a free website to host my images. Anyone is free to recommend one if you know of any by leaving your comment below. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Have a great day ahead.

Cheers.

Allan Cantos

Revit Extension Part 1 – Content Generator

Hello there. I trust you are having a great day. Yesterday, a colleague of mine in the office reminded me about one of the Revit Extension tools that are useful when creating your own families. I’m talking about “Content Generator” Revit Extension Tool.

I’ll run you on how this Revit Extension tool works. For today’s demonstration, let me create a custom angle section shown below.

Normally, when creating a custom section like the one shown above, some technicians and that includes me, do not use “Content Generator” Revit Extension Tool but rather use “Model In-Place”. Though I used this before but honestly I have forgotten about it.

The problem with modeling an in-place family is that you can’t add them to your schedules.

Let us have a look, for instance, this beam where I’ll attach a custom 140×150 angle, 10mm thick as shown.

Let me re-create this in-place family. First, click on “Model In-Place”

Next, set the “Family Category and Parameters” to “Structural Framing” and click on “OK”

Assign a name for the custom family. I’ll call it 140x150x10 custom angle

Make sure that I am on the right work plane. I’ll go ahead and click on “Set”

Next I’ll pick a plane

Then I’ll pick the plane at the end of the beam shown

 

Next, go to “Forms” panel tab and select “Extrusion”. This will bring me to sketch mode.

Go ahead and sketch the angle profile using any appropriate “Draw” panel icons.

Click the green check icon shown once the profile is completed

Next, drag the one of the end of the extrusion shape handle to the opposite direction

And you should have something like this

Continue dragging the extrusion shape handle until I reach the desired length of the custom element.

Next, I’ll assign a material by clicking the icon shown below

Assuming I do not have the “Structural Material” as my existing family parameters, to create one, click on “Add parameter”

Call it “Structural Material” and click “OK”

Next, select “the newly created parameter which is “Structural Material” and click “OK”.

At this point, I am now ready to accept the changes by clicking on “Finish Model” and click anywhere on the working area to deselect the element.

And click on “Finish Model”

By selecting again the newly created custom angle element, you can now assign a material on it.

Now here is the problem, if I look at the properties of this element by clicking on “Edit Type”, I don’t see any useful information such as the size and weight and therefore, if I have lots of model in-place on my model and I want to get the building tonnage, I will have the wrong calculated value because these elements will not be part of the calculation.

To fix this, creating a custom family using “Content Generator” Revit Extension tool will come into handy. To create one, on your “Menu” options, look for “Extensions”

Go to “Tools” and select “Content Generator” from the drop-down list.

Go to “File” menu and select “Regional settings”

Select the location, in my case “UK” and click “OK”

Go to “Parametric section” and click “Add”.

I am creating a custom framing element and therefore under “Element Types” I only selected “Framings”.

Follow the settings below

Click “OK” and I will have the information shown below

Update the dimensions and click “OK”

The newly created custom framing family is now available to use.

And let’s have a look at the properties. You can rename the family to suit your needs.

Now I can get something useful and it is parametric. I’ll change the sizes to check if the “Structural” parameter information will update.

Ops…. It did not. Let me edit the family to investigate why it did not update automatically after changing the dimensions to a new size by clicking on “Edit Family”

However, it’s not a problem. For instance, the weight “W”, you can add formula to calculate the weight based on the dimensions given or you may add a “Volume” parameter then use this value to calculate the weight. I’ll leave it to you to update the structural parameters to suit your needs and that should be it.

Next time I’ll tell you how to install Revit Extensions on Revit 2017.

Have a great day.

Cheers,

Allan

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