Macro-scopic

 WTF?

 Just thought I'd drop a quick one to complain about something other than Autodesk/Revit (refreshing - I know!)

 So... Microsoft.

 Fuck Microsoft. 

 I've had a long running visceral hatred for Microsoft, and their seeming inability to remove their collective heads from their collective asses on a number of fronts - but especially when it comes to their flagship O/S.

 But I didn't come here to tell you about that today.

 Today - it's Office 365.

 Fuck Office 365.

Specifically Excel, and even more specifically, the decision to block macros.

Theoretically, it should be as simple as allowing macros, either file by file, by publisher, etc. - but after fighting it for several hours the other day, the only way it would work was to dump the file I needed to open into a folder, and then add that folder to the 'Trust Center'.

Once I figured this out, I was immediately up against a problem with the glorified spreadsheet the manufacturer of the equipment that I specify - where they added a new option that promptly broke it

 Fuck the manufacturer of the equipment that I specify.

They regularly make changes to this glorified spreadsheet that break functionality, while adding questionable benefit (sound familiar? cough Revit cough).

In this case, the solution was incredibly simple, but even after contacting my rep, and him contacting his rep, nobody was able to explain what the solution was, but it was suddenly not running extremely important calculations that I needed to do projects and produce accurate bills of material.

Only after sitting down with one of our more intelligent salesmen and going through it line by line were we able to figure out what they had changed, and how to fix it.  I told  my rep about it, but amusingly never got any response - and I'm sure it's going to fuck other people who are under the gun, and make the mistake of using the most recent spreadsheet.

There will also be a fuckload of them up against the macro blocking - and it was one of my co-workers running up against it today that reminded me (and making me have to recall the steps I took to fix it).  I forwarded both the file and instructions of how to fix both problems to another one of our salesmen, but I'm probably going to have to make sure everyone at all of our branches that use it get this information as well.

The stated reason for the macro blocking (which apparently started last year, rolled back, then re-implemented again) was to 'to stop threat actors from abusing the feature to deliver malware via email attachments', which is great and all, but if it prevents me from (or requires me to scour the internet for a solution of how to) use files that I know the origin of, purposefully downloaded, and didn't even come from an e-mail (for fucks sake) then 'fuck  you' is the only proper response.

Apparently it has been effective, as 'threat actors' have been moving away from using macros to distribute malware - but (of course) it just means they've moved on to another way of accomplishing the same task, while leaving legitimate users attempting to access legitimate files to have to find workarounds when the 'official solution' doesn't fucking work.

C'est la vie I guess.

 But I don't have to like it - and everyone responsible (including 'threat actors') can go fuck themselves.

Sincerely,

-Skullfuck

 Next Time: I finally get around to reviewing Revit 2023 MEP bullshit.

The Slow Painful Death Of An Art

Greetings and Salutations from the land of Zero Revit,

I never get a chance to post here anymore, because it seems somewhat redundant to keep pointing out the same old shit, but the last two projects I have worked on were especially egregious examples of how far the mighty have fallen.

The first was actually someone else's project - a community center, which I was doing some revisions to due to the Electrical Engineer being a dumbass, and the Fire Marshall having to come back and point out his many (many) fuckups.

Some of my co-workers don't have the fucks to give to do the clean-up work that I do to drawings that we receive that were sharted out of the Revit Box, but due to my background, as well as an outsized sense of pride I take at the quality of my work, I find it necessary to at least make them less cringy to look at.

Sometimes I wish I could not care how shit my backgrounds look, and just do my job, but as I've said in the past, it sometimes helps me to become intimately familiar with the project to spend some time cleaning it up, and I often find items that need clarification so I can get those questions in at the beginning, rather than getting  halfway through the project, only to find out that it was poorly and/or unclearly designed (shocking, I know).

It also helps facilitate my workflow as, once I get to doing my actual job, I don't have to stop every five minutes to stare in disbelief at the absolute garbage people apparently considered 'good enough' to issue to the world with their names, and the names of their firms emblazoned upon the titleblocks of (often with misspelled and/or incorrect project names, address errors/omissions, and other comedy gold.

The community center I was working on was the epitome of Revit, with excruciating levels of detail all throughout - but my absolute favorite were the turnbuckles on the swimming lane marking ropes:

 

They contain nearly 700 lines (and there are 50 of them).  You can also see in that image, the drain system around the perimeter of the pool, and 'no diving' signs, all lovingly crafted in a way that turns into black blobs of nothing once you actually print them out.

 This project also includes a waterslide, that I'm sure looked fantastic in a 3D model, but ended up looking like unwashed assholes in 2D.  I had a similar one in an indoor waterpark I did recently, that was so fucking overwrought that it obscured tons of rather important information.

That underscores one of the other problems that I run into attempting to use 2D drawings exported from Revit - anything that (whether intentionally or accidentally, due to idiots who don't understand view range settings) obscures part of something below it, ends up wiping out whatever it obscured.

This will include structural elements, duct work, and other unrelated elements that make their way onto electrical drawings (my old forte, and the ones I still rely on to do my current designs) resulting in having to sometimes recreate entire sections of drawings after eliminating the offending elements.

Fortunately I'm pretty good at guessing what the fuck all of the countless lines upon lines upon lines are actually supposed to represent, which ones are surplus to needs, and which ones I can use to reproduce what should've just been shown clearly and concisely, but instead... Revit.

The second project I received, and am currently working on is a courthouse building, and while it may be devoid of swimming pools and water slides, the Revitards took great pride in using as many ridiculously elaborate families as they could put their hands on - just to make sure... of... something?

I present to you one that I've seen over and over (and have maybe even posted here before), what I like to call the 'Way The Fuck Too Much Information To Show How A Goddamned Window Goes Together'

For those keeping track, that's 365 lines (x2 for each window in the entire goddamned building), that basically disappears completely when you zoom out (or turns into a little black blob when printed). Interestingly, this family only appears on the second floor of the building, which means two different Revitards were most likely being employed to design one building, and they weren't talking to each other (also meaning they have at least two window families loaded into the model, causing bloat on the Revit end as well - OR the person doing the first floor knew how to set the family to not show unnecessary detail).

It was also evident that (at least) two people worked on it, as there is a courtroom on both the first and second floors - and while one is laid out correctly, the other one has tons of overlaps and other signs that the person either didn't know what they were doing, ran out of time near the end of the project, or just didn't give a shit.

All throughout there are walls jammed together in a haphazard manner, and other weirdness - but I was able to get it all cleaned up fairly quickly.  Then I had to start figuring out what the fuck the electrical engineer had actually designed.  This was made more difficult by his keynotes on every sheet being different (so from floor to floor the tags might mean different things).

In addition to this stupid shit, we had actually requested CAD files for this nearly a year ago - and for some reason the salesman responsible for it kept sending us CAD files for a different project.  We would inform him they were the wrong ones, we would wait a couple of months, then he would attempt to send the wrong ones again.

The problem being, that this gave them ample time to fuck with the project, so now the CAD files have little changes all throughout.  I just got done making a fairly exhaustive list of the changes (including, amusingly, that they managed to delete a door into a mechanical room, while also duplicating the same room number from the corridor outside this room).

At any rate, this has sadly become standard for nearly every single project I do these days.  The only reason it is tenable, is that I have the ability to use ACAD to process the complete and utter shit I am given into semi-comprehensible floor plans. 

I've bemoaned the lack of giving a fuck on many occasions, but these last few projects were just another reminder of how an industry that used to pride itself on producing clear, concise, accurate drawings, has just fallen into a pit of shit, driven almost entirely by Autodesk shilling Revit, and incompetent little cunts being brought in to try to make it generate anything remotely passable.

I never tire of saying fuck Revit, fuck Autodesk, fuck everyone generating garbage with it - and, as it has been since the beginning, and will be until the end... If you don't like it, then FUCK YOU.

Ecstatically Yours, 

-The Revit MEP Skullfuck

 Next Time: 'EXCEL-SIOR!!!'