Revit Productivity Site- part 3

I’m hunting around for a color accordion/spoiler as the current one is gray and a bit bland. I found the ultimate shortcode plugin had extra css to put in and that got the job done, I’d tried a few other plugins including Cosmic Blocks but am really happy with the solution as it reduces extra plugins for the site. Am also using Tabs inside of spoilers to have user page hold more information. Customisation link

Its Saturday 12th March and I just issued V0.07 with the VG generic process. I need to set that up with videos and lessons on how to use tools and then I can move onto worksets and automating those.

I am trying to do videos but I can’t get demo running. Maybe use the test code so not as loaded as the whole code. Worth a try. I tried using the Microsoft Surface Book but that is too knackered and won’t run.

Monday 1st March. Sunday taken up with getting 3 help videos out and tidying up website trying to reduce list size so easier to get to. May need content list then jump to section on page.

Viz graphics still buggy so need to sort that out and also start working on worksets.

I’m getting few to no hits on videos so may need to look at an explainer video. Some info for it below. I need to think about this and get punchy examples so that the tool stands out. No feedback from Grant or Matt or Dan. Maybe another fail, I’m failing a lot of late.

It is recommended that your explainer video script follow this general outline…

• 1. Quick overview of your product and what it does
• 2. Introduce the problem
• 3. Answer the problem with your solution (via product or service)
• 4. Call to action (e.g. sign up for our free trial by clicking here!)
• 5. Broadcast your trust signals (such as well-known clients, awards, write-ups, etc.)

Explainer video script best practices

• Keep it short – 90 seconds or less is ideal.
• Your key message and value proposition should be in the first 30 seconds. Don’t keep folks wondering.
• Speak in 2nd person, using words like “You” and “Your.”
• Use simple language – don’t alienate viewers with technical terms they won’t understand.
• Keep in mind the tone you want for your explainer video. Most videos opt for a casual, conversational tone.
• Try a touch of humor – videos with some subtle laughs tend to be more enjoyable.

Wednesday 16th March 2022

Cracking away yesterday on trying to do a workset move from file and still trying to get that right. I Was setting up and working on HVAC one and doing seperate categories, Air Terminals, Duct Fittings, Ducts, Flex Ducts and Mechanical equipment. I spent a lot of time on it and then found out that you can grab all of those categories and move them all at once. I’ll pause on that for the moment as it seems a bit of a waste of time.

Program a bit mundane?

I woke in the night and was thinking about notes from PowerKey4Revit and that is really just cut/paste from notepad, apart from text box with arrow. So not that great, not a particular wow factor. I’ll have to think about what gives this the zing as it just does some things in a slightly different way that could save a little bit of time. The VG graphics are good but people use view templates. Worksets stuff ok (still working on) but not wow either (see above) 

Where is the biggest bang for the buck? Something exciting, this needs thinking about, maybe no wow, maybe just improves productivity a bit.

Search project browser

So maybe something with browser, but the search ctrl+F is good enough, so set a key up for this (you have to have clicked in project browser first. Put browser coordinates into  User.ini fil. sb & pb are 2 commands for getting to search.

There is an issue of clicking top right in free space as if there is a long title you click on a sheet/drg so can be a pain. So clicking in tight left side of browser so not likely to click on anything. If you move the browser you’ll have to find new coordinates.

Another issue is conflict with letters, especially if you are hunting an architectural drawing a1 or a200 etc as this triggers the arrow keys a1 etc. So will move arrow keys to w1 to w6 to stop this conflict as its not uncommon to have A1..34 etc. I tried remapping to q but that kept deleting text and I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe revit has q as a delete button, I couldn’t figure it.

Spent Thursday doing videos for workset new & search browser. Also tweaked the csv table shortcode which is pretty good for updating tables and getting the styling to match the rest of the website.

So I’ll have to add tables to my aText code as its pretty handy and not too difficult to upload an update.

Saturday 19 March 2022

Spent yesterday doing vids for”FN” for adding whole file to text – good for abbreviation legends and structured text & notes.

Have altered code for “oh” (reset override graphics) , reset override graphics based on window size, can calculate and subtract y to get where button is. This was a big I think it may be faster that the Shift Tab to get to button. Also found out about WinWaitActive so this reduces requirements for sleeps in script, it just waits until pop-up is active. Am pleased with this.

I now have F3 key for suspending script if people have conflict with a specific Keyboard Shortcut in PowerKey4Revit. F4 to turn back on again. Hard to figure if it was on or off so 2 separate keys help. Couldn’t get it to do a message to show that PowerKey4Revit is suspended as only one line. Also its just suspended all the commands too. Only indication is in Tray menu where it shows as S rather than logo (can even hide this by adding

Sunday 20 March 2022

Trying to find keywords for site, so testing “Revit Shortcuts” although “Revit power” gets more views but that is about MEP, so will try that out and see if more visits to site. Did a post on the site about otler programs for revit ,a bit rambly.

Spent most of day trying to do an Explainer video but still 16 minutes long. I put it on site and realised that I needed to put latest version up so did that too last night.

I’m playing with Notes at the moment and that you can blast stuff into schedules quite nicely so may explore that further.

It would be nice to have a little project to do to try out the tools to see how they work.

Spent Monday doing bubble note and adding note from file, almost there. Am trying to find other things to do. Matt hasn’t had time to look at it and probably won’t & Grant hasn’t given any feedback. All a bit sad really.

Tuesday 22 March

Have most of stuff, a running site and I’ll add a few extra items onto the tool but time to move onto something else as there is no interest in the tool, even for testing. Another exercise accomplished.

Ended up building a woo site and getting pricing so people can pay. So have goe through process , like the udemy course and created a product and put it on a platform for others to purchase.

They don’t seem to attract people enough to purchase them at the price I’m offering them at. I put months of work into both the course and the app, about 1 month for the course and about 2 months for the app. Maybe I don’t have a good understanding of marketing and setting price, or other things, but at least I’ve created tangible products.

Still to do contact and info for web page, maybe on footer

I’ll need another idea to do something else. I wonder what that will be.

So for this exercise

So quite a bit of learning, so another fail and failing harder each time, having put more stuff I’ve learned into the project.

Added about page and contact page and fiddled with footer too. Lots of contact info. Need to split footer into more divs so can add other stuff. Also added list of Keyboard Shortcuts added in setup so people know what Keyboard Shortcuts are being added.

Maybe revisit time project and re-look at that. After note bubble. This is being a bit of a challenge as it doesn’t seem to do what I want, there are many steps and they are not quite working.

Note bubble developing into a challenge. Today is Friday 25 March and I’ve just released v0.09 with the Bubble Note I did a video on it here:

The whole selection of family was a challenge that I didn’t pick up on initially but found a method to solve. I’ve put a couple of videos out on this so hopefully it might stir up interest for the program.

Some items of learning that I’ve found useful for developing the tool:

So I also need to link this site to my other sites

Monday 28 March 2022

Spent all day trying to get the shop page and items sorted so that they were a bit more logical, as soon as you get away from main setup it becomes a bit of a pain as you have to manage all the other bits as well. On the shop page I want all the items then more blurb below, but default page setup pushes all the items to the bottom. So I had to set the page up from scratch with woo commerce blocks and then the links to go to cart didn’t work in all the product pages and I also updated the product pages to Guttenburg from classic and bits went all over the place until I figured what was happening. All a bit of a pain really.

So front end of the website is a bit tidier, it still had all the red buttons which was not too pretty.

Now I need to put a bit of HTML in articles on Revit I have in Vast Blog, so that there are links there to come across.

The issue now is getting people to visit the site, I’ve got to do a posting on Irish Revit site and get other outside links to follow across. So marketing is the big push. A quick demo video for people with low attention span.

I need another project as this one has died. No takers, but at least I did a working app.

For remapping keyboard I may need to re-write all the commands as functions and then can use EvilC’s AppFactory to allow users to remap keyboard to their preference- I’m not sure if it works for HotStrings? May need to test.

Upped price Friday 1 April to 49.99$. If people not buying then leave price high. Maybe monthly and annual subscription. 4.99$ / month or $49.99 per year. Perceived value low but provable performance value. So put up price, if they don’t come then you’ve lost nothing, if they do then you’ll get more (but unlikely)

Maybe price point too high, so move to a monthly subscription. I have monthly update for Trial so just use same model for monthly one. Can always adapt it further with later updates.

Redo front page & have a Price page & a shop page. Make a bit posher.

On front page put blurb/videos and explanations , on shop show alternatives and on pricing page show options free trial, monthly subscription & annual subscription.

Move over and do for Archicad? Am currently doing eBook.