CTC Casework Configurator™ User Guide
CTC Casework Configurator User Guide
August 3, 2023
https://www.ctcsoftware.com
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Contents
Suite Overview .................................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Installation and Configuration ........................................................................................................................................................... 4
License Activation and Management ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Cloud Shared or Free Trial License ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Trial Licensing ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Cloud Shared Licensing .......................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Network Floating Licensing ................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Changing Licensing at Any Time .......................................................................................................................................................... 13
Common Toolbar and Menu Buttons .............................................................................................................................................. 14
Getting Help ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 14
Getting More Help: Videos ................................................................................................................................................................. 14
Submitting a Feature Request ............................................................................................................................................................. 15
Reporting a Bug ................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Contacting Technical Support .............................................................................................................................................................. 15
Getting Application Information .......................................................................................................................................................... 16
Suite Settings .................................................................................................................................................................................. 17
Starting Suite Settings ......................................................................................................................................................................... 17
Controlling Which Ribbon Buttons are Visible and how they Appear .................................................................................................. 17
Seeing and Changing License Status .................................................................................................................................................... 20
Casework Configurator Admin......................................................................................................................................................... 21
Starting Casework Configurator Admin ............................................................................................................................................... 21
Basic Database Setup .......................................................................................................................................................................... 22
Configuring the Content ...................................................................................................................................................................... 24
Configuring Parameters ....................................................................................................................................................................... 27
Content updates .................................................................................................................................................................................. 30
CTC Casework Configurator User Guide
August 3, 2023
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Casework Configurator .................................................................................................................................................................... 31
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 31
Opening Casework Configurator ......................................................................................................................................................... 31
Building Casework ............................................................................................................................................................................... 32
CTC Casework Configurator User Guide
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Suite Overview
The products from CTC Software offer many utilities for enhancing the productivity of users of Revit® software from
Autodesk®. Revit users launch these tools from within the Revit software.
Although written to function correctly with the international community in mind wherever possible, CTC Software
products are currently only tested on English USA versions of Revit running on English USA versions of Windows.
Installation and Configuration
The standard workstation installation requires little more than running the setup program. For more information
regarding topics such as automating workstation installations and preconfiguring workstation settings, please refer to
the CTC BIM Suites Installation and Configuration Guide document.
License Activation and Management
The productivity tools provided with light background colors are free tools that run without any special licensing. The
productivity tools provided with dark background colors are premium tools which require licensing.
Unless initially preconfigured by the system administrator, the first time any of the licensed tools are launched from the
Revit ribbon, the Product and License Information dialog will appear which requires specifying the kind of license that is
to be used:
One of the choices must be made and configured correctly using the “Apply” button in order to proceed with using the
tool.
The selected licensing will automatically apply to all of the tools that are included in the suite which require licensing. So
once the first tool has configured the licensing, the other premium tools will automatically be licensed as well.
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Cloud Shared or Free Trial License
The first choice for Cloud Shared or Free Trial License should be selected if your organization has a CTC Software online
account and either have purchased cloud shared licenses, or have acquired a trial license for the account.
If your organization does not have a CTC Software account, the link on this form will allow you to create one.
The first time you try to use a cloud shared or trial license, you may be asked to login to CTC’s portal. You may not be
asked to login if you are already logged in from another tool, such as CTC’s HIVE™ product.
Trial Licensing
Trial licenses allow you to use the software (including premium tools) without any purchased licensing for a limited time,
typically 14 days. The software will generally be fully functional during the trial, with a few exceptions where
functionality will be limited during a trial.
Any standard Internet connection is required to use trial licensing.
Once you’ve been granted a trial license, the status at the top of the dialog should look like this:
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Cloud Shared Licensing
Cloud shared licensing allows you to get a license from CTC Software’s cloud license server, requiring only a standard
Internet connection. The licenses must be purchased and configured by your organization for their CTC Software
account.
With cloud shared licensing you can also “borrow” a license, which will temporarily apply the license to your computer
and will thus allow you to continue using the software even when you don’t have a reliable Internet connection.
However, while the license is borrowed, it will be one less license that’s available to other users in your organization.
For regular (non-borrowed) licensing, all you do is select Cloud Shared or Free Trial License option and connect to CTC’s
cloud services with your login.
Once you click the Apply button and are successfully logged in, the tool will connect to the online licensing engine, verify
your account has been allocated a license for this product, and return a success message.
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When successfully applied, the status at the top of the screen will update. For example:
Borrowing a Cloud Shared License
IMPORTANT: For normal use of the software, where you have a standard Internet connection, you DO NOT need to
borrow a license. Borrowing a license is normally only needed when you know you will need to use the software at a
time when you won’t have a reliable Internet connection. While you have a license borrowed, that is one less shared
license available to all other users.
NOTE: Borrowing is only available for purchased cloud shared licenses. Borrowing is not available for trial licenses.
IMPORTANT: In the event your computer is lost, stolen or damaged (e.g. a hard drive crash) an administrator CAN
NOT recover a borrowed license. In that case, the license will be unavailable to all users until the borrow period has
naturally expired. As such, you only want to borrow a license for the barest minimum amount of time needed.
Begin by opening the Product and License Information screen. From here, click the ‘Borrow…’ button to the right of the
Cloud Shared choice to begin the process of choosing the length of time to borrow a Cloud Shared license.
The date selector should appear:
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Confirm the date selection and click the Borrow License button. A success message should appear.
Returning a Borrowed Cloud Shared License Early
To return the license early, in the Product and License Information form, find the Return Early… button and click it.
A prompt will appear confirming that the license should be returned.
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Click the Yes button, then you should see:
The license status should now show a ‘not borrowed’ message.
Network Floating Licensing
When choosing the “Network Floating” choice, the CTC Network Floating License Server software must be installed and
configured by a system administrator on a computer connected to your office LAN or WAN. The installation and
configuration of this server software is described in the CTC BIM Suites Installation and Configuration Guide document.
IMPORTANT: Using network floating licenses on a remote Revit workstation which is using a software VPN connection
to the company network is not recommended. This typically includes workstations that need to start up VPN client
software in order to connect to the company network. Because software VPN connections are generally less reliable,
the quality of maintaining the license after starting the software is in jeopardy and cannot be ensured. If the remote
Revit workstation is to use network floating licenses, then a hardware VPN connection is strongly recommended. If a
hardware VPN connection is not available, the best practice is for the remote workstation to use a borrowed license
(discussed below) instead.
Your system administrator will need to tell you the path (computer name or IP address) of the license server computer,
which you must enter on this screen.
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Once you have set the server name (or IP address), click the “Apply” button. This will verify the settings by attempting
to check out a floating license for this suite. If the server can be contacted correctly and a license checked out, the
following dialog will appear:
At this point, the status at the top of the Product and License Information screen should show that a network floating
license has been acquired.
Borrowing a Network Floating License
IMPORTANT: For normal use of the software, where you have a connection to the network with your license server,
you DO NOT need to borrow a license. Borrowing a license is normally only needed when you know you will need to use
the software at a time when you won’t have a reliable connection to your network. While you have a license borrowed,
that is one less shared license available to all other users.
IMPORTANT: In the event your computer is lost, stolen or damaged (e.g. a hard drive crash) an administrator CAN
NOT recover a borrowed license. In that case, the license will be unavailable to all users until the borrow period has
naturally expired. As such, you only want to borrow a license for the barest minimum amount of time needed.
Begin by opening the Product and License Information screen. From here, click the ‘Borrow…’ button to the right of the
Network Floating choice to begin the process of choosing the length of time to borrow a network floating license.
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The date selector should appear:
Confirm the date selection and click the Borrow License button. A success message should appear.
Returning a Borrowed Network Floating License Early
To return the license early, in the Product and License Information form, find the Return Early… button and click it.
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Changing Licensing at Any Time
Licensing can also be changed at any time using the “Casework Suite Settings” tool, which is discussed below, or by using
the “Suite Licensing” menu choice in the licensed add-in tools:
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Common Toolbar and Menu Buttons
Getting Help
In the toolbar, clicking the “Help” button will display this user guide.
Getting More Help: Videos
An alternate source of help is to click on the Videos button, which will display a list of tool-specific videos in your web
browser.
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Submitting a Feature Request
If you have an idea for enhancing a feature or would like to see a new feature added to the software, you can either use
the “Request Feature” button on the About dialog (seen below) or can access that functionality using the “Request
Feature” drop-down menu choice:
Selecting this option will open the Support page on the CTC web site, which allows you to add a request for a new
feature by selecting the Wish List option.
Reporting a Bug
If you encounter what you feel is an issue or incorrect operation in the software, you can report this as a “bug” by either
using the “Report Bug” button on the About dialog (seen below) or can access that functionality using the “Report Bug”
drop-down menu choice:
Selecting this option will open the Support page on the CTC web site, which allows you to submit the information about
the issue.
Contacting Technical Support
In the toolbar, clicking the “Support” button will open the Support page on the CTC web site. This button may be hidden
by your system administrator.
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Selecting this option will open the Support page on the CTC web site.
Getting Application Information
In the toolbar, clicking the “About” button will display a dialog which shows information about this tool.
This screen should look like this:
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Suite Settings
The Suite Settings tool allows suite-level changes to be applied.
NOTE: You may need to restart Revit in order to see any changes made with this tool take effect.
NOTE: Your system administrator may disable some features of this application.
Starting Suite Settings
Click on the “CTC Software” tab in the ribbon and then click on the “Suite Settings” button.
This will launch the Casework Configurator Suite Settings:
Controlling Which Ribbon Buttons are Visible and how they Appear
The first tab in the Suite Settings tool allows changing which ribbon buttons are available, if this feature has not been
disabled by the system administrator. The CTC Suites Installation and Configuration document explains how ribbon
button availability can be controlled more automatically using either configuration files or Active Directory security
group definitions.
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For any ribbon buttons that you don’t want to have available, simply clear the checkmark by their name and then click
the “Save” button.
Turning off the button for the application itself will show the following:
Selecting the grouping checkboxes near the bottom of the dialog will condense the tools into a dropdown button.
This is the default configuration when the tools are installed on a new computer:
Note that if only one tool within a group is visible, the button for that tool will be placed directly on the panel.
Selecting the “Use small icons for ungrouped tools in the Revit ribbon” checkbox can save some ribbon space for
ungrouped tools. For example, these settings…
…results in this.
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Seeing and Changing License Status
The second tab allows seeing the current license status and changing the licensing:
The top portion of this screen shows how the licensing is currently configured for this suite. Clicking the “Change
Licensing…” button will show the dialog that allows changing how the suite is licensed:
For more information on how the Product and License Information dialog works, please review the “License Activation
and Management” section of this document, above.
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Casework Configurator Admin
The Casework Configurator Admin tool is used to configure casework family files for use by the Casework Configurator
tool.
Starting Casework Configurator Admin
On the Revit ribbon, click on the “Casework Admin” button.
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Basic Database Setup
The default install does not include the Casework family content. Once the Casework Configurator software is licensed,
the “Download Casework Content” button can be used to download the latest version of the family files.
The family files, once downloaded, can be stored locally or on a network share. Click the “Data Settings” button and
then “Pick Folder…” to select the folder containing the Casework Configurator content.
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The content folder can be placed in any location accessible to all users; however the subfolder structure must remain
unmodified.
When the content has completed downloading, copy it into the specified location. Each piece of content will become
visible in the Casework Configurator Admin window. To initialize the new content (if it was not present before running
the Admin), close and reopen the Casework Configurator Admin.
After the content has been mapped, the basic configuration of the database is complete.
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Configuring the Content
A starter configuration database is provided. The starter configuration can be used and modified or, if a blank
configuration is desired, a new database can be created. To create a new database, open the Casework Configurator
Admin tool, click New and specify the required values. To modify a configuration:
1. Locate and highlight the desired piece of content
2. Press “Configure…” to open the configuration window.
In this example the “SC-MCA-Base_Cabinet_Open” will be configured.
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The “Family Information” dialog is used to configure each piece of content in the database.
Changing Seed Names
The Seed Name field is used for the naming of families and types when they are created in Casework Configurator. If the
default seed names do not match existing company standards, they can be changed by modifying this field for each
piece of content.
To change, enter the desired value in the text box and click the “OK” button.
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Configuring Compatible Assemblies
Each assembly family has been configured with a list of appropriate Interior and Access Style configurations so that
invalid selections cannot be made. For example it would be inappropriate to select an Access Style configuration when
with an open library cabinet. To configure which components can be used with each assembly, open the assembly and
click the Compatible Families button.
The “Compatible Families” window is used to select each panel or frame that can be used with the assembly. Select the
appropriate interior configurations, access styles and pull hardware. To accept the selections, click the “Ok” button.
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Configuring Parameters
The default content for Casework Configurator has already been configured in the database. However, changes can be
made to the default configurations using the “Family Information” dialog. To modify parameter configurations, open
the desired family. The list of parameters for that family will be displayed in the lower right portion of the “Family
Information” dialog.
Parameters that have been configured already will be highlighted in yellow. Parameters that have not been configured
will display in white. Select the parameter to configure or change. Once selected, there are several functions on the left
side of the dialog to control how the parameter will function.
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In this example, we have set the width parameter to 3 possible values, 2’, 2 1/2’ and 3’. Set the Display Value and
Description as desired. The Internal Value field will drive the actual width of the cabinet and should be specified as the
decimal equivalent in feet (ie. 2’-6” = 2.5).
If desired, click Select Image… to choose a descriptive graphic for the parameter. If no image is chosen, the default will
display for all the values of this parameter. If this is a new database being configured for the first time, images will be
not be specified for each casework assembly and its parameters. This step is helpful but not required.
1. Available images
2. Add an image to the list of available images. Allowed types are .bmp, .png, .jpeg, .wmf and .gif
3. Remove the selected image from the list
4. Remove unused images from the database
When finished configuring this family, choose OK.
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To completely remove this configuration from the database, click Clean…
Note: this will not remove the source families from the file system.
To load settings from another configuration in this database, click Load Existing Configuration… from the Family
Information window. This can save time when configuring similar casework assemblies.
This will load the parameter values and image assignments from the parent family. Select desired parent and options
then choose OK.
To commit the configuration to the database, click OK in the Family Information window.
After all of the desired families have been configured, save the changes to the database to make them available to the
Casework Configurator.
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Content updates
If changes or updates have been made to the casework content families, it may be necessary to reinitialize the content
in the database.
To update just one configured assembly, simply double click it in the list. For multiple assemblies, use the right-click
context menu to save time:
Hold the CTRL or SHIFT key while left clicking to select multiple items in the list then right click to update the selected
content in the database.
Right click anywhere in the list and choose Update Data for all of the Configured Assemblies (no selection is necessary).
This will process all of the configured assemblies in the database.
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Casework Configurator
Introduction
The Casework Configurator add-in allows configuring a new casework family and loading it into the current project by
using families that have been configured by an administrator using the Casework Configurator Admin tool. The interface
guides the user through a series of steps, much like a wizard, but all within a single window. Generally, it is only
necessary to configure a family one time for a project. Once loaded into a project, additional family instances can be
placed using the standard Revit methods.
Opening Casework Configurator
On the Revit ribbon, click on the “Casework Configurator” button.
The Casework Configurator’s interface guides users through the configuration process in steps.
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Building Casework
The first step to begin building and using the Casework Configurator is to set the path to the casework database. From
the Casework Configurator window, click Options.
In the options, specify the path to the database (the default database file is shown above). To initialize a newly specified
database, the Casework Configurator should be closed and re-launched after changing the database path.
Parametric type naming can also be configured here. The Configurator allows selecting and ordering of the family
parameters whose values will be used for type naming. Simply double-click a parameter to instantly move one
parameter from one pane to another. To move several selections, left-click each while holding the SHIFT key and use the
left/right arrows to move them between panes. The right pane contains the list of parameters that will be used. The
up/down arrows can be used to re-order the list.
Two custom text fields are available as well as optional separators between fields. An example preview of the resulting
name is provided below the naming options.
Specify the unit of measurement to be used for length parameters (if selected) in the type names.
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Choose OK to apply the settings. Changes to these options do not affect previously configured assemblies.
To create and use casework in a project, just follow these steps:
1. Double-click on the desired cabinet style (Main Casework Assembly)
2. Choose one of the available interior configurations. These may include shelves, racks, trays, etc. depending upon
how it was set up in the admin tool. If an empty interior is desired and available, select No Interior.
3. Specify a Cabinet Access Style. Selections here determine placement and quantities of doors, drawers, openings
and more. As with the Interior Configuration, if open faced casework is desired, select it accordingly.
4. Select a Face Panel. The panel style is applied to the Face Option.
5. Pull Hardware can be specified here if available. If it not configured for or does not apply to the casework type,
the configurator will skip to the next step.
6. To jump back to a previous step, simply click on the label bar of that step in the wizard at any time.
7. Choose appropriate parameter values for the family instances. Depending upon the database set up, some
values may already be provided. The subsections of this step contain parameter groups (as set in the database),
some of which are editable such as Dimensions, Graphics (show/hide clearances, swings, etc.) and other
optional groups. Again, the available parameters here are defined in the Admin database set up.
8. Finalize the configuration during the Finish step. If creating a different size or combination of a previously
inserted casework assembly, the configurator will add it as a new type to the family. Also, choose how the
Configurator will handle the new configuration; load into the current project or save to a file (or both). Click
Finish to place and/or complete the configuration steps.
9. To create more instances of casework in the project, simply drag the desired family type from Revit’s project
browser, use the Component command or any other common method.
Casework Configurator Content Anatomy
The casework content is designed specifically to be built using the Configurator. The casework content can be used
without the Configurator if desired. The basic structure of the components that make up an assembly is described
below:
1. MCA – Main Casework Assemblies: All components are nested into this family
2. CIC – Cabinet Interior Configurations: these components are primarily shelves but include other elements that
are found inside cabinets like poles, rods and hooks.
3. CAS – Cabinet Access Styles: Door and drawer configurations
4. CFP – Cabinet Face Panels: Various types of panel treatments such as edge and inset styles.
5. CPH – Cabinet Pull Hardware: Various styles of handles and pulls
The nested family properties are driven by various parameter values in the main assemblies and by the Configurator
when creating assemblies. Use caution when customizing the families directly; ensure that essential parameters and
values remain.
