Move with Disjoin

Using the Move tool and checking Disjoin is equivalent to "cut to clipboard" (in effect delete) and then "paste from clipboard". This is necessary to break a wall or line away from other walls or lines that may be connected. Without Disjoin the other walls or lines will attempt to stretch to stay connected.

It is not really just moving the existing elements but recreating them in a new location. This means the elements will get new Mark parameters, assuming Revit numbers them automatically, like doors for example.

If you really need to separate walls or lines (ducts or pipes too) you can move without using the Disjoin option and then manually pull the other elements away from the wall using their own grips instead. A bit more work but maybe less than renumbering elements?

Something to keep in mind.

Moving Ceiling Grid Pattern

Scott wrote about an issue at Revitforum.org the other day. He's been using Revit about as long as a person could use it so if it trips him up I'm betting it trips up others too!

Jesse came to the rescue with advice that perked up my Dept. of Subtle ears. He wrote:

"When you tab through to the ceiling grid while in the move command, look near the top (meaning Options Bar) at the "disjoin" check box. Revit will automatically remember if you had this box checked the last time you used the move command. It's going to be greyed out when moving a hatch pattern, and when it's checked you can't move the pattern.

To fix it, select something else, do the move command, uncheck the check box and press escape to cancel. The next time you go to move the ceiling grid the box should be unchecked!"

It's easy when you know how? :) Thanks to Jesse!

Dept. of Unfair - Move Tool is Insensitive

When they added the Guide Grid feature to Revit they made it possible to snap to Grid intersections (and Reference Planes) through a viewport. This means we can move a viewport into the same location from one sheet to the next based on an agreed grid intersection such, "A1 will be what we use as a reference location to put our floor plan views on the sheet the same way."

They added this after many years of hearing users complain about views not lining up on sheets. Me personally, I got over it early. Seemed to me that far fewer sheets were affected by this concern than the number of sheets that weren't. I don't mind having the feature but it just never bothered me. I could get things close enough that nobody would notice, especially working with real paper in hand. Granted it is easier to tell in the digital world "flipping" pdf pages or comparing a CAD file overlay. For me though, it didn't really amount to a hill of beans in the job trailer. As a contractor in the past I was more worried about information actually being on the sheet at all to be worried about whether they stacked from sheet to sheet exactly.

Oops I digress...

In order to make this possible they needed to make Revit more sensitive to the contents of the viewport when using the Move Tool. Unfortunately Revit seems to think we live in an orthogonal world because the only Grids or Reference Planes the tool "sees" are orthogonal ones. No arcs, no grids at an angle, sorry Charlie. Now it isn't hard to place a couple orthogonal Reference Planes somewhere or to choose a different Grid intersection perhaps but it would be nice if Revit was more malleable, enough to let us pick any intersection of Grids or Reference Planes.

From Autodesk's WikiHelp:

Item 7. Snap to the crop regions or datums in the viewports and move them into alignment with the guide grid lines to specify a precise location on the sheet. (bold emphasis mine)

This means we can forget about the datum stuff (Grids/Reference Planes) and use the Crop Region. Of course the Crop Region has to be visible to snap to it and unless you are using a Scope Box to manage the Crop Region (to keep them consistent for many views) it isn't really the most reliable reference point to use either. Here's a visual aid, a short video discussing it too.