Quirky Roof - Roofing Around

A recent thread at the Revitforum.org asked about this roof form.

Don't worry about the dimensions. I used them to make sure a roof would work if I was "careful". I later messed around with it a bit to see if I could reproduce the error the original poster described, like this.

The other day I was discussing roofs with someone and I brought this situation up. I used the arrow keys to nudge walls around and thought the result was worthy of a quick video to demonstrate how different proportions affect the roof outcome. It's certainly quirky, maybe even "buggy"?

Thin Lines and Printing Sheets

Reading reports (at RevitForum.org) of the Thin Lines feature affecting the output when printing from sheet views. In my own quick test I'm seeing the lines of the titleblock being printed respecting Thin Lines being on which isn't good.

The model views appear to be printing correctly, just the title block's own lines seem to be affected. When I printed a model view using Thin Lines the result was the same as with Thin Lines off. In other words, working as we've come to expect, the Thin Lines feature had no impact on printing. Or, we've not noticed it before.

When we use Temporary Hide Isolate we get this dialog to ask how we want the feature to be regarded. If Thin Lines is meant to be able to get printed then perhaps the same sort of warning/option ought to be offered?

Any readers that can confirm this too? Seems like an undesireable "feature".

Suppress Spaces Revisited

In Revit 2012 (wrote about this earlier) we had the ability to shrink imperial dimension values a bit.

The upper dimension shows what 2012 did when Suppress Spaces was checked. The bottom shows unchecked. In 2013 we lose that. In my earlier post I missed/forgot that Ryan responded explaining what changed. Rats, I don't like the change, I want my old suppress spaces back by golly! This is what we get now (using my best Craig Ferguson accent, "It makes littul sense tah meee").

Undo History Gone

Recently learned of a couple reasons that you can find that your undo history has been cleared out. It involves projects that use worksets. When you do something that causes Revit to take ownership of a workset first, in order to do what you want, like deleting a view, Revit clears out its Undo "stack".

In the case of a view if you borrow the view first and then delete it the undo stack remains intact. To borrow it first you'd have to select the view's annotation symbol, right click and chose Make Workset Editable. You can do the same thing in the project browser over the view name, choose Make Workset Editable too. You could also alter a parameter and reset it or use the Workset dialog to make it editable.

Same thing happens if you delete a family from the project browser without borrowing it first. To do that you can click Make Workset Editable via Right Click on the family in the project browser too. A component family will Make Workset Editable while a family's type will offer Make Element Editable. The workset it refers to is the family workset found in the Workset dialog when you select the Families "Show" filter.

It isn't really intended to happen that way. Optimistically we could see a fix in a future update but more likely not till another release.

All Capital Letters

Saw a request recently to change the "Grand Total" (title as Revit calls it) that appears at the bottom of Revit schedules from Sentence Case to Upper Case.

My first reaction was to wander down the path of reminiscing why we use upper case in documentation at all. Going back to hand drafting and reducing the number of characters to master for simplicity and consistency sake. Whenever something like this comes up you can go the route of justification/explanation, "Well, here's why Revit does it that way. I know you don't feel better, but at least you know why though?" Alternatively you can just go the route of apologizing, "Nope it doesn't do that, sorry!"

Something like this request both seems like such a tiny thing to fuss over and still such a tiny thing for the developers to overlook. Why can't we change the "case" of such automagic labeling?? Surely it can't be hard? If we add in localization, making Revit use a different language, there are some examples of where users are stuck with the English text even though the rest of the words on the documentation aren't. I seem to recall the word Scale for the view scale is/was one of those.

If you really want to get your way, you can, not hard...just isn't automatic, you'll have to keep after it. Alter the schedule so it uses the Totals Only option. Then at the bottom of the schedule add a text element that says "GRAND TOTAL". You've got to move this as the schedule expands/contracts. Remember to check it before printing.

Maybe someday they'll make it possible to change these "little things"? Definitely a Dept. of Reviteristic or perhaps Dept. of Quirky or Dept. of Subtle. Heck all three work for me!

[Added: 1/10/2012] Paul Aubin mentions in a follow up POST that we can use a font that only has upper case characters. That's a trick that a few people I'm met or know from the user forums on the "internets" have used. Assuming you can find such a font that is acceptable it might just work. Remember you've got to make any downstream users also have the font.

Elevation Update Update

A comment showed up on my earlier post regarding elevation tags that don't update in stand-alone project files, which reminded me that I never posted this information though I intended to do so.

Steve Faust with Revolution Design let me know back then that the Elevation Fix utility they created is kind of a follow up to your blog post showing the problem. It was developed primarily by Nick Kovach who posted the ‘problem solved’ comment. You can find out more about their solution as well as downloaded at their SITE.

These are the previous three posts (October 2011):
Revit OpEd: Elevation Update Update
Revit OpEd: Elevation Update Update Updated
Revit OpEd: Elevation Tag Update Not Happening

Show Title Option

Revit viewports have a parameter called "Show Extension Line". The Type Properties dialog offers us "Yes", "No" and "When multiple viewports". This post deals with the wordy one.

The "When multiple viewports" option is meant to make it easier to leave off a view title when you are only putting one view on the sheet. Most of the time the sheet title is the same as the viewport title, like for overall plans. Seems a bit redundant to put a view title on too?

Unfortunately using it means we have to give up the option of having the viewport title extension line snapping into alignment with other viewport extension lines. I'm referring to the line that shows up when you check the box for "Show Extension Line".

If you are used to these lines snapping into alignment with one another, they won't when you use the "When multiple viewports" option. I captured a short video to help see it in action.

Show When Multiple Viewports

When you put a view on a sheet, its viewport has a parameter (Show Title) that determines when we see a view title. There are three choices; Yes, No and When Multiple Viewports. The third option (When multiple viewports) will cause Revit to only show the view title when there is more than one viewport on a sheet.

An interesting thing happens when you actually use the When Multiple Viewports option, we lose the snapping sensitivity that the view title line has when adjusting the length/position of the line. I've created a short video that shows it in action since it's easier to see that way.