Floor Perimeter

When you examine the properties of a floor you'll find Perimeter. Somebody decided perimeter shouldn't be available to tags so we can't tag a floor but we can see it in schedule (no, can't tag it in 2014 either).

If you alter a floor sketch to define an opening for something like for a stair or a mechanical chase, it alters the perimeter calculation. If you use either a Shaft Opening or Opening by Face it doesn't alter the perimeter value. Floor A is untouched, B is altered within the sketch and C has two openings one of each type. You'll see in the schedule that perimeter is not altered except where the floor sketch is changed to create the opening.

The moral of the story? If you'd like to be able to use the floor slab perimeter value then don't edit the floor sketch to create openings.

Finish and Cancel Inequity

In the past Aaron Maller and I have had long conversations that oddly enough focus on Revit. He mentioned the inconsistency between the way some elements that are sketch based are finished and the way shape editing for floors and roofs finish. He recently reminded me of it, for example he put forth this list.

Floor, roof, stair or ramp Sketch Creation = Finish and Cancel
Edit Profile = Finish and Cancel
Model Groups = Finish and Cancel

Floor or roof Shape Editing = Accidentally hitting the escape key and getting kicked out of it. We are supposed to click the Modify button to finish Shape Editing.

It would be great if Shape Editing were consistent with the others!!

Sorry You are Too Short

No I'm not picking on short people, that's Randy Newman's domain. Revit does have a bias against short lines (as most of us are well aware). Try sketching a line that's less than 1/32" long and you'll get this message.

It also doesn't care much for moving or copying elements very small distances. You may have run into this message?

What may not be obvious is that you can often trim a line to be shorter than the minimum size of 1/32". The threshold appears to be 1/128" (.16mm). In my experience this appears to work for most families such as annotation, detail component and generic model families. I've tried it in various project views including a drafting view without success. The project environment seems to be entirely intolerant of slipping past the 1/32" (0.780369mm) threshold. Trying to get smaller than that generates the first warning again.

If you want to copy/move something a smaller distance and get the warning, try dragging or using CTRL + Drag. You can get the arbitrary smaller distance and then use the temporary dimension to set the actual distance you want. Sometimes you can affect this limitation by zooming in closer, at least with regard to move or copy.

Fwiw, 1/128" converted to decimal is 0.00781250". I was able to make a line shorter still, to this decimal inch value 0.0063477", however Revit could not display anything other than 1/128" unless I changed the project units to decimal inches first using six decimal places. It is possible to create shorter lines than we are accustomed to (Revit limits) but only in family files.

You've Got a Bad Profile

Considering the time of year and checking lists you don't want a bad profile. If you create a profile family for a railing and don't do a very good job of it Revit won't offer you your profile in the list of available profiles.

The missing profile you expect to find here is a clue that your profile is bad. You need to check your sketch to  make sure you don't have a Bad Sketch. Only kids with a good profile get to use their profile in their railings.