Remember the Status Bar and Think Edges

Two little practical tips or reminders for Friday morning.

Tip One - Revit doesn't see things until you place your cursor near the edge of an element. There are some exceptions but for most elements you've got to move the cursor near an edge. Not sure if Revit sees it? Is it highlighted? No, then Revit doesn't see it. No point clicking to select something if Revit doesn't acknowledge it. The highlighting is visual confirmation that Revit thinks "this" is what you want to select.

If it isn't the correct one, remember the TAB key cycles through alternate elements that Revit could see in the same spot. I imagine sonar radiating from the tip of the cursor. If an element is close enough to bounce a signal back to the cursor you can "sink the battleship". No "Disco Tabbing", that happens when you hold the tab key down instead of just pressing once or twice as needed. I say disco because elements flash at you when you hold the button down. Thanks to Cyril Verley for that, I heard it from him first.

Okay that was three tips already; Edges, Highlighting and the TAB key.

Tip Two - When you are busy remembering edges don't forget to remember the Status Bar. It tells you what Revit sees or wants from you. When you place your cursor near an element you get the highlighting, you should see a tool tip AND the Status Bar offers you some info too. It's like a read-only command line, sssh.

Two Minutes with Constraint Quirkiness

Okay it's a little more than two minutes but less than three. I've been running into a few things lately that I don't recall being an issue in the past. Then again maybe my memory isn't what I thought it was? Take a look at this image. Seems pretty straightforward.

I've got a pair of Reference Planes that I want to keep positioned on either side of a rail (as in stiles and rails for a door). In the past I could do what you see and then use the dimensions on the right to shift the collection of reference planes up or down a bit. Now I find that I can't unless I select all three together. In the past I just grab the one in the middle and use the referencing dimension to shift it up/down. Doing that now gives me some weird results. It's probably better and easier to explain it with a video so here's one at You Tube.

Are You Red - Worksharing Monitor

Overheard the other day, "Hey Englebert, you are all red dude!" (name changed to protect the guilty or course). What he's referring to is the color a user's name becomes in Worksharing Monitor when they are working in the central file instead of a local as expected.

Don't be red! You might get this baby telling you off?

See Floyd? He's playing along nicely.

If you do get caught in the central file, no worries. Just use Save As to create a local copy the manual way (old timer way). Put it where your local files usually go and save it like your other local files. You'll be able to Synchronize with Central (SwC). If you don't do this Revit will end up telling you to do it when you try to SwC. The only time Revit doesn't care if you are working in the Central File is when you are alone, or the other people working in Local Files have not used SwC themselves. As soon as they do the next time you try to use SwC you'll get the message.

Revit's developers added this to avoid creating data reconciliation conflicts when someone does end up working in the central file. Just don't get caught "red handed".

Insert 2D from File

I read another post this morning that prompted me to mention "another door", another way to get where we want to go. In this case James mentions using the Display Model setting for a view to only show the annotation (2D stuff) that's been added. The intention being to then copy/paste that useful stuff to another project. It's a harvesting exercise and one the developers created a specific tool for, "Insert 2D Elements from File".

This tool allows you to browse to another project, select from the views of that project and choose those that have 2D information that you'd like to use in this project. If you've ever thought, "I know there is a great detailing in a wall section in XYZ Project, I wish I could just grab it", you can!

It's brother (or sister) Insert Views from File allows us to harvest drafting views, schedules and sheets that contain either.

System Inspector Inspect

Using Revit MeP, this feature makes me think of Monty Python's Dept. of Redundancy Department every time I use it. When you have elements connected together well Revit's System Inspector icon will be available.

Reading between the lines, that means if you don't see it when you think you should, something is wrong. The part that gets me is as soon as you activate it you get a little ribbon panel like the one we get for Groups. To inspect a system what's the next thing we have to do?

Yeah, tell Revit we want to Inspect. Department of Inspection Inspector?

Family Editor Thought and Tips

There are many great ideas for improving the family editor experience "out there" already. Here's another thought prompted by some Shared Parameter loading.

When you first enter the Parameter Properties dialog, after clicking the Add button, the radio button for Family Parameter is selected and the Select button is disabled.

Seems to me the button could be enabled. This would allow me to click on the button to select a shared parameter without having to first change the radio button selection to Shared Parameter instead. It's just one click different but if you load a series of shared parameters repeatedly now and then one less click is one less x number of parameters involved.

Seems reasonable to me...now for a couple tips.

Here's a little data entry tip in the Formula field, click past the value to select everything faster. If you click "on" part of the formula entry the cursor lands there. If you click past it looks more like this.

If you click on the formula then it ends up like this.

Once you click in the field the "tip" is "off", you have to click elsewhere (outside the field) before it will work that way again. If you are already in the field the Home and End buttons work nicely to move to the beginning or end of the formula. I find CTRL + A (select All) doesn't work there so I tap Home and then Shift + End to select the whole line. Then again I don't usually do that at all, I use my tip and click past the text.

Okay, one more really subtle one, as if that wasn't subtle. Ever notice how the information in the family types dialog can "jump" when you click in a field, like in the formula column? That happens when the column is wider than what the dialog can display. Easy to fix, just squeeze that column so it's entirely visible and Revit won't jump (scroll over to the right usually is what I mean by "jumping").

Filter Pesky Levels

Need another way to manage the Levels of linked files? Sure we can assign them to specific worksets and have matching worksets in our model. Sure we can edit the V/G settings of the link in views (and view templates). Here's another, use a Filter and the criteria "Structural" that is available for levels.

When you examine the properties of levels you should find the parameter Structural. If the engineer uses that for their levels and you don't, then this concept works.

Now build a Filter that hunts for levels with the Structural parameter.

This is before the filter is applied.

This is after the filter is applied.

They can do the reverse by reversing the logic of the filter, Structural = no.

Happy Filtering!