Happy Holidays, See you in 2016!!! (Christmas Gift Inside!)

My Christmas gift for 2015 is a link to a previous post I made back in mid 2014. It still remains one of the best hidden settings for Revit I have come across so far! 

Click the image to open your gift! 

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday and New year! I am itching to get stuck into my classes for 2016! 

I won't be publishing any posts for the next few weeks or so, but stay tuned as I will be preparing a few in the background! In 2016 I will be posting video using Autodesk's fantastic Screencast, posts on Dynamo & I will report back on my experience with Vray for Revit over the break! So Easy! 

Revit Room Separation Lines (in elevation views) - Wish List

I wish by default, room separation lines were turned off in sections & elevations. 

By default, these lines are cyan in colour and they are thick, so you really do need to turn them off before doing any kind of printing. 

Isn't it unusual though that these lines are even on in elevation & section to begin with? For what purpose would you need these on? You can't even use the 'Room Separator' tool in elevations & sections! 

I have this turned off in my view templates, but I still find it a bit of a nuisance, Autodesk help us out? 

Temporary View Properties (Revit Glitch)

There is a strange glitch with the ‘Temporary View Properties’ tool in Revit.  You may have noticed when in sheets, you can’t activate the tool. It is designed just for active views.

The ‘Temporary View Properties’ function introduced in 2014 is a great tool, one I use on a daily basis and therefore has warranted its own keyboard shortcut.

The tool allows you to temporarily override the properties of a view made through the visual control bar and visibility graphics. The best example I can give for using the tool is when you want to temporarily override view templates. I have also heard of it being used as an alternative to ‘working views’.

Image with view active on sheets


Image with view deactivated on sheets

When in sheets, the tools available on the visual control bar are limited to ‘Temporary Hide/Isolate’ & ‘Reveal Hidden Elements’.  As mentioned I have a shortcut assigned to this particular command though. In the past I have accidently run the command without activating the view first. When I do this, Revit throws a “Serious error has occurred…” message. The first time I did this, I had a mini panic attack, clicked ‘Yes’ and expected my Revit to crash immediately after….. but… it didn’t, and never has. 

Since then I have run the command accidently a few times and for this post did it half a dozen times deliberately in sheets just to test it, Revit never crashed.

Since by default, this tool is not supposed to be activated when not in a view, having a shortcut assigned must override this function. Revit appears to get confused and throws up a warning, but rest assured, it appears Revit is only bluffing!

Using shortcuts for the other visual control bar tools not available, does not cause the same error. 

Revit Text Leaders (Wishlist)

Updates to the text editor in Revit has been a long standing wish. These days though, it is seen to be more of a long standing joke. (At a recent RTC event, the Autodesk rep even made a joke of it in his own presentation, while the audience laughed through gritted teeth). 

Do a search query on 'Revit Text Editor' and you're bound to come across a whole heap of discussion on the subject (99% of it is complaints aimed at Autodesk). 

Whilst I am just another Revit user with the same wish, there is one element to text and arrow leaders that is continually on my annoyance list....text leader elbows. 

When you create a text string with an arrow pointing at something you may create an elbow in that text leader. The problem though is when you want to move the text, say to justify or bring text further or closer to the detail, the leader elbow moves too! And it shouldn't!!! Then you have to go back, grab the elbow and slide it back to 90°.

When you move text up & down, the elbow moves as the line between the elbow and the arrow gets longer and shorter. Now if only they could translate that between the elbow and text for left and right movement. 

My (wishful) prediction for text editor updates in Revit is 2018..... hey, I did say wishful!

Filtering Model Lines in Revit

Unfortunately, you can’t filter model lines (or detail lines) in Revit. To be honest, I very rarely come across a situation where I actually need to perform this task, I don’t use model lines that often except in families. However for some, it is desirable and whilst you can’t filter them through the usual methods, one work around I use is to simply create ‘purpose built’ line styles.

For example, let's say you are documenting a carpark for a site plan and you are using model lines for the layout. In various other floor plans though, we may want to see these carpark lines for context, but we typically want them faded or greyed out as they are not the focus of the particular drawing. At the moment, you may selecting all these lines and applying an element override, and you may have to do this a few times. There is a better way though using Visibility Graphics. 

Start by creating the required line styles; for example, ‘Carpark-Kerbs’ & ‘Carpark-Dashed’. 

Now it is just a matter of going to the view in question and modifying these line styles in the Visibility Graphics. In this case, I have overridden the line column with a grey line colour. You could add the change to your view templates too. 

V-Ray for Revit

Exciting News! The beta version of V-Ray for Revit is here! 

Visit their website for more details and to register your copy.