Monthly Archives: January 2012

Vasari Load Family

While playing back and forth with Revit and Vasari this weekend I noticed a small little quirk (at least for me it’s a quirk).  Vasari doesn’t have an Insert tab on the Ribbon, so there isn’t a way to load a family into the current file.  You have to open the file and then hit “Load into Project”.  This is frustrating to me because in Vasari pretty much everything I am doing is a nested family.   I do know that I could always drag and drop the files from Windows Explorer but for me it was easier to the majority of the work in Revit and then open Vasari when I needed specific tools from it.  If I am missing the button or there is another way I would love to know.

Schooled by the Spouse, Part 2

As Brian mentioned in the yesterday’s post, while I was writing an article for AUGIWorld he learned a tip from me (and got upset about not previously knowing said tip).  What he didn’t tell you is that I also learned one from him.  Now, this is not to say that we don’t learn Revit-y things from one another all the time, but we don’t often feel as stupid as we did this time.  I am embarrassed to say that the tip I learned was admittedly quite simple, and it is astonishing that no one (my husband in particular) had taught me this.

One of my favorite features of Revit is that I can select an element and then change its length by altering the temporary dimension.  However, I have found it frustrating that when doing so the base point for the length change is the center, so both ends get longer or shorter, because I often want one end to remain in the same location.  What I end up doing is changing the length and then moving the element, and then complaining about it.

While making a few screen shots for me about temporary dimensions, Brian started in on a show and tell of everything he knows about temporary dimensions.  I let him go on and on, because, lets be honest, there really is no stopping him from talking, especially about Revit, and that is when he spouted off this little gem.

When changing the length of an element by changing the temporary dimension, if one end is to remain stationary, simply start dragging the end of the element that you want to extend and then type the desired overall dimension.  I can’t believe I never knew that, especially since I so often draw elements in this manner (i.e. start drawing and then type the dimension).

 

Schooled by the Spouse

Dezi was writing an article for AUGIWorld about Revit Structure basics and I was helping with the screen captures.  It is amazing how many tips you learn from the spouse when one of you is writing a technical article.  Just as amazing is how upset you get at that same person for not telling you these tips in the past during one of the many many Revit conversations.

Anyway what I learned from her was that the ribbon tabs in Revit can actually be moved, simply by holding the CTRL key down and dragging the tab.  I don’t recommend moving all the tabs around but if your interface looked like mine and you have several add ins installed which create there own tabs the modify tab gets pretty far off the screen.  I can now stop complaining about this and simply move my Modify tab in front of all those other tabs that have been created.

Rotating Crop Regions

While working with a client this evening (yes on a Friday night…. my name is Revit Geek after all) we discovered something I didn’t know.  If you have ever tried to rotate a crop region and the rotate command is greyed out, that is because your view is set to True North.  Apparently crop regions can only be rotated when the view is set to Project North.  This did make sense once I thought about it, if your view is set to True North why would you want to rotate it away from that.  If you are wondering why we were trying to rotate the crop region it was due to the fact that the plan didn’t fit on the sheet.  If you use the “Rotation on Sheet” value the view title rotates with the view.  However if you rotate the crop region in the original view then it is rotated on the sheet and the view title remains in its’ normal location.