Category Archives: Revit

Revit Posts

Plan view types

Revit 2013 brings some new features to plan views.  First, if you are creating new Levels it will not only create a plan and RCP but Structural plans as well (This is true if you are in Revit, from the Building Design Suite).  This can be controlled the same way as before, by going to plan view types and un-highlight the types that are not desired.

The part that I am excited about is the capability to duplicate the plan view type, similar to the way we have been able to create different elevation or section types.  For example I have a working, wall and building sections.   This means we are not limited to plan views only, we can create enlarged plans, code plans etc. similar to sections or elevations.

One more bonus is the fact that we can have view templates automatically applied or associated to the new views being created.  For those of you who might not know what an associated view template is, the view template is linked to the veiw so any changed made to the view template automatically change the associated veiws, plus it locks down the parts of the properties that the view template control.

Revit 2013 templates

While using Revit 2013 I found a nice undocumented feature in the settings dialog (by undocumented I mean not mentioned in the “new” presentations).  In the file locations there is now the capability to have 5 project templates set and displayed in the recent screen.

  This means we no longer have to browse to start a new project, simply click on the correct template and go.

Ghosted Surface

In Revit 2013 they removed the ghosted surface option, don’t freak out just yet, they also removed the transparent option as well.  This still isn’t the time to freak out.  The reason both of the features were removed is due to the fact that they merged to two together, if you think about it this makes total sense, because 100% ghosted is transparent after all.  They both have been replaced with Transparency and this is an adjustable slider.  I like this new feature because now I can make the walls more “Ghosted” or transparent then floors etc.  The combination can be set however you need or want it to be.  Minor change but a good one in my opinion.

Custom Elevation Tags

I was really hoping that in Revit 2013 Autodesk would have truly fixed elevation marks so that there can be lines in the symbol and have them not rotate with the symbol.  We can have it with the text in an elevation, heck a section head already has this option, why can’t it be added to the elevation marks.  I am frustrated having the symbol look like this.

Right Click home dimension

When a new release of Revit comes out I spend alot of time Right clicking with items selected and RC on different grips etc.  I do this because inevitably there is some new undocumented feature in each release that I find.  While in Revit 2013 I thought I had found a new one, only to realize that it was there in 2012 and I had just missed it.  In AutoCAD when you moved the dimension text from it’s home location there was a command called Dim Home that would put the text back to it original location.  Over the years I had just come to get used to the fact that there wasn’t anything like this inside of Revit, you just had to drag the text back to the original location.  I found out that in Revit 2012 if you RC on a dimension that has been moved there is a new option to Reset Dimension Text Position.  This does however reset all moved text back to it’s original location.  In the image below all of the 4″ dimensions will go back to the home position if this is selected.