Tag Archives: Felt Stupid

Dimension Home

I am almost embarrassed to say that I didn’t know this feature existed and I just found it.  Naturally when I find a nice little feature like this I go back to previous releases to see how long I have been not utilizing it.  Thankfully I found out it was new to Revit 2012, so I didn’t feel as bad.  If you have taken the text from a dimension and moved it off to the side, either to get a leader or just to move it, and then wanted it to go back to it’s default location there is a new way to do this in Revit 2012 (yes in 2013 too).  Simply Right Click on the text that has been moved and select Reset Dimension Text Position.

 

Whenever I find an undocumented feature like this it always makes me wonder what other ones am I missing.  If you know of any please pass on the knowledge.

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.