Tag Archives: Tips

Dimension Home

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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.

Show Room-Space Tag from previous Phase

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When working with phases in Revit one complaint is that you can’t show rooms from a previous phase.  This is where composite views on sheets works like a charm.  Composite view means more than one view placed on top of each other on a sheet.  Set up a plan view with the phasing set to New Construction and set the Visibility Graphics as desired.  Set up another view with the phasing set to Existing, only display Rooms and Room tags in this view, only tag the existing rooms to be displayed (Note: in Visibility Graphics the Room Tags can be set to Halftone to display similarly to existing phase). Once both of these views are created drag the views onto the desired sheet.  Revit will align the files nicely on the sheets.  The last step is select one of the views, usually the existing room tag view, and change the viewport to one with out a view title.  The room name only view can also be duplicated with dependancies if you need to show the room names on more than one sheet.

 

Beams Tied to height of Columns

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When Revit 2012 was released there was this new feature on structural beams that didn’t get addressed in any of the “NEW” documentation.  I stumbled across it during a training session and have been using it so much that it has become second nature to me.  This week while using this tool one of my clients saw it and had no clue it was even there.  So I told them that I would blog it so they can have documentation on it.

If you have a a beam connected to a column, similar to what is shown (element types can vary), there is a value in the instance properties of the beam called “Start/End Attachment Type”.   This property can be changed to End Elevation or Distance, by default the value is End Elevation.  End Elevation maintains the value of the beam to the placement level and Distance orients the value to the join location on a column.  So if you are wanting the beams to move up and down with the top (or bottom) of a column then you simply change this value to Distance.

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Once the value is changed to Distance then you will see two new properties show up for the beam, “Attachment Distance” and “End of Referenced Column”.  Attachment Distance option allows a user to put in a value for an offset of the beam to the top of the column, so that the beam will still move up and down with the column just be that given value away.  End of… allows the beam to be either associated to the Top or Bottom of the column.

Dependant Views

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While working with a client today I noticed how they were creating Dependant Views. When they learned this tip they were really upset… upset that they didn’t know about this years ago.

The first step on this is to create the original floor plan and all of its dependencies.  Set up the Matchlines and add the View References.

Once that is set up in the Project Browser right click on the parent view,  select “Apply Dependent Views…”

 

…it will bring up the Select Views dialog box, here you can select the views that need dependencies.  (NOTE: it will only display views of the same scale).  The only thing left to do is rename all the duplicated views, if you use scope boxes and view templates apply them accordingly.

 

Revit Basics – User Interface

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During every training session this question comes up multiple times.  “How do I get my Project Browser (or Pr0perties, or Zoom dialog thingy) back on the screen.  If you accidentally turn off any of these they are easily brought back by going to the View tab >> Windows Panel >> User interface drop down and rechecking what you want back on.  You at anytime can bring back the Recent Files screen that is shown when you open Revit with this as well.