Sneaky Buttons

Not those campaign buttons with pins but the button you push…or rather click with a mouse. There are a few pesky buttons in Revit that new users find strange. Lets take a look at em?

First up is the “EDIT” button, the long thin one you see when you visit the properties of walls, roofs, floors etc.

Yes it is a button even though it is really thin and long…don’t be afraid, click it! Don’t be fooled when you see this button lurking next to parameters like View Range, Visibility or Advanced Model Graphics either.

Next up, the material button. It is invisible until you do something, like click in the field that shows the material name. Again this is lurking in the properties of objects and in several locations.

After you click the area listing Default Wall as in the image above you see this:

Yes, again that little horizontal line with a down arrow IS a button too, clicking it will load up the Materials dialog

What’s next…hmm...how about the “LIST BOX” button? It looks like this before you do anything…

Pretty innocent looking, in fact you have no idea there is a button lurking here either, but as promised there is! Click inside the field and you should see this

Click on that little “V” and you’ll get this, a list of choices.

This little guy shows up all over the place, best get to be friends quick!

Anymore to talk about? How about the family editor’s link parameter button? That’s a good one too!

Talk about low profile and sneaky!! This one is lying in the bushes waiting to bite your ankle. Clicking on this button will allow you to choose a parameter to assign to the parameter the button shares a row with. In the image above this button is tied to the Offset parameter in the family, an instance parameter by the way…uh oh…here we go talking about parameters again.

Yet another…the “Corporal” (like the stripes an Army Corporal would wear)…actually the button is the entire blue bar yet the buttons are meant as a indication what will happen, namely the list will contract to hide the list of parameters in the group.

What? Another one? Yes there is, the little expand button for the Dynamically Modify View feature.

A little click and you get.

The dialog expands to show more options. Then if you click the button at the far right it contracts again.

Quite a few quirky buttons eh? Hope it helps!!