Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Conditional Formatting - was unfair!

Too good to wait to till tomorrow to share!

In the past I commented about the fact that Revit MEP has conditional formatting while Revit Architecture and Structure do not. That is still technically true but... fast forward to now...

David Baldacchino and I were exchanging some emails about work arounds and I was lamenting about the conditional formatting again. He remembered that he discovered a real good trick!

When you are creating/editing a schedule and select a value that can be formatted, like Area or a Number value for example, are you listening? Press the ALT & N keys at the same time and this dialog appears. Yes in Revit Architecture and Structure!




Conditional Formatting in schedules regardless of the version of Revit still does not show up when a schedule is added to a sheet however. This means the tool is useful primarily for internal checking or as an analysis tool but fails to deliver for presenting the information to others. Always leave us wanting more do they?

P.S. This works in Revit 2009 and 2010. Keep in mind that undocumented finds like these may mean that the factory didn't know it was possible and therefore it is technically unsupported. Use it at your own peril?

13 comments:

mcoviello said...

Great find!
my question is how did David ever discover this?


It would be great if the color could transfer to the sheet.
Along that line...
setting cell AND font color.

-control over fonts for headers/group headers etc.
Essentially take everything that excel can with formatting and apply it to revit schedules.
One day maybe...

Dave Baldacchino said...

Funny you should ask! I was playing with Revit 2010 and I guess I was editing the formatting of a schedule when I tried to click Alt+N to switch to the Manage tab to show a user something (did it naturally without thinking I needed to exit) and all of a suddent that dialog popped up! Now I spend my time going around hitting keys on the keyboard like a maniac to see if I can find any other hidden goodies =)

David Kingham said...

How much do you want to bet this will be 'fixed' in the first 2010 service pack? hehe nice find Dave, I always just opened up the file in MEP to set the conditional formatting but this is much better!

Erik said...

Very nice tip. My problem now is that I will be randomly mashing key combinations trying to find new functionality. Darn!

mcoviello said...

Well it's a great find. Keep beating on that keyboard :)

Nicholas Iyadurai said...

Jai Ho!
Can anyone confirm "Alt N" is the keybd shortcut in Revit MEP, when this dialog is open? This would mean that Autodesk keeps the functionality open but hides the 'buttons'. May be one has to go over Revit MEP and check for commands that are not available in RAC and then try to use the keybd shortcuts that are available in MEP in RAC (instead of randomly trying various key combinations!!!) I am going to download MEP trial version....

Yogesh said...

Thanks Steve,
GR8 Find. . .It will help us alot. . . Happy Reviting.

Chad said...

The mind just boggles at why useful things like this are left out.

Josh Moore said...

This is not new to Revit 2010...it has been around since Revit 2008 version...it is kept around by the Autodesk guys as a back door when not using Revit MEP. I got this information from an Autodesk MEP designer...

Steve said...

I didn't say it was new to 2010...I mentioned it works in other versions at the end of the post.

Taans said...

Great! Thanks a lot!
May be it has some other "shortcut keys" like this.

Scott Hopkins said...

Great tip! I can't wait to try it out.

Yves Gravelin said...

Just for information : in the french releases the shortcut is ALT+R