Thursday, January 07, 2010

Dept. of Subtle - Copy Option Checked or Unchecked

A post at AUGI by Aaron Rumple reminded me of a very subtle feature using the CTRL key. I stumbled into this using the Offset tool in Revit 2009.

Here's the scenario, imagine you are using the Offset tool to create a copy of a wall offset by four feet. The Copy option that appears on the Options bar is checked by default. That's great, but what if you wanted to use the Offset tool to move the wall not create a copy. You have to un-check Copy to get the Move instead. If you press the CTRL key prior to selecting the wall to offset the check mark is cleared in the Copy Option.

The AUGI post discusses this technique in conjunction with the Mirror Tool. Like with Offset the default setting for Mirror has Copy checked, assuming you want to create a mirror/copy, not a mirror/move.

As you probably already know, you can create a copy of an element by selecting it, pressing and holding CTRL and then dragging the selected element to a new location. When you press CTRL with Offset, Mirror, Copy and Move the Copy option becomes un-checked or checked in the case of Move.

I've never found any mention of this in the help file in the past. I just scanned through the 2010 documentation for any mention of it (using CTRL as a criteria) to see if they've added it but didn't find anything now either. A far as I can tell it's undocumented. Thanks to Aaron for the reminder!

A video might help?



8 comments:

Jacki said...

Best... keystroke shortcut... ever!

Jim said...

Definitely one of the more useful undocumented tips out there. Thanks!

iyyy69 said...

Sorry in advance for the rant, but this is one of those "little" things that I just find so terribly irritating in Revit - that I have to clear the copy box when mirroring every time (or about 90% of the time for my usage). I shouldn't have to use the Control key - it should just remember! There are tons of examples of this kind of poor UI design/functionality.

Take the filter tool - I window over a bunch of objects, click the filter tool button, and then I have to clear the check box to exclude all categories every single time I use the tool (because 99% of the time I only want to select one or two categories of the dozen caught by the filter), then select the categories I want. All the categories should be cleared by default, or at the very least, remember the last way I used it.

I could go on and on with these "little" examples - it's all these "little" things that really bring down the the user experience in my opinion.

Steve said...

I here ya, but the reality is...it will never be correct every time for every one no matter how good they get it. For every person that wants it to un-checked all the time there will be someone who wants it to be checked all the time.

UI memory might help in some cases but not always...

I haven't met a UI yet that I can't find something I don't care for and wish was different. No excuse for apathy or not to strive for "better", but it is a moving target. I Don't envy them trying to please all of us.

Steve said...

nice spelling of hear eh? *-(

Anonymous said...

The same thing applies with the SHIFT key for Constrain. If you hold down the SHIFT key it unchecks the Constrain check box for move & copy.

K.Sheppard said...

So are we really saying that the CTRL key is actually a toggle key. For instance, if move is desired (of a selected object) the CTRL will switch the command to copy BUT if copy is the active command then CTRL will toggle it back to move?

Steve said...

K. Sheppard,
Yes...in the context of those tools it is a "toggle".