Monday, June 25, 2007

Tiling Views - Window menu > Tile

Recently I was asked if there was any logic to how view windows are tiled I replied, "umm, don't think so?" At least the last time I got perturbed about it, there didn't seem to be a way to define where windows end up.

We'll I'm partially wrong... The active window will be placed on the left when there are two windows. More than two will place the active window in the upper left corner. There doesn't appear to be any simple logic to the placement of the remaining windows however. By now you're thinking, "thanks for nothing, Steve!" You are welcome!

Oh, remember that keyboard shortcuts don't work in schedule views. If you want to tile views with a schedule active...up to the menu you must go.

Additional Data provided courtesy of David Mills with Autodesk, he writes (and includes images), thanks!!!

Ah yes, the elusive Window Tile command. How do I get the views to tile in order A, B, C, D, E (or any other order for that matter)?


The ‘magic’ that’s going on behind the scene doesn’t have a real technical name but I describe it as the last active queue. This queue tracks only the opened views and, most importantly, which view is currently active. As the user changes to a different view, that view comes to the top of the queue and pushes the previously active view down the queue. If a new view is created/opened, it becomes the active view and gets a seat at the top of the queue. Conversely, if a view is closed, it’s removed from the queue.

The last active queue is what provides the ordering mechanism for the Window Tile command. Revit then takes that order and sequences the views (starting with the currently active view) down the first column, then the second, etc.


For Example, in the image above, the last active queue looked like this {D, B, A, C, E} at the time I hit WT. In the same example, if I wanted to give an intentional order to the views…let’s say A, B, C, D, E…I would activate each view in the reverse order that I want them to tile – in this case I would select E first, then D, then C, then B, and finally A. At that time, I would be certain that the last active queue would look like this {A, B, C, D, E} where A is the currently active view and E was active the longest time ago. Then hit WT and presto!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

haven't tried it recently, but i remember when it used to place them in order of "last used" from top left to bottom right working top down. evidently as you said the current one being the top left.

so i suppose in reality there is a full way as to how they place themselves.

Steve said...

Thanks to David Mills (Autodesk and Robert Yori (SOM) for adding some "insider" info to the article!! Thanks guys!!

Abel said...

Yeah, there's a method to the tiling, but it's still madness. It makes no sense to have 3 windows open and put two of them as small views on the left - where all the toolbars/menus are. Isn't it logical that I should work in the largest window, and have that near my tools and commands and menus? To make it even worse, I'm working on 2 widescreen monitors, so my biggest window shows up about 18 "real" inches from any button I want to click. I say, give me user defined tiling!