Schedule Grip Control

This change crept in with the 2012 release. In the "old days" the move symbol was in the middle of a schedule. This is the 2011 version, same for older ones as well.

Now it is located at the upper left corner of a schedule.

This makes it harder to see, find and use unfortunately. This fits the old wisdom, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". It might help to see what I'm writing about in a video.

If having the grip in the current location somehow made it easier to align a schedule perhaps it would better sense. However schedules always snapped into alignment with each other at the top anyway. Didn't seem broken to me...

Dept. of Moved Cheese - Tag on Placement

Previous releases of Revit offered a check box to decide if we wanted a tag to show up as we placed various elements. For example placing a door offered us this on the Options Bar.

With 2011 this has been changed a little. There is a button to press to choose tagging or not. Fun to see the puzzled look trying to work out where the option went. It goes something like, "I could have sworn there was a way to stop tagging when I place families?!? Oh!! There it is!!".

Dept. of Moved Cheese - Warnings

With Revit 2010 I found myself repeatedly clicking the Manage ribbon when I wanted to review Warnings. No sooner would I click on it than I would remember that it isn't there it is on the Modify ribbon tab, nuts!!

It should be on the Manage ribbon!!!

In 2011 it IS! Yes!! Trouble is that I'm now clicking on Modify first, oh well. It's where I felt it should be instinctively, just have to listen to my instincts now.

By the way, notice they also moved the selection features; Select by ID and IDs of Selection. Measure is still on the Modify ribbon tab though.

Dept. of Moved Cheese: Orient > By Plane

In Revit 2009 the View Cube and Steering Wheel were added to our "tool chest". After all this time I admit that I still barely use the Steering Wheel. I also tend to forget about the View Cube because I'm so used to using the Shift key combined with the mouse scroll wheel button to orbit. However, I definitely use the View Cube for the view Orientation options because I really like the view separation in the Orient to View tools.

Even though they added the "Cube and Wheel" to Revit 2009 it still had the View menu which offered us the following menu items, including the topic of this post, Orient > By Plane.


They also added this to the Steering Wheel, calling it "Orient to a Plane", but not to the View Cube. Confused? Me too, add to both maybe, but just the Steering Wheel? Okay?? I'm just as likely to want to have access to the tool via the View Cube because it's already visible and I have to turn on the Steering Wheel to access it there.


In 2010 they've got a View Ribbon tab but the view orientation options are gone, my cheese wasn't "moved" it was "eaten". My first instinct was that I'd find it on the View tab. Then I thought it might be on the Home tab since the Work Plane panel is there for Set and Show Work Plane, Reference Plane and Line etc. Nope the cheese is just gone...

I also thought maybe I'd find them on the new Navigation Bar which if I could just remember is there I'd use more too! But no, not there either!


I'm still not sure that this "sense of loss" or "sadness" is borne of knowing where my "cheese" was and not finding it there or that it is because I don't find it where my instincts tell me it ought to be? My instincts are either wrong or strongly biased by what I've been doing in Revit for a long time now.

I see some logic for putting it on the navigation tools but I really don't understand why it isn't on the View Cube too. I'd like a 3D Orientation panel on the View Ribbon that offers all the "old" tools from the View menu show earlier. This way they'd be discoverable on the Ribbon and we could have Keyboard Shortcuts for them again too.

I miss my "cheese"!