Move to Room - Element ID - Review Warnings

If we use Review Warnings often enough, and we should be, we'll run into this warning eventually.

Check the item and Click Show to have Revit try to find a view to show it in. Once it is selected we can either drag the Tag where it is suppose to go or Click the Show Related Warnings button on the ribbon to show the dedicated warning it has again.

When this warning is isolated like this the dialog includes the Move to Room button. An aside, is it amusing or worrisome that Revit seems to think the best way to fix warnings is to delete the offending element (via Delete Checked)? Regardless, Move to Room will resolve the issue whether we can see where the tag is meant to be or not.

Another way to tackle it from the Review Warnings dialog is to make a note of the Element ID referenced in the warning. Now we can then use the Select by ID tool. Enter the ID value and click OK.

This will select the tag, even if we're not in a view that it can be seen in, and then we can use the Show Related Warnings button on the ribbon again followed by the Move to Room button.

Finding Families - IDs of Selection

When we need to track down a family that might be loaded into one or more project files we can use master schedule project that includes links for all the relevant project files. If one of the project files already has links to all the others then we can just use that one for this instead.

A schedule focused on the relevant category that also uses the option Includes elements in links can be quite useful.

It can help us track down which models and how many there are in each of them. A little clever use of the Filter tab in the schedule can be a big help. Once we've figured out where the family is we can deal with each of them in each project.

We can search through the Families branch of the Project Browser and then use the right click option for Select all Instances in Entire Project.

Now I can reach for IDs of Selection.

Revit provides a list of Element ID numbers for each family.

It is not unusual for the list to be quite long so I often reach for Notepad (or better still Notepad++...which reminds me I need to install it on this new PC). I use CTRL+C to copy the element IDs to the clipboard and then CTRL+V in Notepad. Notice the commas between the Element ID numbers.

In Notepad I can be selective about which ones to start examining more closely. I just select one or more of the element IDs and then use Select Element by ID (CTRL+C and CTRL+V again in reverse).

Notice the instruction in parenthesis (in the image below)? It says to use a semicolon between the numbers but Revit used commas earlier. Odd.

...and...believe it or not, this is the reason I decided to write this post... commas work too. Yeah, that's definitely subtle.

As for the element hunting and selecting process, I'll be interested and waiting to see what sort of Dynamo approaches pop up in comments.

Need to See Yer EyeDee Son!

Revit is a database and all records in a database have a unique identity field or ID. This makes it unique among all other records in the database.

A wall for example will have an ID that looks like this, "118476". There are tools to find an object using its ID or to learn the objects ID. Both are located under the Tools menu > Element Ids


Tools menu > Ids of Selection assumes you will select an object and then run the command to display the ID value.
If you select multiple objects Revit will display a list of IDs.

Tools menu > Select by ID assumes you have an ID already and wish to find the object instead. Typically you'll find an ID listed when you are Reviewing Warnings (click the link to check Beau Turners blog for his recent article on this feature). If you click SHOW, Revit will take you to a view, or try, that shows the object in all its glory.


We ID all elements, no exceptions *-)