Dept. of Wishes - Center Options Bar Options

I've often thought about this but don't recall complaining about it before. I "wish" that the options offered on the Options Bar were closer to the work at hand. Perhaps "center" all the options being offered by default, at least? Here's the Option for "Copy" when using the Mirror tool. It's soooo faaaar awaaaay from the work at hand. With the mirror tool I can use the CTRL key to toggle it on (if off) and off (if on). Still, if the options themselves were closer to the "action" that would be nice, no?

Move Room Tool

Following on yesterday's post about rooms and their tags. It occurred to me that a Move Room tool might be helpful (via Dynamo or app). I imagine being able to start the command and choose a room. Then I'd choose between options for This Floor or Another Floor.

If This Floor is selected I'd choose between options for Move All Associated Tags or Delete All Associated Tags and then I'd be prompted for a new location.

If Another Floor is selected then under the hood the room would be deleted, I'd choose between tag options, and then prompted to choose another plan view to open, followed by placing the room in the new location.

Multiple room selection might be useful too? I don't often move a collection of rooms together. It's certainly possible that could be necessary and very helpful if so.

Whatcha think?

Moving a Viewport Error - Disjoin

The Move tool offers us an option called Disjoin. When it is used Revit deletes the original and creates a new element at the new location. That isn't obvious to us but if you examine the GUID (ID's of Selection) you'll find it has a new GUID after the Move is complete.

The option is sticky, we have to remember to disable it when we use the Move tool again. When we are working on sheets and adjusting views we now have an opportunity to run into a confusing error message.

If you run into this or people you support do, just remember to Disable da Disjoin.

Per a comment: My previous post on re Disjoin.

Revit 2015 R2 - MEP Move To for Circuits

Here's a subtle one for Revit mEp users, a new button shows up in Panel Schedules when you select a circuit.

Move To begins by selecting a circuit. You can choose another eligible slot in the schedule. You'll see the "No You Can't" icon at your cursor when you hover over ineligible locations in the schedule.

Revit will highlight eligible slots in the schedule by turning the cells green. If your schedule has a fixed number of slots and they are all filled up you'll have to reconsider the panel loads. You also need to move circuits up or down to create an open location. The Move To feature doesn't shift existing circuits around, it just moves a circuit a bit easier than using up or down when a slot exists for it to move to.

Move with Disjoin

Using the Move tool and checking Disjoin is equivalent to "cut to clipboard" (in effect delete) and then "paste from clipboard". This is necessary to break a wall or line away from other walls or lines that may be connected. Without Disjoin the other walls or lines will attempt to stretch to stay connected.

It is not really just moving the existing elements but recreating them in a new location. This means the elements will get new Mark parameters, assuming Revit numbers them automatically, like doors for example.

If you really need to separate walls or lines (ducts or pipes too) you can move without using the Disjoin option and then manually pull the other elements away from the wall using their own grips instead. A bit more work but maybe less than renumbering elements?

Something to keep in mind.

Moving Ceiling Grid Pattern

Scott wrote about an issue at Revitforum.org the other day. He's been using Revit about as long as a person could use it so if it trips him up I'm betting it trips up others too!

Jesse came to the rescue with advice that perked up my Dept. of Subtle ears. He wrote:

"When you tab through to the ceiling grid while in the move command, look near the top (meaning Options Bar) at the "disjoin" check box. Revit will automatically remember if you had this box checked the last time you used the move command. It's going to be greyed out when moving a hatch pattern, and when it's checked you can't move the pattern.

To fix it, select something else, do the move command, uncheck the check box and press escape to cancel. The next time you go to move the ceiling grid the box should be unchecked!"

It's easy when you know how? :) Thanks to Jesse!

Dept. of Unfair - Move Tool is Insensitive

When they added the Guide Grid feature to Revit they made it possible to snap to Grid intersections (and Reference Planes) through a viewport. This means we can move a viewport into the same location from one sheet to the next based on an agreed grid intersection such, "A1 will be what we use as a reference location to put our floor plan views on the sheet the same way."

They added this after many years of hearing users complain about views not lining up on sheets. Me personally, I got over it early. Seemed to me that far fewer sheets were affected by this concern than the number of sheets that weren't. I don't mind having the feature but it just never bothered me. I could get things close enough that nobody would notice, especially working with real paper in hand. Granted it is easier to tell in the digital world "flipping" pdf pages or comparing a CAD file overlay. For me though, it didn't really amount to a hill of beans in the job trailer. As a contractor in the past I was more worried about information actually being on the sheet at all to be worried about whether they stacked from sheet to sheet exactly.

Oops I digress...

In order to make this possible they needed to make Revit more sensitive to the contents of the viewport when using the Move Tool. Unfortunately Revit seems to think we live in an orthogonal world because the only Grids or Reference Planes the tool "sees" are orthogonal ones. No arcs, no grids at an angle, sorry Charlie. Now it isn't hard to place a couple orthogonal Reference Planes somewhere or to choose a different Grid intersection perhaps but it would be nice if Revit was more malleable, enough to let us pick any intersection of Grids or Reference Planes.

From Autodesk's WikiHelp:

Item 7. Snap to the crop regions or datums in the viewports and move them into alignment with the guide grid lines to specify a precise location on the sheet. (bold emphasis mine)

This means we can forget about the datum stuff (Grids/Reference Planes) and use the Crop Region. Of course the Crop Region has to be visible to snap to it and unless you are using a Scope Box to manage the Crop Region (to keep them consistent for many views) it isn't really the most reliable reference point to use either. Here's a visual aid, a short video discussing it too.