Revit 2015 R2 - Perspective View Changes

It is not uncommon for a new Revit user, that is already familiar with Sketch Up for example, to be a bit surprised that we can't do routine modeling work while using a perspective view, called a camera view. I liken Revit to having been raised by parents with different beliefs than other software's parents have. In this instance Revit's parents didn't think it was necessary or important to let their kid model around in perspective views. Most users react to this as if they've just found out their friend's parents ground them for practically any infraction. How sad, your parents are tough!!

Good news on this front, 2015 R2 begins reducing this restriction!

The following are available in perspective views now:

• Editing tools: Move, Align, Pin and Unpin
• Reset Target tool: Restores the position of the camera target to the center of the field of view
• Toggle between the perspective and parallel representations of the 3D view

Reset Target is a new button when the view's crop region (perspective views) is selected. It places the camera target back at the center of the crop region. It may be useful if the changes you made switching back and forth between view modes has altered the view in a confusing way.

Toggling between view modes is possible through the View Cube and right click. CLICK TO find out more about these enhancements.

The online help documentation specifically notes these items when switching from parallel to perspective view modes.

• If you add elements to the parallel view that are not supported by a perspective view (such as annotations or displacement sets), and select to toggle to the perspective view, a dialog displays.
  You have the option of duplicating the view without the non-supported elements and opening the duplicate view in perspective.
• The Toggle to Perspective 3D option is only available from the parallel view if the Crop Region Visible property is selected for the view.
• Some modes are not supported in the perspective view. For example, if you are in Reveal Constraints mode in the parallel view, this mode is automatically closed when switching to perspective.
• Changes made to the View Scale in the parallel view are reset when switching back to perspective.

It's not quite the 60's, the era of free modelling, but it's a start.

BIM is Full of Holes

I took Seth Godin's recent blog post title and plugged BIM in instead. His post said "Life is Full of Holes". His perspective and observations are always welcome and happily sometimes (often) they plug right into my own life and work.

In particular these lines resonated with me and what a friend once essentially asked his company during their deliberations regarding "To do Revit or not to do Revit"...

Seth wrote: "I don't think the right question is, "is the path perfect?" It's probably, "Is this somewhere I'd like to go?"

In the context of Revit the question is, "Do we want to continue to work this way or that way". Do we want to keep doing what we already do or see where and how we can benefit from using Revit instead?

The Revit path isn't perfect, no "path" is... but do we need to keep waiting for it to be perfect, or even have that expectation? Keep in mind it never WILL be perfect...nothing is.

Stop prevaricating about the bush, make a decision!