Quick Access Toolbar

Having the tools you use on a regular basis in a quick and easy location is important to a streamlined production process. If you like using the visual tool icons rather than keyboard shortcuts, then the quick access toolbar could be your answer.

If you right click on a tool you use quite regularly will see the option to you can ‘Add to Quick Access Toolbar’. This will add the icon to the Quick access toolbar above. (To remove a tool from the Quick Access toolbar, just right click on the tool in the toolbar and you will have the option to remove.)

If you would like to show the Quick Access toolbar below the ribbon, just select the down arrow on the right hand side of the toolbar and you will notice there is an option to ‘Show Below the Ribbon’ 

Splitting Views using View Breaks

When you are creating details for your Revit project, you often find yourself in a situation where you want to create a full wall detail, without showing the boring bits in the middle.

Any view you have in Revit gives you the opportunity to split the view and not display pieces of the image.

To enable this view splitting, ensure that the view crop region is active and the Crop Region is visible. (In Properties)

If you select the crop outline of the view you will notice some break symbols on the vertical and horizontal edges. These are the ‘View Breaks’. If you select either of these symbols it will remove a portion of the view.

The gap is not how you would like the finished view to be represented, so if you select the crop region again, you have some movement arrows to adjust the crop regions into position by selecting and dragging.

The views can be amalgamated again by dragging them on top of one another, thus undoing the view break.

Hide at Scales Coarser Than

When you are creating views in your model, to ensure that you don’t have your section, elevation and callout markers appearing everywhere and on all of your views, an easy way of filtering out some of the markers is adjust the ‘Hide at scales coarser than’ parameter.

This parameter will allow the View markers to be hidden at larger scale views than the number specified, for example setting it up so that you don’t get your 1:10 views showing on your 1:100 plans.

Section Box Adjusting

The Section Box is a fantastic tool in Revit to create an isolated 3D model of elements in your project. If you are using an orthographic 3D view of you model the section box is fairly easy to control by using the grip arrows to drag in and out. In some perspective views it can be harder to adjust the section box.

Irrespective of you view type, if you need to fine tune the section box in a view you can open up floor plan view of you model and if you right click on the 3D view you would like to adjust there is an option to ‘Show Section Box’. This will show the outline of the Section Box and can be adjusted in the plan.

Remember about the Auto-Section Box Addin, a real time saver!!!

Schedule Calculated Value

It can be difficult add formulas to schedules when you are working with combinations of system and component families, as they are contained within the project only. You have an option for adding a formula in the schedule under the Calculated Value tool.

For this example I am just going to add a simple formula that calculates the total cost of certain walls. The Calculated Value is just the Area of the wall multiplied by the Cost /sqm.

You have had to add a ‘/1’ at the end of the cost to bring it back to the same units at the Area parameter. You can use the box with the 3 dots to pick the parameters, rather than having to type them all.

Now you schedule has the total cost of the walls.

Schedules for Editing

When you have multiple elements in your model to alter, one option you have is to create a schedule of the elements and edit the parameter that needs to be changed.

A schedule is a tabulated representation of the model, everything you change in a schedule will change the elements in the model.

The process is a little like creating a door or window schedule and then adding specific information, but you are just thinking a little outside the box and creating schedules for other building elements.

This process can work for all different types of Elements including 3D Modelled elements and 2D information as well. (Most parameters can be changed in a schedule, so may not, so you will have a little trial and error)

A great way to see what you are changing is to have the schedule view and some other graphical view of your model open, this can be a 3D view, plan, elevation or section, whatever is appropriate. Then tile the views. Whatever you highlight in your schedule gets highlighted in the model and then you can change values. (To multiple select in the schedule click and drag in the one motion)

So next time you have to change a large amount of parameters in the model, think if this can be done using a schedule. This might save you a lot of time.