We had a set of Detail Plan Views that had a graphic stutter, or jerkiness when zooming.  Basically, if you went one click on your mouse wheel, it would take a few seconds to zoom in and regenerate the view.

In the end, it turned out to be some shape edited floors, far outside the crop boundary, that were causing the problem.  Once I had added these to a saved Selection Set and then hidden it off, the zooming was smooth again.

A little story about Diagnosing the problem:

  • Checked in other plan views – these seemed to zoom ok
  • Changed View Templates
  • Changed View Type
  • Switched off Worksets until the problem was corrected – thus found that problem elements were in Workset1
  • Turned off all Model Categories – problem corrected.  Now, which category is causing the problem?
  • Turn on about 10 categories at a time – when the problem reappears, you just need to narrow it down a bit further
  • Problem category was Found – Floors
  • Now, go to a 3D view, isolate Floors and try to figure out which element is causing the problem.  In my case, I could safely hide off all of the shape edited floors.

RFO user revittotd has come across an interesting anomaly:

view full screen version

via thread at
The Trouble with Tribbles…

I recently observed this issue when a presenter in a Lab class could not select a work plane accurately.  He would hover over the correct plane, but when ‘clicking’ the mouse, a different plane would be selected.  Revit 2012 was being used on a laptop, with an external projector plugged in for the presentation.

I have a feeling that this issue is similar to one I have posted about previously, at this link.  Over at Do U Revit, a comprehensive set of comments may prove useful if you are trying to solve this problem.

Some potential fixes (from the abovementioned comments) may be to:

  • swap monitors from left to right in the Windows display properties
  • make the monitor that is running Revit the primary monitor

Of course, if all else fails:

  • run Revit in a single-display configuration if possible to avoid the issue

I have a few other ideas that I have not really tried for 2012, including:

  • make a new Windows user AFTER connecting the extra monitor or projector, then log in as this user and attempt to use Revit.
  • fully reset the UI and Revit registry data AFTER connecting the extra monitor, and then run Revit (risky).

The other important lesson is this – if you are going to be doing a presentation or tutoring session, TEST your proposed configuration prior to the session.  Five minutes of testing can save a lot of embarrassment!

If you select multiple views in the Project Browser in Revit 2011, how would you modify their common properties?

If you attempt to directly modify them in the open Properties palette, they are not modified. In fact, the only thing that is modified is the ‘active’ view – not the ones you have selected in the Project Browser.

The even weirder part is that the Properties palette shows a mixture of properties from the selected views in the Project Browsers AND the active view (which is not selected). Scary!

This is a dangerous little workflow anomaly. Keep it in mind until the Factory fixes this up.

Occasionally you may find that the Finish Sketch and Cancel Sketch buttons disappear from the Ribbon.

The easiest way to get out of this situation is to map a Keyboard Shortcut for these commands. You can do this at any point (even after they have disappeared from the Ribbon). Simply open the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ dialog, and type ‘Finish Sketch’ in the box.

Then just map a suitable shortcut, like ‘FS’, to the command. As soon as you press OK, you can now use this shortcut to get out of the editing mode.

One of our staff found a bug for Schedule editing in Revit 2010 64 bit. If modifying a Schedule (in our case a Door Schedule) and you change a ‘Type Property’ and then go straight to the ‘Close’ button in the Schedule (without changing cells or tabbing or anything), Revit will tell you “this will change all instances of this xxx type” and then if you click ‘OK’, Revit will crash.

Here are the steps to reproduce this issue (keep in mind that we are running Revit 64 bit on Vista 64 bit):

  1. Create a schedule that includes Type Properties that you can directly modify.
  2. Open the schedule.
  3. Modify the Type Property.
  4. Using your mouse, click the ‘x’ or Close button in the top right corner of the schedule window.
  5. Revit will provide you with a dialog box – Click ‘OK’.
  6. Revit crashes.

See if you can reproduce this.It would be wise to Save your project before trying!