Tag: grouping

Placing a Spot Dimension in a Detail Group

Luke Johnson

When in Edit Mode for a given Detail Group, the Spot Dimension tools are grayed out.

However, if you place the Spot Dimension OUTSIDE the Detail Group, and then ‘Add’ it to the Group – Revit is quite happy.  You can even place a Spot Coordinate in a Detail Group (in Plan View), copy the Group instance, and then drag the copied Group around with the Spot Coordinate continuously updating!

Here is a quick step-by-step:

  1. Exit the editing mode for the Detail Group
  2. Place the Spot Dimension (referencing an element inside the Detail Group)
  3. Edit the Group
  4. Use the ‘Add’ tool to add the Spot Dimension to the Detail Group
  5. Finish Group

 This works for Spot Coordinates in Plan View Detail Groups, and it works for Spot Elevations and Spot Slopes in Section / Elevation Detail Groups…

    Save an In-Place Family as an RFA for use in another project

    Luke Johnson

    Do you have some awesome in-place families that you would like to convert to normal Component families, so that you can load them into other projects?

    Here’s how:

    1. Open the Project containing the In-Place family
    2. Edit the In-Place family
    3. Select all of the elements in the family
    4. Group all of these elements using the Create Group tool.  Give the Group a name.
    5. Select the Group
    6. Do not Finish Editing the In-Place family yet!
    7. Go to the ‘R’ button (Application Menu) – Save As – Library – Group
    8. You will notice that the filetype is RFA!
    9. Save the Group somewhere.
    10. You Component Family IS the file that you just saved.

     I’m sure there are limitation to this method, but I think it is very cool.

    Here is a quick video:

     
    Credit for this tip – KarelCAD support document

    Re-ordering and re-grouping parameters for userfriendliness

    Luke Johnson

    So you have added a bunch of Shared Parameters to your Project, but you never bother to set the ‘Group Parameter under:’ property correctly…you are naughty, aren’t you?

    It can make using Revit a lot easier if you Group Parameters properly – its what revit wants you to do.

    How do you do it?  Quite simply:

    1. Manage – Project Parameters
    2. Select Parameter – Modify
    3. Change ‘Group Parameter under:’ property to something more appropriate.
    4. OK, OK etc
    Here is a quick video on how to do it:
    Annoyingly, you can’t change the grouping of parameters that are ‘built in’ to Revit.  It annoys me that ‘Drawn By’ is not grouped with Checked By, Approved By and Designed By on the Sheet Parameters:
    If you know how to fix this, please comment!

    Grouping sheets by Revision in Project Browser

    Luke Johnson

    I had a bit of a problem using Revit OOTB (out of the box) parameters to group sheets by Revision, so I did it super-quickly using a custom parameter.

    Here are the steps:

    1. Add a new custom parameter to sheets, such as ‘Sheet Revision Group’ or similar.
    2. Open a schedule that shows the Revision you would like to group, and add this parameter to the schedule.
    3. Modify the custom parameter on all the sheets to match the Revision (you can do this quickly by toggling the ‘Itemize each instance’ tick box).
    4. Now you can easily use this parameter to group your sheets by the Revision.

    Please note that this technique forms a ‘break’ between Revit native revision data and the custom parameter, so only use this technique if you understand this issue.

    I have provided a quick video of the technique: