Tag: Highlight in Model

Two Secrets about Revit Schedules, Closed Worksets, and Highlight in Model

Luke Johnson

When working with a large project, you may often close all or most Worksets for performance reasons.

Secret #1

Did you know that objects still show in Schedules when the Workset is closed? And even if the Visible in all views checkbox is unticked?

Additionally, the Schedules dialog does not give us an easy method to filter by Workset. Sometimes this results in some weird workarounds like using Dynamo to copy the Workset name to a parameter in each element (yes, I have seen this on real projects).

But what happens if we try Highlight in Model now, with these elements on closed worksets?

Secret #2

Interestingly, Revit will immediately and transparently open the Workset that the object resides on. This happens even if Revit can’t find the object in a view (such as because the Workset is set to be invisible in all views). You will not be warned or asked about this ‘open Workset’ action.

This automatic action does not create an entry in the Undo list, and therefore you must manually open the Worksets dialog and close the Workset yourself.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this is desired functionality or not? But it is definitely something to be aware of when working with Revit Schedules, Closed Worksets, and the Highlight in Model button.

How To Select All Types of All Curtain Walls at Once in Revit

Luke Johnson

Curtain Walls in Revit are strictly a Family of the Walls Category. Then you have Types for each type of Curtain Wall. What if you want to select all Curtain Walls at once? You can’t multi-select types in the Project Browser to do this, but…

You can make a suitable Schedule to do it. Here’s how:

  1. Make a new Wall Schedule
  2. Only add the Family data field
  3. In Sorting / Grouping tab, Sort by: Family and untick ‘Itemize every instance’
  4. Now, in the schedule, click inside the Curtain Wall cell, and
  5. Use Highlight in Model to select them all

You could then use Save Selection, or Temporarily Isolate Elements in View, depending on what you want to do next.

Finding Something that is Hidden by Element using a Schedule

Luke Johnson

Using Schedules, you can usually use Highlight in Model to find an element (or group of elements) from a schedule row.

However, this does not work if the element is hidden in the only view that it is instantiated in – for example, a single Generic Annotation entry in a Note Block (Schedule).  Revit will not be able to find the element.

One workaround – interestingly, selecting a Schedule row actually selects the object/s in Revit, but at least in my configuration (Properties Palette on second monitor), it does not show the Properties in the Palette for that object while the Schedule view is active.  However, you can:

  1. Select the schedule row
  2. Switch to another view (for example, a 3D view)
  3. The Properties Palette has now updated to show the properties for the Element!
  4. You can trigger normal commands – such as IDs of Selection or Save Selection

Another workaround:

  1. Install RevitLookup
  2. Select the row in the Schedule
  3. Revitlookup – Snoop Current Selection… (this will give you Element ID and other info)

Finding an Object you have Selected

Luke Johnson

While you can use Highlight in Model from a Schedule, there is no similar command relating to a ‘current selection’.  If you have somehow selected an object and want to “find” it so you can actually see it, what can you do?

This:

  1. Select the object
  2. Manage – IDs of Selection
  3. Ctrl+C (copies the ID)
  4. Manage – Select by ID
  5. Ctrl+V (pastes the ID)
  6. Don’t press OK, instead
  7. Click Show.  You can cycle through various views by pressing Show multiple times.
To speed this process up, map some keyboard shortcuts to IDs of Selection and Select by ID.