Mirroring workflow on the Ribbon UI

EDIT: As of 2010 SP3, the following is no longer a problem. Thanks for listening!

The mirror tool used to be awesome. You click the icon and it defaults to the Pick option. You changed your mind in the middle of the command? No problem…just click the pencil button on the Options Bar to draw your mirror axis.

In 2010, this beauty gets thrown out with the bath water. You change your mind in the middle of the command? Tough, start over…pick your elements from scratch and re-mirror with the correct option. Clearly a step backwards and frankly I’m tired of it! It can be easily corrected because a similar approach already exists when using the Dimension tool.

When mirroring, the Modify contextual tabs are obviously different than the Place Dimensions tab, and will further differ based on the combination of selected objects. Once you start the Mirror command, the panels grey out, but I suppose they could give us another panel with different mirror axis options or present us with the old buttons on the Options bar. Clearly, this is another UI problem that needs addressed.

Mirroring workflow on the Ribbon UI

Editing Linework

Objects in Revit are shown in a view based on the Object Styles settings. Each view can then have its own overrides as defined in the Visibility/Graphics dialog and finally, each object can also be overridden at the instance level.

Revit also allows us to further refine how the different object edges are represented by using the tool on the Modify tab. In essence, you select what line style you want a particular edge to be and simply click on it to override. In some cases you’ll notice a blue grip at the end of each overridden line, but in other cases you don’t get them.

What do the grips do? They let you refine even further! By moving them along the edge, you can define where you want the override to apply. In other words, you define the start and end of the override.

Here are the basic rules for grip availability:

• If the edge is a projected line, grips are available
• If the edge is a sectioned line, grips are not available

I don’t know about you, but I find myself needing grip control in section views all the time. The current implementation makes it unnecessarily difficult to embellish sections when trying to utilize the model elements. Instead you end up having to draft & mask over more than should be necessary because you cannot adjust linework extents for sectioned elements. Am I alone on this?

Editing Linework