Pesky filters

Recently I’ve come across an issue on various project files and have been unable to pinpoint a cause or figure out how to reproduce the problem on demand.

Basically in a workset enabled project, there are times when during a synchronization with the central file, filters get renamed and a number gets appended at the end. So Filtername becomes Filtername1. The requirement seems to be that there is more than one person working on the project and that the renamed filters are being used in some views where multiple users are making changes. If only one person is working in their local and synchronizing regularly, renaming does not occur.

A peculiar thing that happens in this case is that Revit issues the familiar yellow warning dialog while saving but this message is actually blank and goes away on its own almost instantly. Also, nothing is captured in the journal, which makes troubleshooting really difficult. This was filed with Autodesk Support but due to the difficulty in tracing the root cause, not much can be done about it.

If you have experienced this problem or have managed to put your finger on the cause, please send a comment or email me. Maybe we can provide enough data to uncover the culprit.

Pesky filters

Filters, View Overrides and Halftones

Here’s an example of something that seems to be broken. I created 2 floor types and 2 wall types, and called each one Object1 and Object2. Then I created a filter for the floor and wall categories, and filtered By Type = Object1. This way I could verify that the issue is not isolated to a single category. I assigned this filter to the Visibility/Graphics dialog, set an override for projection lines to Red, and the result is shown below:

 

Then I set a view override in addition to the above filter and made Floor projection lines as Blue:

 

Thus we can deduce that overrides are applied in this order

1. Filters
2. View Overrides

So far so good. Based on this order, one would assume that if I set an additional view override to Floors and Walls to Halftone, Object2 should halftone but Object1 should not, right?

 

Wrong! As you can see above, the halftone setting in the View Overrides is taking precedence over the filter. I’d say this is an inconsistency that needs fixed. Agree?

Filters, View Overrides and Halftones

Filtering application - now works on 64 bit!

Back in September, I wrote a post about a third party filter tool for Revit, called FilterTool 2009 by Jochen and Shenqiang from Toolbox4Revit.com. As a few of you found out, this version did not work on 64 bit XP or Vista. Well finally, the new version is out and they have added some great enhancements!

Remember two of my suggestions about grouping and distinguishing between model and detail lines of different styles? Guess what...that functionality is now in! This is a great little addition that I'm sure lots of you will find very useful. I know we needed to filter by line style and type several times in the past. And now that we can build selection filters, this tool will get used very often. Give it a try! I think it's great value for the money.

Filtering application - now works on 64 bit!

Custom application - Filtering

In a post last month, I suggested several enhancements to the filter tool in Revit, namely being able to view the family types and quantity of each category. A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by Jochen Reichert of Toolbox4Revit.com, who has developed such a tool utilizing Revit's API. I was very excited that my wish was granted in such a short time ;) Note to Autodesk: Users STILL want this to be in Revit's core functionality.

Jochen graciously gave me a license to test out and I really like this little gem. Installation was a snap and I didn't have to edit the Revit.ini file manually to get it to work. As with Revit add-ins, you can access it under the External Tools in the Tools pull-down. Now if only we could disable Revit's filter tool and make it point to this application, it would be awesome!

The application comes with a nicely explained and illustrated pdf document, which will install in the Program folder of your Revit Architecture directory. The application is very simple to use and quite self-explanatory. A feature I really like is the ability to save selection filters in your project which can be used later (persistent). Note that these filters don't save the actual selection set. So for example if you save a filter for Generic - 8" walls and you add more instances of this wall type to your project, when you use this filter later on, all Generic - 8" walls are selected.


Another really handy feature is how the filter tool groups objects by their associated/hosting level. This can be a huge time-saver when trying to clean up a model with objects hosted to the incorrect level and positioned "properly" by using lots of offsets. I had to do this manually not long ago and let me tell ya....it wasn't fun.


As always, I came up with a list of suggested future enhancements:

• What if the Selection Filters could be saved as view Filters? Building them through selections is a nice, interactive way and they could serve a dual purpose by also being used in the V/G dialog.
• It would be nice if lines are grouped by style. Currently we cannot do a "select all instances" for lines, so this feature would come in handy, especially if we could save selection filters.
• We cannot select detail lines independently from model lines, so if detail lines would group under "Not level based" or "View specific", while model lines would go under a "Workplane based" group (or if the workplane is set to a level, then perhaps they go under that level), that would be a huge asset to this tool.

I don't intend to uninstall this tool and I'm sure that if you check it out, you'll want to have it installed permanently. I'm sure Jochen doesn't like to hear me say that this should be standard Revit core functionality, but I truly believe it and in the meantime, it's great to see that 3rd parties can fill this gap and make some money in the process. Once we get this functionality in Revit, 3rd parties can continue focusing on other, more important plugins ;)

Custom application - Filtering

Selecting Elements

When you right-click on an object or a tag in Revit, one option is to Select All Instances. For some reason, even though it's in plain English, some users tend to think that only those instances in the current view will be selected. When Revit says "All", it means ALL! (in the entire project file)

So how do you select all instances within a view? It's a multi-step process, at least for right now.

1. First, do a Select All Instances on the object in question.
2. Now use the Isolate Elements command to only show the selected elements in your view.
3. Finally, window-select the visible objects in your view. The filter tool at the bottom-right corner of your view window should report the same amount of objects selected or less.

Doing a window-select on it's own does not give you enough filter granularity and will only show you the categories of the selected objects and the quantity of your selection. So if you have 20 types of casework, it'll show them all grouped under that category, which is not what we want to select. We want all instances of just one type selected.

Another little issue I ran across this past week...I wanted to select all instances of a type of casework and change an instance parameter. Once I selected all instances in a project, I noticed that the instance properties were greyed out. This happened because some of those instances lied within groups. To deselect the groups, I isolated all the selected instances in my view and hovered over the visible objects with my cursor. When a group was highlighted, I Shift+clicked to deselect it. Once all groups were removed from the selection, I was able to make the instance parameter changes. Later I edited the groups and made the same changes there too.

So, here are some suggestions to the Factory to make our lives easier:

• We need a "Select all instances in current view" option.
• We need the ability to expand the filter categories and reveal the different types in the selection. The filter tool has been enhanced in the 2009 versions, but has a way to go to be truly efficient.
• We need to be able to "Select all instances" on lines too!!
• We need the ability to easily remove elements that reside within groups from our selections. Currently, if you select instances that are within groups, those groups do not become part of the selection set. If they did, then perhaps it would be easier to remove them by going to the filter dialog and unchecking the"Detail Group" and/or "Model Group" categories, leaving only ungrouped instances selected.

I'm sure you have more enhancements in mind, so feel free to add your comments!

EDIT: Thanks a lot to "ada" (see comments) for pointing out that this technique doesn't work on dimensions. In fact, it doesn't work on any annotation object, since when you hide the referenced model element, the associated tag/dimension is hidden also. That should strengthen the argument for the need for a "Select all instances in View" command!

Selecting Elements