Missing panels in contextual Modify tab

This has been happening sporadically in Revit 2011 and I believe it’s been fixed in 2012. Basically you would be editing a profile sketch such as a wall through Edit Profile, you switch your view to a standalone RFA family and upon switching back to the project environment, the contextual panels disappear and the contextual Modify tab switches to the usual Modify tab only, leaving you stuck in sketch mode with no apparent way back to the project.

The first way out is through assigning a keyboard shortcut for Finish Edit Mode: all 8 of them in 2011 (and 9 in 2012!). Honestly, I think there should only be one as the user doesn’t care which particular sketch mode is active: they just want to learn one shortcut that gives them the ability to finish any sketch mode. I sympathize with the technical reasons why there’s more than one, but if that is truly necessary, why make them look identical with no way to distinguish them except through endless hours of trial end error?

The second method makes the panels reappear so you can continue editing the sketch or finish/discard; here’s how you do it:

1. Start a new family, pick any one;
2. Load it into your project;
3. Once you get the error that it cannot be placed in this mode, hit Ctrl+z to undo.

For some reason the panels come back. Obviously, do not switch back to the open families or you’ll lose them again! This has happened to me several times now, especially when I open a profile family to “steal” the linework and paste it into the profile sketch of a wall. So if this happens again in 2012 in one of the 9 sketch modes, one of these methods might help you get out of a bind.

Missing panels in contextual Modify tab

Properties Palette annoyance

Sorry, another post to highlight something that’s been bothering me.

A year ago on Inside the Factory, a post discussed Modeless properties. One of the topics was that of User/Focus update. I thought that committing changes once the mouse is moved out of the properties palette was a brilliant idea. As I tested the new features in November, I thought it worked great. However now that I’ve been working with it for a while, I’ve changed my mind. Unlike Steve Stafford who is quite happy with the palette!

I’m finding that I keep losing focus when trying to edit a parameter. Usually once you click in a list box, you naturally move the mouse sideways to make sure the cursor doesn’t block what we’re about to type (at least I find myself doing that a lot when working in any software). Unfortunately if you move the cursor outside the palette’s boundaries, it commits changes immediately, and the input box you just clicked in, loses focus. At least when selecting something from a list box, you can pick the scroll, hold down the mouse button and move the cursor outside of the palette boundaries up and down, while still retaining focus until a selection is made.

At first I loved the above behavior, but now that I find myself losing focus constantly, it is growing to be very annoying. Sure I can adapt, but I think a better solution is to commit the changes once the focus is moved away from the palette, such as when clicking the next command on the ribbon, dropping your selection by picking other objects or clicking on an empty spot on the canvas. These are natural clicks that a user makes, so it wouldn’t increase the click count.

I know a lot of you like it the way it is but I just had to state my feelings as it’s not going away for me. I’ve held on posting about this for a while to see if I would get used to it and obviously I have not! Here is a summary of my thoughts together with some other possible solutions:

• Commit changes when a new selection is made or the current selection is dropped such as when clicking an empty spot on the canvas. Say you select a door and make changes to its parameters. Now you pick a wall; since the selection changed, the door parameter edits would be committed.
• Commit changes when a new command is invoked. This seems quite logical as now focus has moved away from the palette, as if saying “Hey Revit, as you can see I’m done editing parameters...commit my changes!”
• Define a distance in pixels that the cursor has to travel past the palette extents before changes are committed.
• To satisfy a wider audience, how about controls/settings to customize the commit behavior: current behavior or per my above suggestions?

Anyone else out there having similar thoughts or other ideas?

Properties Palette annoyance

UI annoyance

There’s no doubt that the 2011 UI has been a positive improvement over the 2010 Ribbon. But there’s one thing that has been really annoying me in this iteration of the Properties Palette: selecting a type when in sketch mode for system families such as floors, ceilings, stairs, etc.
In 2010, you had a button on the ribbon to change the properties of the element you were sketching:

This would open the Instance Properties dialog, from where you could change the Type as desired.
In 2011 things get confusing in my opinion. There is no Properties button anymore, so you might think that it’s just a matter of picking the correct type from the Properties Palette’s Type Selector. Wrong. You have to use the Edit Type button.

This will open the Type Properties dialog where you can then change the Type as before.
One could argue that the terminology got better in 2011 as you go to the Type Properties to change the Type. The number of clicks has remained the same. However I’m expecting to be able to change the type in the palette’s Type Selector rather than having to click Edit Type. After all I’m just selecting a type in most cases without actually doing any editing. Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but I guess it bothered me enough to say something about it! What’s your take?

EDIT: This was fixed in Revit 2012. Thanks for listening Factory!

UI annoyance

Online help

Oh boy I’ve slacked. Sorry, but I’ve been very busy. I promise to keep writing, even though frequency is an issue at the moment with so many personal things going on.

Enough excuses, let’s talk about Online Help. Autodesk recently introduced an online version of the documentation for all 3 flavors of Revit. You can find direct links to them on this blog’s sidebar.

I tried using it this week to help a colleague through email by sending a link to a topic (Note Blocks). It’s very useful to have this tool, however it’s lacking an important piece of functionality: sharing the link easily! Unless I’m missing something, it seems very convoluted and can surely be improved a lot. Think about when you share a link from Google maps or Bing.

Right now you have to search for the topic and then find it in the contents. Since the last time I tried it, a new button showed up at the top-right (or I missed it the first time), which opens up the topic in the contents. So the typical workflow goes something like this:

1. On the left, click Search
2. Type the topic and click the Search button
3. Select from the list and the topic opens on the right
4. At the top right, click the button to open the topic in the contents
5. Alternatively you can navigate to a topic directly from the contents.

But now what do you do? The easiest (relatively speaking) way I found is to right-click on the topic in the contents and open in a new tab or window, so you can then copy & paste the link/hyperlink into an email or document. But wait!! If you’re using IE7 (not sure about IE8), it seems to get into a vicious circle and it doesn’t finish opening the topic. So this seems to only be possible with other browsers such as Firefox. So instead when you right click, go to Properties and copy & paste the address shown at the bottom. In a world dominated by cool gadgets and the iPhone, this is not very elegant.

Online help

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

More on the UI – Text Leaders

EDIT: As of Revit 2011, the following has been solved. Thanks for listening!

Minor thing perhaps, but they all add up, don’t they?

The text leader option buttons in 2010 can be a lot better. First off, it’s hard to visually tell the difference between them and you have to read the label. The old ones were better at communicating their function.

Location is also an issue. Why stack them? It’s not intuitive at all. If you have left and right options, place them in left & right positions and not top and bottom!

Finally, if you’re reading this post, make sure to visit this other post and submit your feedback immediately. You’ll be helping yourself and others as well.

PS: Oh look! Seems like better leader icon placement is in the works. However, that ‘A’ is obnoxiously big and distracting. Make it smaller please!

More on the UI – Text Leaders

Revit 2010 – UI oversight?

EDIT: As of Revit 2011 the issue below is no longer a problem thanks to the new Properties Palette. Thanks Factory!

Prior to 2010, when you selected one or multiple views in the Project Browser, you were able to click the Properties button to bring up the View Properties dialog. However in 2010, there is no Properties button on the Options bar and no context menu is activated when views are selected. The View Properties button in your QAC stays grayed out nonetheless, so was this an oversight? I tend to think it was.

However, don’t freak out. The View Properties are still accessible via the right-click context menu.

Revit 2010 – UI oversight?

Places

I’m finally back from going places…slowly :) So this post about “Places” seems timely. Now that I’m going to start working on a project in 2010, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of constructive criticism on the UI and other things.

This isn’t a new issue, but something that should have been fixed a long time ago. And if Autodesk’s main focus for the 2010 line was the UI…how on earth do you let something like this slip?

Some versions ago, we got “Places” in the Save and Open dialogs. Big deal, right? They have existed in other applications for quite some time, such as in Autocad. As is often the case, we get a half-baked solution in Revit.

Places are stored in 2 locations: the Revit.ini file and the Registry. Links stored in the Places dialog are stored in both the Revit.ini file and the Registry. Links added via Tools>Add Current Folder to Places or Right-Click>Add Current Folder are only stored in the Registry. This allows firms to push certain Places to all users through the Revit.ini file, while also allowing each user the ability to add their own unique links directly from the dialogs, which get stored in the Registry only.

What’s really annoying is the fact that you cannot rename the Place inside of the dialog if you add it via Tools>Add Current Folder to Places or Right-Click>Add Current Folder, since these do not show in the Places dialog. So imagine you want to add a link to 3 projects and they all follow your firm standards. There is a good chance the folders are named the same (say, “Central File”). So now I get 3 shortcuts for 3 unique projects with the same name and I cannot edit it. Brilliant eh? Oh, in Autocad you can rename the link straight through the UI in the dialog (right-click and select “rename”). This option does not exist in Revit.

However it’s possible if you edit the registry entry directly. Please be careful when doing this! Below is an image from a Vista 64 machine, so if you’re running a 32 bit OS, the location might be slightly different. Simply rename the value of the key to what you want it and restart Revit to see the changes.

Come on Factory, how hard can this be to fix once and for all?

Places

Revit 2010 to ship with Classic UI

I’ll probably get in trouble for divulging this information, but I’m very excited about some last minute changes to Revit 2010. The new Ribbon interface will come with the option to change it to Classic Mode and we will have a couple of additional tabs and buttons.

But the Factory didn’t stop there: they gave use new revamped text tools that will be the envy of all text editing features out there. I’m finding it hard to contain my excitement! We should be getting Revit 2010 soon and I can’t wait to take advantage of these great features. Here’s a sneak peak:

EDIT: What started as a pure joke turned out to be true. Psychic? Absolutely...not! But hey, I'll take credit anyway ;) So to enable Classic mode, follow this link. To make it easier to switch back and forth, use this utility, courtesy of Greg at Revit3d.com.

Revit 2010 to ship with Classic UI

Sheet List Gotchas

Don't you love it at the end of a job, when everything seems to go wrong (Murphy's law anyone?), PM's start blaming Revit? "These notes aren't showing up! (found out later they were deleted)....These windows are not printing! (again, deleted).....9 MEP sheets won't show up in the Sheet List! That's it....we're re-typing the sheet list in a text box!".

"Wait! Did you check if the "Appears in Drawing List" parameter is checked for the missing sheets?", asks Dave. "Of course they're checked!", answered Courtney in disgust. I'm kidding, she typed it nicely :)

So I looked at the file and I found nothing wrong. I quickly created a sheet list and it reported 124 sheets. Next I linked this project in another file, created a sheet list and it still reported 124 sheets. Eventually it turned out to be just as originally expected: unchecked parameter. Hold on, there is a lesson to be learned, which doesn't involve me grinning and singing "I told you so", because that would be mean.

Now to the serious part. What happened is that when all sheets were selected and the properties box was accessed, the user observed that the checkbox was in fact checked. Now let's see if you can spot the issue:



Do you notice it's greyed out? The user thought it was read-only and so she didn't think twice about it. Unfortunately, in the world of Revit, this instance parameter is usually not greyed out and in this case it just means that some selected sheets have a different value than what's shown. In fact, you can click one time on the checkbox and it will no longer be greyed out. Now all selected elements will have the parameter checked. To me, this is a User Interface problem. Here's what we are used to seeing when selected elements have different values within the Windows OS (such as selected files with different attributes):

Ah yes, one more thing that needs improving!

Sheet List Gotchas