Читать книгу Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2016 - Krygiel Eddy - Страница 22

The road to mastering Autodesk^® Revit^® Architecture software will always include reinforcement of fundamental skills. Just as an accomplished musician will practice her scales, here you will “practice” by reviewing the fundamental selection and editing tools throughout the Revit Architecture program. There are many tools that can assist you in refining your models and project designs. Some are simple geometry-editing functions, whereas others possess more powerful capabilities.

In this chapter, we’ll review these tools and provide some exercises for you to remain productive. In this chapter, you’ll learn to:

● Select, modify, and replace elements

● Edit elements interactively

● Use other editing tools

● Create site context for your project

Selecting, Modifying, and Replacing Elements

Knowing how to select, modify, and replace elements efficiently is fundamental to working productively in Revit software. These interface operations are the foundation on which you will build skills to create and edit your project models. In the following sections, we will review methods for selecting, filtering, and modifying properties.

Selecting Elements

Revit was one of the first programs that had the ability to pre-highlight elements as you hovered the mouse pointer over them, before actually clicking to select. Not only does this give you a clear idea of what you are about to select, but it also displays information about that object in the status bar and in a banner near the mouse pointer. When you hover over an element, it pre-highlights; click the highlighted element and it turns blue, indicating that it is selected.

Once an element is selected, the ribbon changes to Modify mode, where consistent editing tools are located on the left side and context-sensitive tools appear to the right. Notice the subtle differences in the ribbon, as shown in Figure 3.1, when a roof, wall, and floor are selected.

Figure 3.1 The right end of the Modify tab changes based on the element that is selected: (a) the Modify | Roofs tab; (b) the Modify | Walls tab; (c) the Modify | Floors tab.

CHANGING SELECTION COLORS

You can customize the default colors for selection, highlighting, and alerts to your own color palette. To do this, click the Application menu and select Options. In the Options dialog box, select the Graphics option on the left to edit the settings for colors.

You can select elements in many ways:

Add or Subtract You can build a selection of individual elements by using the Ctrl and Shift keys on your keyboard. Hold down the Ctrl key while picking to add elements, and hold down the Shift key while picking to remove elements. Notice that the mouse pointer will indicate a plus (+) when you hold the Ctrl key and a minus (–) when you hold the Shift key.

Window To select a large number of elements in a view window, you can click and drag the mouse to form two different types of selection windows. Click and drag from left to right, and only the elements completely within the window will be selected – this implied window is displayed as a solid line. Click and drag from right to left, and any element within or crossing the window will be selected – this implied window is displayed as a dashed line. To activate either window-selection tool, you must begin by clicking in a blank area (not on an element) within the view window.

Chain Chain-select is an intelligent method for selecting connected elements such as walls, lines, sketch segments, and line-based components. To activate this mode, hover your mouse over (but don’t click) one linear element that is connected to several other linear elements. While the element is pre-highlighted, press the Tab key once and the connected elements will be pre-highlighted. You can then click to select the chain of elements. When selecting objects, use the Tab key to cycle through all available objects near your mouse pointer. If a floor edge happens to be near the edge of a wall that you are trying to chain-select, you can skip the chain of walls and select the floor. Be sure to look at the status bar; it will indicate “Chain of walls or lines” when you have selected correctly.

Select Previous Command A little-known feature allows you to select elements you had previously selected. Either right-click and choose Select Previous from the context menu or press Ctrl and the left-arrow key on your keyboard.

Selection Options

You have the ability to choose elements that will be included or excluded when you click on elements in a model. There are two ways to adjust these settings, as shown in Figure 3.2: Click the drop-down menu under the Modify button in the ribbon, or use the icons at the right end of the status bar. Note that the icons in the status bar will change slightly to indicate the status of each option. When a mode is disabled, a small red X will be displayed on the icon. One of these selection options is Select Elements By Face, which allows you to select elements simply by picking any face of the element.

Figure 3.2 Use selection options to avoid picking elements, such as links or pinned elements. These options are found in the Select expanded panel (a) and the status bar (b).

Filtering Your Selection

Once you have elements selected, a count of selected objects is displayed at the right end of the status bar. You can also filter the selection into object categories by clicking the Filter icon in the status bar or ribbon. This tool allows you to select large numbers of elements and then focus your selection by removing categories you don’t need, as shown in Figure 3.3. For example, if you window-select an entire floor plan, you will have a selection set of many different categories. Using the Filter tool, you can limit the selection to just the Doors category – or perhaps Doors and Door Tags.

Figure 3.3 Use the Filter dialog box to fine-tune your selections.

You can also use the Properties palette as a filter; see the section “Using the Properties Palette” later in this chapter for more information.

Using Selection-based Filters

If you need to save a selection of elements for future editing, you can save a selection-based filter. When you have a number of elements selected, click Save in the contextual tab of the ribbon and a named selection set will be created in the active project model. To load or edit any saved selection-based filter, go to the Manage tab in the ribbon and locate the Selection panel. Click the Load button to activate any of the saved selection sets, and then you can use other tools such as Temporary Hide/Isolate to continue your task work.

Selecting All Instances

Another fast and powerful method for selecting objects is the Select All Instances function. When you right-click a single object in the drawing area or a family in the Project Browser, the Select All Instances tool gives you two options: Visible In View or In Entire Project. Selecting the Visible In View option will select only those items you can see in the current view. This will not select elements that have been either temporarily or permanently hidden in the view.

Use the In Entire Project option carefully because you could modify elements in many places that you did not intend to change. Always remember to look at the selection count in the status bar when you use Select All Instances. Here are some common situations where you might use this tool:

● View titles – when updating graphics

● Walls – when switching from generic to specific types

● Title blocks – moving from design to detail documents

● Viewports – useful when trying to purge unused viewports

Note that Select All Instances does not work on model lines or symbolic lines. This limitation exists because lines are not only drawn in project views; they are integral parts of other objects such as filled regions and shaft openings.

Using the Properties Palette

The Properties palette is a floating palette that can remain open while you work within the model. The palette can be docked on either side of your screen, or it can be moved to a second monitor. You can open the Properties palette by using one of the following methods:

● Click the Properties icon in the Properties panel of the Modify tab in the ribbon.

● Select Properties from the context menu.

● Press Ctrl+1 or PP on your keyboard.

As shown in Figure 3.4, the Type Selector is located at the top of the Properties palette. When placing elements or swapping types of elements you’ve already placed in the model, the palette must be open to access the Type Selector.

Figure 3.4 The Properties palette contains the Type Selector (a) and is used to set view properties when no objects are selected.

When no elements are selected, the Properties palette displays the properties of the active view. If you need to change settings for the current view, make the changes in the Properties palette and the view will be updated. For views, you do not even need to use the Apply button to submit the changes – simply move the mouse out of the Properties palette, and the changes will automatically be accepted.

CUSTOMIZING THE APPLY BUTTON BEHAVIOR

The behavior of the Apply button in the Properties palette can be modified by editing the Revit.ini file. If you want to disable the automatic application of settings when you move the mouse pointer from the palette into the drawing area, add the following code to the Revit.ini file:

[UserInterface]DisableMppAutoApply=1

If the bracketed text [UserInterface] already exists in the Revit.ini file, simply add DisableMppAutoApply=1 below it. You should restart the application after making any changes to the Revit.ini file.

Finally, you can also use the Properties palette as a filtering method for selected elements. When you select elements from different categories, the drop-down list below the Type Selector displays the total number of selected elements. Open the list and you will see the elements listed per category, as shown in Figure 3.5. Select one of the categories to modify the parameters for the respective elements. This process is different from the Filter tool in that the entire selection set is maintained, allowing you to perform multiple modifying actions without reselecting elements.

Figure 3.5 Use the Properties palette to filter selection sets.

Matching Properties

Located on the Modify tab of the ribbon in the Clipboard panel, the Match Type Properties tool allows you to select one element and apply its type and instance properties to other elements of the same category. Once you select one element, the brush icon near the mouse pointer appears filled. Each subsequent pick on elements of the same category will replace the selected element with the properties of the first element picked. Clicking in an open space will clear the brush icon and allow you to pick a new source object without restarting the command.

If you want to use the Match Type Properties tool for multiple objects in a more controlled manner, click the Select Multiple button in the contextual tab of the ribbon after the source object is selected. Proceed to use any of the usual selection methods described earlier in this chapter. When your selection is complete, click the Finish button on the ribbon.

Be careful when using this tool with walls, because not only does it change the wall type, it also changes the top and bottom constraints of the walls being matched. One best practice for changing wall types without affecting height constraints is to pick a wall and use the Type Selector to modify its type.

Using the Context Menu

The context menu that appears when you right-click in the view window contains several options. You can activate the last command or select from a list of recent commands, as shown in Figure 3.6.

Figure 3.6 Run recent commands from the context menu.