IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

The Revit Architecture 2010 Ribbon

The Revit Architecture 2010 interface is designed for intuitive and efficient access to commands and views. It includes the Ribbon, Quick Access Toolbar, Application Menu, and Status Bar, which are common to newer versions of Autodesk and other software programs.

The Ribbon contains Revit Architecture tools in a series of tabs and panels. Selecting a tab displays a group or related panels.  The Panel contain a variety of tools, grouped by function.

 
 The ribbon has 3 types of buttons:

1. button: invokes a tool

2. drop-down button: contains a drop-down arrow that displays additional, related tools

3. split button: invokes a frequently used tool, or displays a menu that contains additional, related tools

A drop-down on a next to a Panel name is an expanded panel, will show related tools that can be pinned to keep open and unpinned to hide.

 
A Slannted Arrow head next to a panel name ,is a dialog launcher, will open a dialog box related to that tool.

When you select a command that creates new elements, the Ribbon switches to a contextual tab. The tab includes the Change Element Type selector and general commands for creating the element.

When you select an element in Revit Architecture, the Ribbon switches to a contextual tab that includes general editing commands, as well as those related to the element type. The Ribbon changes to a blueish color.

The Options Bar changes according to the selected command or element. For example, when the Wall command to active, it displays options for placing the wall.

To Change the Ribbon View State, Click the down arrow at the right of the Ribbon Tab.
The ribbon view state cycles through the following options:

1. Show Full Ribbon: Shows entire ribbon.

2. Minimize to Panel Tiles: Shows tab and panel labels.

3. Minimize to Tabs: Shows tab labels.

Ribbons in Sketch Mode is an environment in Revit Architecture that allows you to sketch elements whose size or shape cannot be determined automatically, for example when you create (or edit a sketch of) a roof or a floor. When you enter sketch mode, the Ribbon only displays the tools applicable for the type of sketch you are creating or editing.

The Ribbon change to a green color and you will see a Finish and Cancel button at the right end of the Ribbon.

 
 You can move panels from the Ribbon:

1. Click a panel label and drag the panel to a desired place on the ribbon

2. Click a panel label and drag the panel off the ribbon to the drawing area or the desktop. To return the panel to the ribbon, mouse over the panel to display a control in the upper-right corner, and click Return Panels to Ribbon.

 

True North in Revit

When you create a project in Revit Architecture, Revit Structure and Revit MEP, specify the project location on the globe using the nearest major city or the latitude and longitude. This project-wide setting is useful for generating location-specific shadows for views that use them, such as solar studies, walkthroughs, and rendered images.

You can also rotate a view to reflect True North (instead of Project North, which is the top of the view). This procedure ensures that natural light falls on the correct side of the building model to produce realistic shadows for solar studies, walkthroughs, and rendered images.

True North and Project North start off the same (pointing straight up). To establish the direction of True North, duplicate one of your floor plans (typically your site plan) and name it appropriately.

Edit the View Properties of the duplicated view and change the Orientation to True North.

 
Close the dialog and then on the Manage tab> Project Location Panel, click the Position drop-down>choose Rotate True North.

 
This command works like the normal rotate command. Simply click points on screen to indicate the appropriate rotation or type in the direction on the options bar.

Once you have established the rotation variation between True and Project North, you can see the angle in the Manage Place and Locations dialog from the Manage tab>Project Location tab>Location tool.

 
If you click the Place tab in this dialog, you can choose your geographic location from the City list. You also can change any plan view from Project to True North and vice-versa and the orientation of geometry shown in the view will change accordingly.

Enable shadows on the View Control bar to see accurate shadows for your location and date and time.

Controlling Visibility and Graphic Display of Elements Using Filters in Autodesk Revit

In Autodesk Revit Architecture, Revit Structure and Revit MEP you control visibility and graphic display of elements using Filters.

In any database system, a filter can be used to find a subset of a larger collection of items based on some criteria that the desired items (in the subset) share in common. For example, selecting all Doors in a model would give you every Door on all floors of all sizes. If however, you were interested in only the 3'-0" wide Doors, or just the Doors on the third floor, or even only the 3'-0" wide Doors that were also on the third floor, then you would need a tool to help you isolate just the Doors that met this criteria. This is what Filters accomplish in Revit. The Filter command allows us to create a criterion and then use it as a basis to modify the display of elements on screen in a particular view or views. The Filter feature is more advanced and offers a way to modify the display in a view in nearly limitless ways not limited to the display hierarchy alone.

Working with filters is a multi-step process. Naturally the first step is realizing that you have the need to filter something. Next, you use the Filter dialog to set up one or more filter criteria. However, simply creating filters is only the first step. Without applying your filters to the Visibility/Graphic Overrides dialog of a view, they do nothing in your project.

The potential of Filters is nearly limitless. Let’s look at a simple example. Suppose you have a project with doors that are fire rated. I want to see difference in graphics between fire rated doors and nonfire rated doors. Making such a variation in graphical display can be accomplished with Filters applied to the view Visibility/Graphics. The Filter dialog (View tab, Graphics panel) offers many options. On the left, you can create a new filter, select an existing one, rename, duplicate or delete them. The first filter criterion is the category or categories to which the filter will apply. If you select more than one category, the parameters that they share in common will appear on the right. On the right side, choose one or more parameters to filter by.

 

Next we add the filter in Visibility Graphics Override. Click View tab Graphics panel Visibility/Graphics, or type VV or VG to open the Visibility/Graphics dialog.Click View tabGraphics pane lVisibility/Graphics, or type VV or VG to open the Visibility/Graphics dialog. Click the Filters tab and click Add and select the filter created. Override the projection, surface, and cut line styles and projection patterns as necessary.

 

 You also can Check the Halftone option to make filtered objects appear at halftone, select or clear the Visibility check box to turn visibility of the filtered object on or off, Check the Transparent option to make filtered objects transparent.

 
The potential of Filters is limitless. Experiment with them and you find many uses just waiting to be tapped.