To Pin or Unpin? that is the Revit Question

Following on from several recent posts about 'Pinning' elements in Revit, there are a few more subtleties to mention.  There are also some exceptions to the general rule of not being able to edit pinned elements.

Refer to these other posts on Revit Pins:

• The Revit Pin Icon
• Selecting Pinned Elements in Revit
• Revit Chain-Pins

Modifying Pinned Elements

A pinned element cannot be moved or rotated, but it can be copied

• If you try to move a selection that has any user-pinned elements, Revit will attempt to move them all (graphically showing the move) then warn you that they cannot be moved – so it puts them back and nothing happens.  This is a time-waster, so it is better to check for pin icons before moving large selections - and use the selection filter to check for hosted subcategories. 
• NB. It is not sensible to just click on the unpin icon on the ribbon before moving the selection - if you had any curtain walls or handrails, it would also unpin all the chain-pinned (type-driven hosted) curtain grids, panels, mullions and handrail supports - thus destroying the integrity of the model.

A pinned element cannot normally be deleted;

• If you try to delete a selection that has any pinned elements, Revit will behave quite differently to trying to move them:  If some elements in your selection are pinned, and some not, it will delete the unpinned elements and warn you about not deleting the pinned ones
• Revit will warn you about what is happening, but it is sensible to stop and think about what it has just done - and your next steps:  The undeleted elements are no longer selected, so it may be tricky to reselect the same ones?

Modifying Unpinned Elements

Once an element has been unpinned, you might think that it could be freely edited - but of course that is not true of 'Chain-Pinned' or type-driven hosted elements such as curtain panels, grids & panels.  there are some tricky rules and exceptions here:

Deleting Chain-Pinned Elements

• Unpinned type-driven Curtain Wall Mullions can be deleted;
• Unpinned type-driven Curtain Wall Grids cannot be deleted (but segments can be 'removed', laboriously, one by one);
• Unpinned type-driven Curtain Panels cannot be deleted - but you can change them to an 'Empty System Panel' (if you haven't purged the last type from your project, that is;  if you have purged it, you can't just create a new type of empty system panel, you have to copy one from elsewhere);
• Unpinned Railing Handrail supports can be deleted

Moving Chain-Pinned Elements

Chain-Pinned elements can only be moved within the constraints of their relationship to the parent element.  For example:

• Unpinned type-driven Curtain Wall Grids can be moved in one direction only;
• Unpinned type-driven Curtain Wall Mullions and Panels cannot be moved except by changing their properties, such as Offset;
• Unpinned Railing Handrail supports can be moved along the handrail - but there are some extreme weird behaviours when you try to do this.

Editing Chain-Pinned Elements

 The only Chain-Pinned elements that can be edited after unpinning are curtain panels – using the ‘Edit In-Place’ functionality.  In fact this allows you to do some crazy stuff with panels, which is quite surprising given all the other restrictions that prevent you from creating buildable elements!

Editing Pinned Elements

You would think that you cannot edit any pinned elements, but you would be wrong!

Floors (and other sketch based elements)

Pinned floors cannot be directly edited – the Edit icon is greyed out

Pinned floors can be modified (without editing the boundary) – by moving associated walls, depending on how the floor edges were defined:

• If the floor edge is defined by ‘Pick Wall’, the floor edge will move with the wall, even when the floor is pinned

• If the floor edge was done using ‘Pick Line’ or just drawing a line on/near the wall, when the wall is moved, the floor edge may still move with the wall, even if the sketch line was not locked to the wall.  The rules are not clear on this.

• This happens even if the floor sketch lines themselves are pinned when editing the floor. 

•  If a floor is moved, any pinned sketch boundary lines will just move with the whole floor - rendering the pin command inside a sketch pretty useless.

• Other pinned sketch-based components such as roofs, ceilings etc behave like floors.

This means that Wall Associations are stronger than pins in Revit.

Moves With Nearby Walls

An element that has been pinned, and has its property 'Moves With Nearby Elements' ticked will completely ignore the pin and move when a nearby wall moves

Wall associations win again!

Groups

Pinned Groups can be edited (without unpinning) - this is not the same behaviour as floor sketches.  However, it is not a bad thing in itself, as it means you can pin all groups all the time.

• Pinned elements inside a group will be moved or deleted when the parent group is moved or deleted, without so much as a 'By your leave'.

Properties

Instance & Type properties of pinned elements are generally editable - this means that such things as Base level or offset could be changed, thus rendering the 'Pin' less effective than you thought.

Modifying Pinned Datums

When a datum element (grid, level or reference plane) is pinned, you cannot change its 3D extents - not surprisingly.

• However, you can change its 2D extents in each view - which is a jolly good thing, because you can pin them, and leave them pinned!

Section Line

When a section line is pinned, you cannot change either its 3D or 2D extents.  In fact it does not display the extents or depth of view in plan when you select it.  This is an immensely frustrating and dangerous inconsistency in Revit.  It really ought to behave just like datums so that you could change its 2D extents, and at least see its depth of view - it is ironic that you can change the depth of view of a pinned section using the properties dialog box.

As soon as you unpin the section, you can adjust 2D, 3D extents and depth of view graphically in plan.  The big danger here is that you might forget to repin the section line, and some other fool may then move or delete your section line (along with all its carefully lined up 2D annotation).

For this reason it is wise to use the pin icon on the section line itself to unpin it - that way it retains the unpinned icon as a reminder to repin it immediately afterwards [If you use the ribbon unpin icon, it does not retain the unpinned icon on the section line itself]

Please go to the Revit Ideas forum and vote for 'Allow us to change 2D extents of pinned sections'

I am sure there are plenty of other examples of pinned elements in Revit that can be edited when you do not expect to be able to do so (or vice versa).

Accurately Rotate a Section in Revit

When you have a non-orthogonal building model in Revit, you often need to create sections (or elevations) at various angles other than orthogonal.  Normally you would want sections to be perpendicular/parallel to the angled model elements - the image above shows a section somewhat off parallel (much exaggerated version of a typical example where it may be slightly off).

If the section is not exactly perpendicular (or parallel) to objects in the model you can encounter some very frustrating problems:

• You may not be able to dimension sectioned elements
• 2D Symbolic lines in families may not show up (eg. door swing in elevation)

If you try to rotate the section to make it exactly perpendicular (or parallel) to objects in the model, it is not as easy as you might expect:

• One thing to avoid is measuring an angle and then typing in the measured angle during the rotate process - it is never accurate enough, even if you use several decimal points.  Revit is extremely fussy about this - even a difference in angle of 0.000001 degrees may be enough to play havoc with dimensions and symbolic lines.
• It is much more accurate to rotate by snapping start and end rotation points to the section to be rotated and some other reference element.  The other problem you will encounter is an inability to snap to section lines.

Workaround

The trick here is two preparatory steps

• Create a reference plane snapped to the section tail end, and exactly parallel to the angled wall
• temporarily turn off the section markers at the ends of the section line - use the little cycle symbols et each end of the section.  Then you can accurately snap to the section line when rotating. 

 

To rotate the section:

• During the rotate command, snap the centre of rotation to the point where the reference plane and section tail end meet (they must meet exactly)
• Snap the start of the rotation to the section head end
• Snap the end of the rotation to the other end of the reference plane

The section should end up exactly perpendicular (or parallel) to objects in the model.  Unfortunately the annotation on the section will have moved (much exaggerated in this example), so you may need to do some tidy up, and replacement of dimensions.

• Don't forget to turn the section head/tail marker back on.

You should now be able to dimension to sectioned elements, and the 2D symbolic lines in families should now be visible.

It is your call as to whether it is worth rotating the section line or just create a new section - it all depends on how much annotation there is, and how often the section has been referenced in other views.

Once you have the section oriented exactly right, you surely don't want to lose it, so most likely you will pin it in place.  Revit is very annoying in that you cannot change the 2D extents of a pinned section (as you can with datums like grids).  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to pin a rotated section and have it never move again, but still be able to adjust its 2D extents per view, without unpinning it.  If you would like that, please go to the Revit Ideas forum and vote for 'Allow us to change 2D extents of pinned sections'


[Edit:  Now we have a new way to do this in Revit 2019.1, which has an 'Align Section' functionality, using the existing 'Align' command. ]

The Revit Pin Icon

So you think you know what the pin icon in Revit looks like, and exactly what it means?  Think again - the icon actually changes all the time, depending on the situation and sequence of events.


Most elements can be 'Pinned' in Revit to make them more stable:  when an element is pinned in Revit, it cannot be moved, deleted or edited without unpinning it – but there are exceptions . . .

The Ribbon Pin Icons

When you select an element in Revit, the ribbon displays a 'Modify' panel with two icons for pinning/unpinning (top right of the panel):

These icons are used as command functions to operate on the selected element(s); they also indicate what command is possible on those elements - in effect, showing the current 'pin state' of the  element, but in a confusing way:  the greyed out icon indicates the current state.

• The lower right 'Pin' icon will be available if the element is not pinned

• If the element is already pinned, it will be greyed out

 

• The upper right 'Unpin' icon will be available if the element is already pinned

 

• If the element is not already pinned, it will be greyed out

• If multiple elements are selected, and some are pinned, some not, then both pin and unpin icons become available, so you can no longer tell the state of any of them from the ribbon icons.

 

Element Selection Pin Icons

The icons that display on the selected element operate in the more logical (but reverse) fashion - as well as being command functions when clicked on, they do actually indicate the current 'pin state' of the  element(s).

• Each element has its own icon, so you can tell the state of each one.
• Pinned elements show a blue 3D pin icon

• Elements that were once pinned but are now unpinned sometimes show a blue pin with red cross - but it depends on how it was unpinned.

This is where it starts getting tricky:

• If you click on the blue pin icon on the element, Revit now will show a red line through the pin to indicate it is now unpinned but was previously pinned - this can be a good reminder that you should repin it after performing some edit operation on it.
• Revit remembers this 'previous pin state' even when you close the session and open the model again later - when you select the element it still shows the blue unpinned icon - I like to refer to this as temporary unpinning.
  
• However, if you use the ribbon command icon to unpin, then the blue element pin icon totally disappears - I like to refer to this as permanently unpinning.
  

The keyboard shortcut to permanently unpin elements is ‘UP’. Multiple elements can be unpinned at one time using the UP shortcut.  There is no keyboard shortcut for the temporary unpin command.

This difference between the two operations is almost like a partly implemented idea for a proper temporary unpin command - I wish that Autodesk would take it one step further and give us a proper temporary unpin (or persistent pin):  this would allow us to unpin an element, then edit it, after which it would automatically repin itself.  There is a precedent for this in Revit with the temporary 'Exclude Options' selection checkbox (which rechecks itself automatically).
Feel free to vote for my Revit wishlist idea for Persistent Pins

 

Selection Settings

In the bottom right corner of the Revit window are the orange selection pin icons, although these perform a totally different function:

• They display the status of whether you will be able to select pinned objects or not - they also operate as switches between the two modes.
• The red cross on the icon means that you cannot select any pinned elements.

Refer to Hidden Commands - Selection Locks

Pin Visibility

Element pin icons are not always visible:

• In a workshared model, when you select an element, it displays the 'Workshare puzzle' icon - this will obscure any pin icons
• To see the pin icons you have to take ownership of the element(s)
• you can click directly on the icon to remove it (and take ownership of the element), or right-click ‘Make Element Editable’ to take ownership and remove the puzzle icon.

 

Pin icons may also be hidden by group add/remove icons if you select an element inside a group without editing the group.

The way around this is to edit the group

Chain-Pins

Chain-Pinned ‘hosted elements’ (eg. Curtain panels) behave completely differently to normal pinned elements.  However, the icon for this is very similar - it has a chain link next to the pin.

The same pin/unpin commands and ribbon icons are used but they operate in a quite different way

Refer to Chained / Pinned Hosted Elements