BILT Speaker

BILT Speaker
RevitCat - Revit Consultant

Tuesday 9 December 2014

View Filter Sort Order in Revit

In Revit, View Filters are not automatically sorted in the 'Visibility Graphics' dialog box - meaning that you often get a jumbled list that is really hard to read. [Edit: There is good reason for this - the order of the list is the order that filters are applied, from the top (as pointed out by Steve Stafford);  but sometimes you just want all similar filters listed together so it is readable]

Recently there has been a subtle change to how filters are added to the list (in v2015 of Revit):

In Revit 2013, when you add view filters, the most recent one will always be added to the end of the list.

In Revit 2015, when you add view filters, they appear to go in just below the selected filter in the list.  Once you add a new one, it does not become selected.  That means that if you add several in succession, they won't go in the order you add them - they will be added in reverse order just below whatever you happened to have selected.

To correct the Sort Order:

Initially I thought that you either have to live with the mess, or remove the filters and add them back in again.  Of course, if you do this, you lose all the filter override settings.

We actually have the ability to move filters up and down the list (Edit. Thanks to various comments - this paragraph has been corrected).

Revit 2015 - Adding new filters
  • Click on the filter in the list that you want new ones to follow
 
  • Add the first filter
  • Then click on the one you just added
  • Add the next one
  • Click on that one
  • Add again
  • etc - until you have the list as desired.

If at any point you forget to select the last one before adding the next one, all is not lost.  All you need to do is to move it up or down the list

This method does give you much more flexibility than how it worked in v2013.  However, it is confusing as hell until you see what it is doing.

I noticed that you can also add several filters at once, but it does not necessarily add them in the order that they are shown in the 'Add Filters' list.

There is also the curious question of why the list of filters in the Filter dialog box is not alphabetical.  Only Autodesk can solve that for us . . . . .

5 comments:

  1. Keep in mind that the order the filters are in within V/G are applied from the top of the list to the bottom. This may matter if your filters are meant to alter some "things" in the view and then another filter is meant to further alter the same "things".

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  2. In 2015 you can use the Up & Down buttons in the Filter dialog to move them around instead of going through the process of adding and removing.

    http://screencast.com/t/nZLgXdIJwe

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  3. Thanks for comments Steve and Chad. I have corrected the post accordingly. I can't believe I didn't notice the new up and down buttons in my testing.

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  4. You can move filters up and down the list prior to 2015 as well. Once you start the move with the button you can continue it by tapping or holding the enter key (a little less annoying).

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    Replies
    1. You are quite right - I'm not sure how long it has been that way, but I've not had a need to change the order until very recently. So it seems that the change made in v2015 was only to do with adding the filters. Curiously none of the help files for the last 3 versions even mentions the ability to move filters up and down in the list.

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