Selecting Pinned Elements in Revit

Following on from an earlier post about 'Chain-Pinned' elements in Revit, it is useful to point out the implications of different kinds of pinning when selecting elements.

Selecting Chain-Pinned Elements

Different hosted elements can be selected in different ways:

o        Tab-select to individually select chain-pinned elements.

o        Click-and-dragging across curtain walls or railings will also select individual hosted elements such as curtain grids, panels, mullions, top rails, handrails or supports  (regardless of whether they are chain-pinned or not).

You may find that you cannot select chain-pinned elements by either method.  This may be due to the ‘Selection Controls’

‘Select Pinned Elements’ can be turned on or off as desired;  it may be useful to disable selection so that chain-pinned elements cannot be selected when click-and-dragging across curtain walls (such as curtain grids or mullions)

 or

If ‘Select Pinned Elements’ is disabled, it applies to both pinned (parent elements) and chain-pinned (hosted elements) – thus, if a curtain wall is pinned, you would not be able to select the wall or the hosted mullions etc This is particularly noticeable when you click-and-drag across many curtain walls – you will see a forest of chain-pins

In this situation, it is well worth using the selection filter to select only the parent categories (eg. Walls)