Travel Path Update in Revit 2020.1

Following on from my posts about Revit 2020 on Path of Travel and Follow Up :

With the release of Revit 2020.1, we have been given four minor improvements to the new (2020) 'Path of Travel' feature in Revit.  Welcome as they are, these improvements do not address any of the fundamental shortcomings of the tool, which seems like a missed opportunity:

1. Start and End Points of travel paths can be dragged.
2. Reveal Obstacles toggle.
3. To and From Room properties have been enabled (these were previously just blank instance properties in 2020).
4. Two new Dynamo nodes for Travel Paths (presumably new API capabilities allow this?)

Start and End Points

If you select an existing 'Path of Travel' element (which behaves like a polyline detail line) it now displays a blue grip-handle dot at each end.

• Select the grip-handle and drag it to a new location - while doing so, Revit displays a moving straight line directly between the cursor and the other end of the path.

• Once you let go the grip-handle in its new location, Revit recalculates the path of travel

• Associated properties, schedules and tags will also be updated.

This is a very welcome little change to behaviour - if you tried this with the original vesion (2020), it just moved the whole path of travel.  However, this is only a small usability enhancement.

The fundamental issues it does not deal with include:

• Still no ability to choose, change or control where the actual path goes (apart from adding/removing obstacles).  In order to do this, we would need to be able to somehow nominate additional points along the path, which it must go through.
  [Edit. * NB. Revit 2020.2 improves on this]
• No ability to make the path orthogonal (in Australia I have never needed that, but comments on my last blog post indicated a requirement for this in North America)
  [Edit. * NB. Revit 2020.2 improves on this]
• No ability to deal with sloping floors, level changes (split level), stairs.
• No ability to prevent the path going through a very narrow opening (430mm or 1' 5") - more on this in another blog post.

NB. Given that the default selection colour in Revit is dark blue, and the grip-handles are mid/dark blue, it is pretty hard to even notice this new feature.  I would recommend changing your options for selection (and pre-selection) colours to something other than blue. 

Incidentally, which *!@*&#$ at Autodesk thought it was a good idea to make the selection and pre-selection colours the same (both dark blue)!

Reveal Obstacles toggle

This is a useful new tool for figuring out why your path of travel is not behaving as expected.  Again, this does not address fundamental shortcomings - such as:

• What do you need to do when Revit fails to generate (or update) a path at all.

This new feature has a few quirks in behaviour - as detailed in another blog post.


[Edit. Revit 2020.2 further improves on 2020.1]

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)

Revit's Most Hidden Commands (part 5) - Selection Locks

The title of this post is somewhat ironic - because the command in question is right there on screen, all the time in Revit.  However, it is remarkable how many Revit users never see it and don't know what it does.

I'm talking about the Selection Locks at the bottom right of the screen, in particular the one called "Drag Elements on Selection". 

It used to be called 'Press + Drag'.  I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

In the words of Captain BIMCad, it is the "Little Button of Evil".  I am glad that someone else considers this little icon to be the bane of Revit Users lives.

It is astonishing how many Revit users do not have this set correctly - unfortunately the default out of the box Revit setting is wrong.    Just Plain Wrong!   Downright Evil!

The correct setting is for the little evil icon to have a red cross on it so that users cannot select and move an element with one mouse movement - something that is all too easy when trying to make a multiple selection by dragging the mouse.  When  "Drag Elements on Selection" is disabled, the user would have to select an element, let go of the mouse button then click and move again - that is a more definite action that is unlikely to be done by mistake.

To solve this once and for all, you need to have a BIM manager that sets this properly in your Revit.ini file, and an IT team who understand how to roll out Revit.ini files to all users (that is a challenge in itself).  The fall back position is to manually check (and change) the setting on every computer in your office, for every user profile, including whenever a new person joins the company.

The other selection locks are extremely useful, but cause endless confusion because most users just don't see what is right in front of them.  The same settings are also available from a drop-down menu below the selection icon at the far left of the ribbon.

It is really important that everyone makes the best use of these, so that you can avoid accidentally selecting things like underlays, linked files and pinned elements.  Obviously you just disengage the locks when you do need to select any of those elements.  and remember to re-engage the locks afterwards.  But never, ever disengage the 'Drag Elements on Selection' lock - it should always have a red cross on the evil icon, and not be ticked/checked in the drop-down menu list.