Friday, April 3, 2009

Trouble finding hidden elements in Revit? Use; Select by ID

This handy feature can really save you when you are trying to figure out what objects are causing issues in your project.


The other day I was trying to resolve some warnings related to switching a wall from one type to another that was not as wide in section. I wish that I had taken a screen shot of the warnings... there were 18 warnings (cannot be ignored) and 9 errors (Revit telling you that you should pay attention and see if what you just did was really what you meant to do.)
The project was fairly far along (actually CDs have been issued, but there is some clean up going on in the model.) Swapping walls at this stage can cause all sorts of issues.
In this case all of the warnings and errors were related to a ceiling. I created a new section and oriented a duplicated 3D view to it so that it encompassed the wall in question. I selected the ceiling in the warning tree and clicked the "Show" button but it wouldn't highlight in the view.
So, I wrote down the ID number (you can't copy/paste here, so you have to go old school.)

(I guess you could screen capture like I just did to get this image though.)
Now, go to "Tools" Drop-down menu>Element IDs>Select by ID
Enter the # into the dialog and now you can either use the "Show" button to highlight the element, or the "Select" button to grab the item and modify or delete it.
If you are trying to scout something that is deeply hidden in the model:
Duplicate the Default 3D view
Use the Select by ID feature
Use the "Isolate Element" command (click the eyeglasses) to hide everything else in the project.

Now you can activate the Scope Box for this view and crop out most of the model to get a better idea of where the elemnt is and what may be causing your issue.
Good Luck and Good Hunting.

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