Deleting a Curtain Wall Grid

Revit allows us to delete a curtain wall grid very easily. Select the grid (use TAB key if needed) and press the delete button.

However, if the grid was created using the (out of the box) Storefront type or any other type that 'generated' the grid pattern based on the type parameters, Revit does not allow you to delete it. The type parameters for grid patterns typically look like this:

Selecting the grid also shows a pin like this:

Unpinning does not allow you to delete it.

To be able to delete the grids, you need to:

1. Change the Grid Pattern type parameters to none like this:
   Press ok.
2. Revit gives a warning that the Type generated gridlines will become non-associated. Press OK. Don't press Delete Gridline button. (You dont have to delete the 'all' the gridlines, right?)
3. Now Revit allows you to delete any unnecessary grids. You dont even have to unpin them.

It is a good idea to duplicate the CW style before changing the type parameters, so that the change does not affect any other CW.

Revit does not change any default grid patterns or any user edited custom Grid patterns when you choose "none". It just makes the gridlines non associated.

Schedule list of Revised Sheets

Question: Is there a way to schedule drawing sheets based on their revision number? For eg., you have a project with a lots of sheets and before issuing a new Revision set, you want to get a list of the sheets that will be issued for this particular revision.

Even though there is a Revision parameter in the sheet properties,

it is not exposed in the list of available fields for the Drawing List schedule.

So, it looks like getting a list in a schedule form seems to be difficult.

However, you can use browser organization to group the sheets that belong to each revision numbers in the Project Browser. To do this:

1. Go to Settings menu > Browser organization > sheets tab > New > name it as "Sheets by Revision"
2. In the Browser Orgn Properties dialog box, in the 'group by' select 'Current Revision' and hit ok.
   
3. The project browser now groups the sheets by the current Revision Number.
   

Print PDF to Half scale from Adobe Reader

Before I start: IF you use Autodesk DWF, you will not have this problem!

Adobe reader 8 does not allow you to print to a certain scale, except for:

Some printer drivers allow you to print in a desired scale.

To do this, while in the print dialog box, go to printer properties

and change the option for scaling there:

(Canon copier)

(HP Designjet)

(IKON color laser)

(Oce 600)

Remember to print to full scale from the application (in this case Adobe Reader) with no scaling and select the Paper size that matches the paper size of the PDF document. The printer driver scales and prints in appropriate size and sheet (in Oce!)

Move Floor Plan callouts to another view

Scenario: You have an (original) plan view with some detail / floor plan callouts. Then you have a duplicated view with some Floor plan callouts on it. Now you want to move all the Floor plan callouts from the duplicated view to the original plan view and delete the duplicated view.

I wrote about moving a detail callout view tag from one view to another yesterday.

Creating a reference callout will work, as long as you dont want to delete the duplicate views and you dont want the callout boundary and the crop view of the view are not coordinated / linked.

Instead:

1. Open the particular Floor plan callout view.
2. Select all the objects that need to be copied from the Floor plan callout view along with it's view boundary. (Use Filter tool if needed)
    
3. Go to edit menu > Copy to clipboard.
4. Go the the Original plan view and then to Edit menu > Paste Aligned > Current view.
5. This results in:
   1. A new Floor Plan callout tag in the original plan view.
   2. The floor plan callout view will contain all the detail elements.
6. Now you can safely delete the duplicated view. (This deletes the floor plan callouts in duplicated view. However, since we have already created new floor plan callout views, it should be fine. )

Move detail callouts to another view

Scenario: You have an (original) plan view with some detail callouts. Then you have a duplicated view with some detail callouts on it. Now you want to move all the detail callouts from the duplicated view to the original plan view and delete the duplicated view.

The easiest is to cut and paste the callouts. However, this does not bring the detail elements added to the detail views like dims,  annotation, etc. So, not an option.

You could:

1. Select the callout detail tag in the duplicated view and go to its properties and change the 'Show in' parameter to 'intersecting views'. 
     
   (This makes the detail callout tags visible in the original plan view and if you don't want to delete the duplicated view, you don't have to do anything else!)
2. If you try to delete the duplicated view, the detail callouts that were created on the duplicated view will get deleted too.
3. To be able to delete the duplicated view, without deleting the detail callouts, select the callout detail tag and go to its properties and change the 'Parent View' parameter to 'none'
   

Now the detail callout should be visible in the original view and Revit will allow you to delete the duplicated view without deleting the details. This works only for the detail callouts.

You need to employ a different strategy to move Floor Plan Callouts to another view.