Select Model Elements and Navigate Views (5:41 min)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Often users prefer to use the keyboard to execute commands. Many of Revit’s commands have predefined keyboard shortcuts. You can also customize and edit keyboard shortcuts for nearly every command.

On the Architecture tab, hover the mouse over the Wall tool.

A tooltip will appear after a short pause.

Figure 1–21 Hover over a tool to see a tooltip. Keyboard shortcuts appear in parenthesis

The predefined keyboard shortcut for the Wall tool is: WA. To use a keyboard shortcut, simply type the two letters on the keyboard, DO NOT press enter following the key strokes. Pressing enter repeats the last used command, so if you do press enter, it will run the desired command (wall in this case, then immediately cancel it and run the previous command).

If you want to see all the shortcuts, you can open the keyboard Shortcuts dialog. To do so, on the View tab, on the Windows panel, click the User Interface dropdown. Then choose: Keyboard Shortcuts. (optionally, you can just press ks. That’s right, Keyboard Shortcuts has a keyboard shortcut!

You can easily modify existing keyboard shortcuts or add shortcuts to commands that do not have them. Or you can just search the list to help you learn the default ones.

View Navigation

As already noted, the easiest way to change view navigation and centering is to use the wheel on your mouse. Roll the wheel to zoom in our out. Position the point over a point that you want to remain onscreen before you zoom. Drag with the wheel held down to pan and re-center the screen. Double-clcik the wheel to zoom to fit the screen.

You can also find some zoom commands on the right-click menu and on the Navigation Bar on the side of the screen (see ).

Figure 1–22 Use the wheel mouse, right-click or the Navigation Bar to zoom and pan

Selection

There are many ways to select elements in a Revit model. The more comfortable you are with selection, the easier it will be for you make detailed edits.

The simpliest way to select is to simply click an element with the mouse.
To select additional elements, hold down the ctrl key and select other elements.
To remove from the selection, hold down the shift key and click a selected element.
To deselect all elements, click in empty space, click the Modify tool on the ribbon or press esc.
To select many elements at once, click in empty space, hold down the mouse and drag a box around the elements you wish to select.

o Drag left to right to make a solid edged box that only selects elements completely surrounded by the box (see the left side of Figure 1–23).

Figure 1–23 Window and Crossing box selections

o Drag right to left to make a dashed edged box that selects anythig it touches (see the right side of Figure 1–23).

You can use ctrl and shift with these selection methods to add and remove.
To select just one or more catgory of element, start with a box selection (window or corssing) and then on the ribbon, click the Filter button. From the dialog that appears, uncheck the categories you don’t want selected. Click OK to complete the selection (see Figure 1–24).

Figure 1–24 Make a selection and then use Filter to remove some categories

To select all elements of a certain type, right-click and choose: Select All Instances > Visibile in the View.
To cycle through alternate selections in a tight space, use the tab key. First highlight an element, then press tab one or more times (don’t hold it down) to cycle through other possible selections. When the element(s) you want selected is/are highlighted, click the mouse to complete the selection.

From the File menu, choose: Close (or press ctrl + w). You do not need to save the file.