Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> Possible to specify the starting offset object?

buttonsrtoys

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Joined: Wed, Feb 10, 2010
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When drawing Detail Objects, Revit guesses which items in the view I want to offset from. The image below, I want to offset from a roof edge but Revit guess I want to offset from the previous Detail Line I drew. Is there a way to tell Revit which item I want to offset from?

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WWHub

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Pick the end of the temporary dimension and move it.

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buttonsrtoys

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I can't pick the dimension b/c it disappears when I move the cursor off the object.

The image attached is what I'm seeing. On the left, when I hover over the wall, a blue dimension appears, but when I move off the wall, it disappears.

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WWHub

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Click on the object you want to locate and you should see temporary dimensions.  Grab the blue dot and move it to what you want to reference from.  Sometimes you need to click on the object and then pick "activate dimensions" on your options bar.  In either case, these are temporary dimensions unless you click on the little dim line under them to make them actual dimensions.

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buttonsrtoys

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Thanks for the reply WWH. I wasn't aware of that behaviour and will get a lot of use out of it in the future.The feature I was looking for was to specify the offset before the object is created. To exploit your suggestion, I need to create my object in a random location, select it, move an extension line, select the dimension value, and only then enter the offset value. That's a lot of steps for locating a line, IMO. My old CAD system DataCAD sucked in a lot of ways, but I miss it's ability to enter offsets on the fly, rather than after-the-fact.What I was hoping to find was the ability to hover over a point or line(s) when creating an object, hit the space bar (or some other key or shortcut), then when I moved away from the point/line(s), Revit would display offset dimensions. It would be not unlike what it does now, but only I want to be able to specify the reference pt/lines, rather than Revit's current, fairly random selection of references.

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WWHub

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You say locating a line???? When you draw, the temporary dimensions are there.  Watch them and place it correctly to begin with.  What Revit uses to temporary dimension from is set under manage tab / temporary dimensions.

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buttonsrtoys

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I see the temporary dimensions when I draw lines. The problem is it seems they rarely reference what I'd like to offset from. I wasn't aware of the settings you suggested. Thanks! They seem pretty limited, though, and not much help drawing details. In my original post, there's a screen grab of me drawing a dashed line roughly 2'-0" in from the edge of a odd shaped roof, though I can't tell how far away I am because Revit "guessed" that I wanted to offset from the previously drawn dashed line. I'd like to be able "correct" Revit to reference the nearby roof edge by intially hovering over the roof edge and hitting a key or shortcut. Afterward, the temporary dimensions would reference what I specified.Adding a "Roof Edge" preference setting for temporary dimensions wouldn't be much help since the next object I draw I might want to reference something completely different. What I was hoping to find was a way to reference these things on the fly a la DataCAD, but it's looking like it doesn't exist in Revit.

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buttonsrtoys

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Update: I just discovered the Offset field that's been staring me in the face when drawing lines. Very nice. Very different that the tool I had been using with my previous system. Much handier from the looks of it.

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