- One of the first things you should typically do
when setting up a brand new building project is
to set up your levels of course,
and if it's a column grid layout,
then you're probably going to set up
your grids shortly thereafter.
So in this movie, I'd like to look at some
techniques that you can use to customize
the way your grids behave.
So like many elements in your Revit project,
a grid is an element that has
both instance and type properties.
And it's really the type properties
that I want to focus on here, so I'm going to click
the Edit Type button, and let's start with the
Plan View Symbols at End 1 and at End 2.
Notice that it says that it's going to include
a Plan View Symbol at End 2 only,
End 1 is not checked. So what does that mean?
I'm going to cancel this,
go to Architecture, and create a new grid.
Here's End 1, it's the first point you click,
and then you move your mouse to where you want to go,
and then you click again, that's End 2.
So all that means is, the first point you click
won't get a bubble, and the second point will.
Now, suppose I were to select this
grid and edit the type again.
Could I reverse the order of these,
or could I check both of these? Absolutely.
So let me duplicate the type first,
just to make sure that I preserve the original,
and I'm going to make a variation here
that has the bubble on at both ends,
so I'll just add that suffix to the name.
And then I'll check both of these boxes,
and click OK, and as you can see,
it now adds a bubble at both ends.
Now as you've always been able to do,
you can still override individual grids
by hiding and showing the bubble,
but this is going to be the behavior
across all of the grids by default,
so let me select all of the grids
that we can see in this view,
open up the Type Selector,
and I'll choose my new Both Ends type,
and you'll see that I now get grid bubbles
on both ends across the entire plan.
Now, clearly on a large floor plan,
this might be a desirable way to set things up,
because it'll be very easy for you to tell
which grid is which when you're
looking across that large expanse.
Now, there's other customizations
you can make to this type as well.
So for example, I'm going to select
any one of the grids and go back to Edit Type.
We have this Center Segment option right here.
Now, this one's kind of interesting,
because it's got three choices,
Continuous, None, and Custom,
and Continuous is what we get by default,
it just does a continuous line segment
from one end to the other.
If you went to Custom, it would actually
break it into three separate segments.
You'd have an end segment at either end,
and then you'd have a middle segment that you could
customize and apply a different line pattern or color to.
Or you can do None.
Now if I choose None, and click OK,
what's going to happen is the middle
of all of the grid lines disappears.
Now they're still there, if I move my mouse around
and highlight, you know, it's still going to
highlight those lines, and in fact
if I go to Architecture and create a column,
it will still sense where the intersections
of those grids are, and place the column there,
and in fact, that grid will continue to control
the location of that column
even though we don't see the gridline.
So this can be a nice graphical effect
to help eliminate some of the clutter
in the middle of your plan, but it doesn't
otherwise affect the behavior of that datum at all.
Now if I go back to Edit Type one more time,
you can customize the size of these
segments at either end as well,
and that's this parameter right here.
A smaller value will make them shorter,
and a longer value, of course, will make them longer.
Now keep in mind that that setting
is in paper units, okay final plotted units,
so the scale is taken into account when determining
how long to make those end segments.
Now the only potentially downside to this,
depending on your point of view,
is that if you look at it in elevation,
it applies that same parameter in both directions.
So the middle gap is not displayed here in elevation either,
and the length of the segment that is shown
is controlled by that same parameter.
So we don't get a separate length
for plans or for elevations,
it's all the same for all views.
Likewise, we don't get control over
the center segment for plans or for elevations.
Interestingly enough, though, you do get
a separate setting for the symbols.
So by default, we're only getting symbols
at the top in elevation, not at the bottom,
but you could choose top or bottom, both or none.
Okay so you do get those options, but you don't get
the options for the overall segment.
Now you can certainly, you know, make an adjustment
to the extent of these, and kind of do it that way,
but just keep that in mind, that if you decide to remove
that center segment, it's going to remove it everywhere.
Now, let me go back to my Level 1 floor plan here,
and let's just look at one last thing.
Right here I've got two grids
that are overlapping one another,
and there's a real easy solution to that.
You just simply click the grid,
and there's a small little control
handle here to add an elbow.
I will need to do that at both ends,
that's a 2D-only modification,
and it only affects this view.
And you can make adjustments to the shape
of the elbow, after you create it, okay.
So I'm going to adjust both of those,
but keep in mind that it's a 2D
modification, and it's view-specific.
So what that means is, if I go to Level 2,
those elbows have not been applied here.
Now I've got 11 levels in this project,
so it would take me a lot of time
to go though each and every view,
and keep repeating that modification.
And furthermore, they would look
a little different in each view.
But it turns out that there's a pretty easy solution.
Go ahead and select the grids that are affected
with this 2D modification.
Once you have them selected, there's a button up here
on the ribbon called Propagate Extents.
I can click that, and this will allow me
to copy those 2D modifications to any parallel view.
So in this case, it's going to list all of the floor plans
that are parallel to the current floor plan.
I can use my shift key to select
the whole collection of them.
Check on of the boxes, and they'll all check,
and when I click OK, now you'll see
that any floor plan that I open
will have those elbows applied.
So it's a really easy way to go in
and apply any 2D modifications that you make
that are view-specific to all of the other parallel views.
So as you can see, you do have quite a few
different opportunities to customize
the behavior of your grids,
both at the type level and at the instance level,
and using Propagate Extents you can share
those instance-level modifications with other like views.