Groups vs Design Options - revisited

[clog boy]

We discussed groups vs design options roughly six months ago. Significant changes appear to have been made in the way groups behave, making them easier to work with.
So let's match them up again.

Design Options
You can put whatever you want in a design option, switch them on and off and replace with another option within the same set without the model complaining about it. However, a design option is view specific. They're not as easy to edit as the main model, you can't 'explode' a design option.

Question:
If you make a design option primary, and you delete all other design options. Will that design option become the primary throughout the project?

Groups
Groups are pretty much like blocks in AutoCAD, but 3D. Annotations within a group will become a nested group. You can mirror or move a group, and replace a group with another group, but should expect errors to pop up. Groups are model specific, not view specific

Question:
What exactly has changed since Revit 9.0? Can a group be exported?

This discussion is intended as a reference for other users, and for myself to become more aware of the potential of both options.

[sbrown]

Groups have totally been revamped in 2008 they are much better. they aren't any longer rvg files, they are RVT files which allows linking of groups. creation of groups outside the model, groups used in multiple files, elements from groups can be excluded instance by instance. They really are workable now. You can also work directly in the group editor creating using the full functionality of revit where befor you could only add to groups and remove from groups.

[clog boy]

How about relations with objects outside the group? I grouped a random portion of a project, cut&paste to empty project (where doors etc were only visible upon selection of group) and copied back to the project file. The doors were not able to be hosted again, but were still in the group.
Can groups be saved to a standalone file?

It's absolutely great that groups have been improved like that, and I hope people wil like to work with it again.

[bclarch]

However, a design option is view specific.

Design options can be seen in any view. You need to go into the visibility settings > design options tab and turn on the option that you want to see in a given view. The primary option is always the default for all views until it is changed.

[jeffh]

What exactly has changed since Revit 9.0? Can a group be exported?

A lot of things changed in groups from Revit 9. This was one of the major areas overhauled in the 2008 release. In addition to what has already been mentioned groups can have items that are unique to one instance of a group. So if there is some slight modification of geometry within the group it can be accomodated without the need for a second group for the deviation. There is an entirely new tutorial created to cover all of the functionality of groups in Revit 2008. Check it out for more info.

Tutorial>Using Advanced Features>Grouping

Lots of good stuff there.

[Kevin Janik]

This post http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=61418 gives you a concept how to use groups to create and display multiple design options in a very useful way.

Maybe the two kind of go together with some creative thinking!

Take a look.

Kevin

[Calvn_Swing]

"Question:
If you make a design option primary, and you delete all other design options. Will that design option become the primary throughout the project?"

Yes!


As for question 2: Read the help file. It really is good on this particular topic...