'EW' Shortcut Not Working Properly

[leeba]

I've slowly been building my revit shortcut "vocabularly" over the past few weeks and have found it really makes drafting much quicker. However, the Edit Witness Lines shortcut will drive me up a wall! On random occasions, for no apparent reason, I select a dimension and type EW and nothing happens other than the dimension getting unselected. I often find myself going through the process a couple of times (select dimension, type EW, select dimension, type EW) before revit finally "catches on" at the third try and I'm able to edit the witness lines.

Any way to make this work on the first try, every try? It's a little thing but often those are the most frustrating...

(I should point out that I've already gone through the doubting stage, where I thought maybe this was a between-keyboard-and-chair problem, and have double and triple checked that I was actually typing E and W in that order... So I can assure you that's not the issue.)

[eric.piotrowicz]

Are you certain that Revit doesn't have multiple commands assigned to have the EW shortcut? I'm trying to replicate the issue on my end but I can't seem to get it to do anything abnormal. As long as the dim string is selected prior to typing EW it works as expected. If no string is selected nothing happens.
Does it happen only in one project or it happening in any project? Can you post a striped down version of the file you are having trouble with?

[eric.piotrowicz]

My apologies, I spoke too soon. I just found the behavior you mentioned.
It turns out that if you pick the dim string on an actual dim readout then it unselects when you type in the EW command. If you pick the string anywere else it acts just fine. Hope this helps ya out.:beer:

[leeba]

My apologies, I spoke too soon. I just found the behavior you mentioned.
It turns out that if you pick the dim string on an actual dim readout then it unselects when you type in the EW command. If you pick the string anywere else it acts just fine. Hope this helps ya out.:beer:
I don't follow. What do you mean by "dim readout"?

[leeba]

I just did some playing around. If by 'dim readout,' you mean the actual text, I see what you mean. If I select a dimension string right underneath the text and type EW, nothing happens. If I don't move my mouse and keep doing this, it appears I can do that indefinitely without actual results. If I move my mouse slightly along the string so it's not under the text anymore and type EW, I immediately get results. The funny thing is that, after it works the first time, I can move my mouse back to where it was originally (when it didn't work) and this time it will work.

Sorry if this is confusing. I find it so odd; it's like Revit needs to be told again and again what to do with this shortcut and, once it 'understands,' has no problem making it work. But it keeps 'forgetting' and needing to be 'retaught'...

[eric.piotrowicz]

You are right, I was refering to the actual text. Somewhat odd behavior but I generally don't pick the text on a dim string unless I'm adding a note to it. I've filed away a mental note anyway though..

[leeba]

To add to the mystery, it doesn't seem to matter where you select on the dim string - it only seems to matter where your mouse is hovering when you actually type in the shortcut.

[eric.piotrowicz]

Haha, now that is one awesome Revit quirk! :screwy:

[jdixon676141]

Think* i may have solved this here. We use the Revit Suite in our office... which means we all have revit architecture + MEP + structure bundled with our revit on our machine. "EW" is a keyboard shortcut for Arc Wire in Revit Electrical.

TO SOLVE THIS go to the view tab, drop down user interface and click on keyboard shortcuts. Search for "Arc Wire" and remove the "EW" keyboard shortcut from it. Close out and the issue should be fixed. Hope this helps!

Cheers.