Can't rotate crop regions to rotate view

[Wes Macaulay]

Build Number: 20050126_2030 and others too...

In R7 you can't rotate the crop region to rotate the view. We really, really need this back since many of us have gotten used to being able to rotate the view 90d using this feature.

What's up with the removal of this feature? Sure it's a bit weird (and unexpected.. rotating the crop region rotates the whole view? Sure!) but we've got several BIG projects that desperately need this feature to be continued until they're done...

Heeeeeelp

[beegee]

Wes,

You will have seen Leonid’s posts on this issue, but for everyone’s benefit, I have taken the liberty to reprint some here.

Leonid's original response to this issue:

7.0 behavior may be a bit confusing but I think it is the correct one. It deserves an explanation.

To illustrate open sheet in the attached file, activate callout view, select both view crop boundary and a wall and start playing with rotate command. Callout is deliberately made to look like a rectangle not a square, so the behavior is easier to understand. Observe in the overall (not callout) view that rotation is behaving correctly for any angle. However callout view itself orients itself either horizontally or vertically alternatively depending on rotation angle.

The underlying logic of this behavior is the following. A cropped callout of a plan view knows that it has to orient its vertical/horizontal axes parallel to sides of crop rectangle. However there is still a choice to be made which of the sides to chose as defining horizontal. In 7.0 this choice is made in such a way as to keep resulting view oriented as close as possible to the orientation of an uncropped view. In effect if angle of rotation is greater then 45 degree then horizontal and vertical are swapped. This logic makes it easier for the user to understand the overall orientation of a callout relative to a building. 7.0 made rotation itself a bit less understandable but assured that resulting view is easier to understand.

In 6.1 behavior was different and I think worse. Try similar experiments with 6.1 and you will notice that even though rotation itself is more predictable the resulting views may be more confusing. In 6.1 resulting view was especially confusing in case of large rotation angles. With 180 rotation in 6.1 one could get callout to be upside down relative to uncropped view. Even Ph.D. in geometry or architecture would have difficult time understanding resulting views.

BTW you may notice that changed/improved behavior applies not only to rotation but to mirroring of views as well.

HTH
And further explanations / reponses:



Andrew,



Thanks for articulating the problem you are having with 90° view rotation. Your picture and explanation make a lot of sense.



The change implemented in 7.0 was designed to solve some other problems and the ill side effects that you pointed out unfortunately were not foreseen. Among other things 7.0 tried to address the issue that just by looking at a callout and examining view properties it was impossible to distinguish between rotated callout and view sketched with these boundaries to begin with. User could also get an upside down view by rotating 180°. There were some other issues as well.



However your problem is a real one. In order to address it I think that instead of reverting to 6.1 implementation a better solution would be to adjust effects of View Rotation on Sheet parameter. In case of your illustration and if you want your project west to be at the top of your sheet then you would set this parameter to 90° clockwise. You would not need to do any view rotation at all. While making this additional enhancement it would also be necessary to make rotation of view titles independent of View Rotation on Sheet parameter. (By the way, how often do people want vertical orientation of view tittles?) I suspect that these additional changes would address the described problem and will make sure that this information reaches responsible developers. Unfortunately I am not in the position to make explicit promises regarding timing and details of eventual implementation.



Leonid,



Thanks for your reply.



Your method of re-implementing the view rotation would be fine, if there were a way to add any annotation, etc. to the view, while rotated (as was possible in 6.1).



I tried an experiment & was somewhat surprised by the result.



In 7.0, place a view on a sheet, and rotate it 90° via the properties dialog box.



Activate the view on the sheet. (It activates & stays in it's rotated position.)



Using the text command, place some text in the activated view. (It snaps to the view's project north (vertical) orientation.)



I can then select the text, & using the rotate icon, reposition it in the view.



Not sure if it's possible, but if you could eliminate having to re-rotate the text, it would save a step. I know it may sound silly, but when annotating a sheet, I feel I can work much faster if I'm not rotating my head to place, read, and edit vertically oriented text.



As for view titles, I never place them vertically, but I'm only one user, & there's probably someone out there that does...



Andrew,

I understand and was taking into account that once a view is defined as rotated on sheet then the default orientation of text in a view should be according to sheet horizontal axis. It was my operating assumption that overall intent is to keep everything readable on a landscape printed sheet.

[Wes Macaulay]

Ok... there are SEVERAL posts on this topic :Oops:

But we're still screwed!

I can understand why the feature was removed, but a cardinal software rule is never remove a feature (even a half-baked one that EVERYONE uses) until you've got a suitable replacement.

And far be it from me to call the old crop region rotation behaviour half-baked. I liked it.

[hand471037]

Yeah, I'm pulling my hair out here, and my boss is getting really upset with the time this is wasting.

See, we do a lot of multi-unit housing. The Units are always pointing every-which-way. We like to arrange them on a sheet so that the Enlarged Unit Plans are all pointing the same way for clarity, and then have whatever little variations they have be next to them with the same orientation. Now this has been rendered impossible! The only way to get this to work is to either make the view rotate itself on the sheet, which means that I can't use a view title and all the tags are rotated too! I'm thinking of simply exporting the Unit Plans to DWG files and re-inserting them as a workaround, but that's a pretty silly way to be working.

While I can see Leonid’s point, the Revit team *really* should have talked to folks prior to changing this...

[aggockel50321]

I agree this has to go back to the way it was in 6.x.

Leonid should really stop talking to those architects! He'll never get the same answer from any two of them...

[LRaiz]

Leonid should really stop talking to those architects! He'll never get the same answer from any two of them...
Usually any two architects have at least three different points of view. :)

[Steve_Stafford]

Usually any two architects have at least three different points of view. :)ouch.......!

[hand471037]

Usually any two architects have at least three different points of view. :)

At a certain time, in the morning, prior to coffee. Then it becomes more like four-to-seven. ;)

When I was working at the reseller, I remember going from firm-to-frim, and every firm did things completely differently than the last, and every firm thought their way was the 'standard'... :D

I really wonder how you guys on the Revit Team put up with that, and why you didn't just give up and pick an easier market where folks agree with each other about things. Like Politics. :p

[Wes Macaulay]

We like to arrange them on a sheet so that the Enlarged Unit Plans are all pointing the same way for clarity, and then have whatever little variations they have be next to them with the same orientation. Now this has been rendered impossible! <snip> While I can see Leonid’s point, the Revit team *really* should have talked to folks prior to changing this...Yeah. What he said. We are SCREWED until this is fixed... I honestly don't know what to do until this then. We have some VERY SIGNIFICANT PROJECTS coming up and if this isn't in my toolbelt, we're going to be working at a deficit from the get-go.

[beegee]

Jeffrey,

I'm not for one moment suggesting that the 7.0 behaviour is better than the old 6.1 method, but I have been thinking about your problem, ... particularly after Wes referred to it in another thread. ( Wes's problem is different however )

We also do a lot of multi unit housing, but we usually don't have a problem with the orientation of units because we have separate files for each unit type. Within each of those files, all units are orientated to Project North. We link each file into a Site Plan and orientate them there to their True North locations. ( every which way but Project North )

That method works really well for us and I'm wondering if it might for you also ?



Yeah, I'm pulling my hair out here, and my boss is getting really upset with the time this is wasting.

See, we do a lot of multi-unit housing. The Units are always pointing every-which-way. We like to arrange them on a sheet so that the Enlarged Unit Plans are all pointing the same way for clarity, and then have whatever little variations they have be next to them with the same orientation. Now this has been rendered impossible! The only way to get this to work is to either make the view rotate itself on the sheet, which means that I can't use a view title and all the tags are rotated too! I'm thinking of simply exporting the Unit Plans to DWG files and re-inserting them as a workaround, but that's a pretty silly way to be working.

While I can see Leonid’s point, the Revit team *really* should have talked to folks prior to changing this...

[hand471037]

Beegee, thanks for the tip, but we're not linking in our unit plans, they are groups.

We were linking them before, maybe we should start again. However linking & having the unit plans within sepirate files presents it's own set of issues too, which is why we would rather group them if possible.

Also doesn't help that I'm in mid-DD on a huge project and this hits. I can link the units instead, but that a lot of 'stupid work' that doesn't get us closer to being finished with the set. So I think I'll just try to convince the boss to settle with not having the unit plans all facing 'down' for I can at least get them all facing 'to the right' instead.

This sucks! First time I can think of where Revit took a step backwards when a new release came out. The Dev Team *really* should have tried this with people first!

[aggockel50321]

On a few pre-7.0 projects, I've lucked out somewhat, and had cropped views or callouts that were rotated 90 degrees. In 7.0 I duplicate the view, & drag the crop region or callout over to a new area of the floorplan that I need to use.

What I did find though, is don't rotate them back, or they're gone.