Mirroring Projects

[ChristinaB]

I am having a heck of a time trying to mirror my project. Every time I am ready to complete the command I get a warning message stating that multiple items will be deleted; mainly dimension & room tags. This makes me think that maybe I am not selecting everything, but I turn all layers on and go into every level and select everything?!?

I feel I have tried everything and have now hit the wall. I downloaded the mirroring lesson from dgcad.com and followed those instructions to the tee and am now at a loss.....PLEASE HELP!

Thanks Mucho,

Chris

[patricks]

Yeah it would be really nice to have a Select All command, because there are some things that are tied to the model that only show up in certain views (like room tags, door tags, etc). You may just end up having to re-dimension stuff and re-create room tags, etc. after mirroring.

[David Haynes]

If you are mirroring your project as a whole to change the orientation (north becomes south), there is a better way.

Use the Project North command - Help section gives good instruction on this.

I have found that it is not possible to mirror a whole project or rotate a whole project successfully (for the reasons you stated).

Hope this helps.

[patricks]

If you are mirroring your project as a whole to change the orientation (north becomes south), there is a better way.

Use the Project North command - Help section gives good instruction on this.

I have found that it is not possible to mirror a whole project or rotate a whole project successfully (for the reasons you stated).

Hope this helps.

I don't think the project north settings will work for mirroring a project, i.e. flipping it over, so that the east/west sides swap and north and south stays the same, or vice versa.

[SCShell]

Hey there,

Although I have never done this, I have been told that if you link a project, it can be completely mirrored. The other thing I have been told, is to go to a 3d isometric view, turn all visibilities on and select from there. For some reason, the 3d view is better than any plan view.

Good luck
Steve

[Shaun v Rooyen]

Annotations/dimensions will produce problamatic issues when doing a mirror. As far as being able to mirror the whole model, I have never had any issues. our biggest one yet was 12 stories 250 appartments, selected everything in 3d view and mirrored. Its nothing to go do tags and dims again.

[sbrown]

You will not be able to completely mirror a project that is fully documented. You have to mirror it in parts and you will have to recreates some views. Basically do this, copy your file, rename it mirrored. now open both in the same session of revit. Mirror the model geometry and as much as you can from the 3d view and plan views(use ctrl + tab) to cycle thru the views. you won't get all the annotations in your sections, details, etc. these will have to be cleaned up or recreated which is why you have the old file open. Once you get your model mirrored, you start the process of view by view cleanup.

Copy paste detail items from your old file to your new as needed.

This is one of the downsides of actually building a model and not just 2d lines. Its easy to mirror 2d lines, hard to mirror a building.

[BWG]

I can't believe you would do such a large project with the mirror command. I just mirrored a simple house that was in SD with dimension and room tags and there is so much work left to be done to clean things up, it isn't worth doing. Dimensions are gone, room tags are all over the place, and some families were deleted. Probably two days work if it didn't screw anything else up. This is a flawed tool and needs to be fixed. We mirror things all the time.

As far as mirroring an entire building rather than 2d lines, other programs don't seem to have this problem. Softplan for instance - while it doesn't let you draw in 3d views, is a 3d model of the building, but mirroring is simple with very few mistakes. Takes about 2 minutes to clean up and most of that is just double checking. They just haven't spent much time on that tool or it would probably work perfectly. SOM better hope they don't decide to mirror the freedom tower. Anyways, the whole point of being able to mirror something is to save you a ton of time, not take you backwards. Right now, it only keeps you from having to redraw the entire model. That is about a 20 year old idea.

[Max Lloyd]

Even in autocad, mirroring a whole 'project' has never been that easy. Loads of adjustments to viewports, text embedded in blocks not mirroring etc etc.

I do agree however that this is something that could be looked at as its something I have always had problems with, (elements deleting etc) and it is simply something we do on a frequent basis, therefore deserves a bit of attention to make the process easier.

[sbrown]

I have to disagree. I've had to mirror entire projects in autocad and it still took forever. individual views mirrored fairly easily in dwg. but you had to open each plan, mirror, look for mistakes. Basically the same process. I think revit probably has much more going on then softplan(I've never used it so I'm just guessing). Would I like to have a mirror project button, sure. But its pretty low on the list. Now the mirror command does need work, even for smaller things, some families and wall hosted items when mirrored miss their new location and find another wall to sync too. So I agree that improvements are needed in the mirror world. I dont' think mirroring an entire project is an easy task, when you think about cuting a live wall section, annotating it, then mirroring the wall it was cut from to the other side of the buildign, how would revit know what to do with that. It has to recreate the section in the new location, now looking the opposite direction, so all the annotation and detail components need to be mirrored, if the families aren't created rightn the annotation is now backwards. Also what happens if from that wall section you have called out a foundation detail, soffit detail, etc. these are all now messed up too. So its a big task to mirror a project, smaller task to mirror the geometry.

[BWG]

I see your point. However, it would be nice if it did not delete all the dimensions. It deleted some instances of families in some areas, but not in others. Why can't the room boundaries and room tags stay with the model? In my case they stayed where they originally were, therefore not really associated with the model as they should be. Revit has a lot more going for it than Softplan, but there are a few similarities between the programs, hopefully by chance and not design. But, it has the best mirroring tool I have seen yet. Actually they call it reverse, but it does the same thing as mirror, just not copying anything. I guess that program can do it because it doesn't care about elevations or sections, only the floor plan and any thing tied to it like framing, roofs, electrical, etc. But I don't care too much about that program, I am wanting to use Revit now, but having difficulty with the simplest of commands. They keep adding new features, but doing nothing for many of the existing features.

[sbrown]

Something is wrong if the room boundaries didn't go with it. the room boundaries are the walls themselves. So you should be able to get all that mirrored without issue. the way to do it, is close all windows. Open 1 3d view and 1 view for each floor plan with roomtags on. Start in the 3d, select all, ctrl+tab, select all, ctrl+tab, select all, etc, then mirror(make sure you uncheck copy). that should all work. Dims should come to. As for families getting deleted, in-place families, yes they may fail, but others shouldnt.

[BWG]

Hmmm. I will have to try it again maybe. I did the 3d view deal, but all dimensions except three that were tied to ref. lines were deleted. A standard rod and shelf family was deleted (one instance of it). The room tags did not go with the model and there was not an option for them in the filter. I checked all that first. The roof made it however.

[Steve_Stafford]

If you haven't seen this THREAD (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=7259)you might want to take a look at the list of steps Jim Balding outlined. Don't miss the bit that Yman adds about grouping the model temporarily, which I recall being the key to success. One of WATG's Revit guru's, Randy, worked through the process on one of his projects and JB and Randy took the time to document it and share it here, check it out!

My Magic 8 ball says, "Revit team understands this wish". Just a matter of when they can work out all the ramifications of mirroring a project, which I'm confident they can do. Now if only we can get them some extra time in the day! :-)