Rotate Family Instances

[dpollard909366]

I just had one those all so common instances when you wish that revit could do something... and it turns out it can!

I always knew that when you placed a component the space bar rotates it at 90 degree intervals.

I just realized that if you select a component that has already been placed and tap the space bar, it will rotate it about its axis.

Even better, you can select 100 million components, simply tap the space bar and rotate every single instance about its individual axis in 90 degree increments.

This was expecially helpful for me after adding information to my parking components that weren't originally oriented correctly, and I didn't want to add a rotation parameter to the family.

Good work Revit designer people! It's the little thing in life.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Even better, you can select 100 million components, simply tap the space bar and rotate every single instance about its individual axis in 90 degree increments.

Ya learn something new everyday! This is why I read every post on the AUGI forum. Thanks Dave

(mind you, if I ever get a model that has 100 million of anything I need to rotate, I may be too busy to read every post)

[Scott D Davis]

And when placing an object, if your object is next to something skewed at an angle, Ctrl-spacebar while hovering over the skewed reference rotates the object to alignment of the skew.

[dpollard909366]

Nice - thanks Scott... This is why I still prefer reading all of the augi posts instead of actually doing tutorials or reading books.

[The Sweg]

And when placing an object, if your object is next to something skewed at an angle, Ctrl-spacebar while hovering over the skewed reference rotates the object to alignment of the skew.

I've been able to get things to align to an object that's at an odd angle just by hovering the object over it and hitting only the spacebar. If you keep hitting the spacebar, it will rotate in 90 degree increments staying parallel or perpendicular to the object. Cool!

[rgrace]

It is very convenient that objects will rotate using the spacebar.

Is there a way to control this rotation? For some reason, some families are not rotating at all when I hit the spacebar, and some will only flip vertically, but not horizontally. Any suggestions?

[The Sweg]

It usually has to do with the family itself. For instance, a cabinet that is wall hosted will only flip from one side of the wall to the other, if you have a left/right arrow flip, it will reverse it, but it won't truly "rotate" per se, because it's attached to a wall. I think the flip arrows embedded in the family also decide which way it goes.

Hope this helps,
--Derek

[rgrace]

The family is not hosted at all. There is a letter annotation in it - could that be affecting the rotation? It will only display right-side-up or upside-down, but not backwards. Even when both horizontal and vertical flippers are placed in the family, they both make the family flip vertically. I noticed a box under Settings - Family Category and Parameters that says "Always Vertical'. But whether this box is checked or not has no affect on the behavior.

[The Sweg]

I guess I may need to know what kind of family it is that we are talking about.

Is it a generic model based family or an annotation family, etc...? Would you mind posting the family so we could take a look at it and maybe explain its behavior?

[Revit MEP DR]

OMG Day Made! Thank You for sharing this!