Circular chain of references

[clog boy]

At times, when sketching a roof, floor or wall profile and I'm content with how it looks and how it's likely going to work, I get the error 'circular chain of references'. This is driving me mad, I can't seem to work around it and this effectively stands between me and getting the full potential from Revit.

Does someone have a clear cut and bulletproof way to troubleshoot on this, or to prevent this from happening? I'd also like to have some 'me too' statements, but I can do better without the 'copy-paste from manual' suggestions.

Anyone ever beat this issue, please let me know. I'm working with RA2k8 (Revit Architecture 2008 ).

[tamas]

Bram,

I don't think there is an easy answer to your question. It may be related to your choice of references between those objects, or it might even be a software bug.
Some of the more hidden references I've seen were locked dimensions between floor sketch lines and some other object.

If you can send your file to support, I'd be happy to diagnose your latest case. (Or you may post it here with some instructions on how to reproduce the error.)

Tamas

[Joef]

Most of the time when this happens to me it is because I am not paying attention when I align something. If there are several items on top of one another (wall, window, fascia, reference plane, etc.) it is really important to make sure you are aligning to the object that you want to align to. Tab tab tab. Just my .02.

[SkiSouth]

I too find I usually have duplicated a line, or even worse a VERY small line on top of another. Not fun. Even when "highlighted" the very small line doesn't show.

[clog boy]

I think I pretty much found it.
I aligned and dimension-constrained several layers of one wall to a grid line (I draw my exterior walls as individual layers) and also dimension-constrained my roof to the grid.

Then, lacking a better option, I attempted edit profile to attach the exterior wall layer to the roof (simply 'attach' didn't work). Locking or even snapping the sketch lines to the roof's fascia caused this error. We want the sketch to change when the roof angle changes.

But I've seen this too many times before. I'm well aware of how stuff should be constrained, but at times I simply lose track. When I want a model to be truly parametric and I think I got it, everything is clean, well-related to each other and so on, this little and frustrating error stands in my way of actually doing a decent job.


This is not a support question. I simply want to b!tch and moan right now.
I'm also not going to post my project since it's intellectual property. I couldn't even if I wanted to.

[tamas]

Bram,

Thanks for the follow up. We constantly look for ways of handling sticky situations like the one you describe better in the code. I cannot promise to fix everything, but you can be assured that future releases will contain improvements in these areas.

Tamas

[bclarch]

I'm also not going to post my project since it's intellectual property. I couldn't even if I wanted to.
You don't necessarily have to post it to the forum. You could email it directly to Tamas. I think that it is helpful for the developers to have real world examples to work with. Providing a copy to someone for technical assistance probably won't violate any intellectual property rights, but the decision is up to you.