When to lock, When to pin - Best practices

[jrotella]

I have a lot of people here at my work always asking me when they should pin things, versus when they should lock things and I can't always give them a general answer to that question. Anyone want to share their best practices on when to pin and when to lock?

Thanks.

[bclarch]

Pin when you want something to stay in one place relative to the overall project. Lock when you want something to maintain a relationship with another element in the project.

[aaronrumple]

Pin holds position.
Lock makes a relationship.

Pin grids. AutoCAD backgrounds. Maybe levels. That's about all I ever pin. Some like to pin external walls.

Locks set up dimensional relationships. New users shouldn't lock until they get a good fell for how Revit's parametric work. Otherwise, the project can get too complex and slow. As users get better, you'll find a good balance as what to lock and what not to. It very much depends on project type.

[hand471037]

Either way I've found on the long-term to use minimal use of locks and pins.

New Revit users usually go a little crazy with the locks, for it's something (if they are coming from an AutoCAD background) haven't really had before and love to use thinking they will save time.

But usually pins and locks will make things more complex, and harder for others to work on.

So when I lock something, once I no longer need that relationship for it's late in design and I'm not expecting huge changes I'll unlock those relationships to 'clean up' and keep things simple and fast. It's easy to re-lock those relationships in the future prior to a huge edit of the project, and I've found that it's better not having those things get in the way of minor edits (or worse, undoing work in non-open views that you don't find until later).

When I pin something, it's usually either to maintain a reference location (like Aaron says, DWG backgrounds are perfect) or as a temporary gesture to keep something from moving while making a large change to the project. Again, I undo pins unless they are absolutely needed, just to keep things simple, clean, and fast.

The less you have to do, the faster you will get things done. It's a little zen, but I've found that keeping my Revit model's internal relationships 'light' keeps life easy, makes things fast, and lets others easily step in to help out without fear. There's a balance point there that you'll need to find for your staff and projects, and it's probably less use of both than you may be thinking.

[davidcobi]

I would only pin grids, levels, and developed sections. You don't want developed sections moving by accident once you've added detail to a view.

I only use locks in the family editor enviroment.

[Scott Hopkins]

Pins have very little effect on performance. You really don't ever have to worry about slowing down Revit with too many pins. As said, Grids, Levels, Property lines, etc. are great candidates for pins.

Locks if over used have the potential to slow Revit to a snail’s pace. If you don't believe me try locking a bunch of plan region edges on a big project and then see what happens when you try to make a change. The only items that I typically lock are walls to grids and floors and roofs to walls. On big projects I might lock nothing at all. Also, locking dimensions within the Family editor can be very useful.

[clog boy]

Oh boy oh boy oh boy - I use locks a lot, since I pretty much build models of prefab houses. One grid should be able to move, floors should stretch with it while other things move. Even I find myself at times creating cascading constraints (constrain to constraint item, which is constraint to a wall, which is constraint to a grid) while dimension constraints directly to the grid are the 'proper' way to go. I never really pinned items before, but will have a look at it in the near future.

Live and learn...

[hand471037]

Bram, I think on smaller projects where the total number of relationships is less you can get away with locking everything. It's when you get into the city-block-sized or larger buildings that I think you need to pay closer attention to it.

Also I started using Revit at version 3.1 on a P-III, so maybe I'm just overtly sensitive to slowdown problems and old habits die hard. ;-)