Why are wall legends so completely useless?

[jthacker]

Hi all, new to this place so I hope this is posted in the proper location.

Using Revit Arch 2008.

So anyway, wall type legends - WHAT IS THE POINT? Once you drop a wall family into the legend view you:

Can't dimension.
Can't snap to.
Can't trim to.
Can't align to.

What in the world are these things good for? Do they have a very specific intended purpose and that is all that one should use them for or is this some part of the Revit program that has been criminally neglected for some reason?

Gah!

[roy.70844]

Wow, Nice first post....

The way I see it, legends serve the following purpose, that is to provide a graphical representation and a text description of the elements being used in the project. For example I might create a legend with all my electrical symbols on with a description/specification next to each. I would also do this for my wall styles so that those viewing the drawing could easily identify the different walls in use on the project, different fire ratings perhaps. Also I would create a door legend so that I could tag the doors by type in the plans, and those reading the drawings could refer to the legend for more details and a plan/elevation of each door type. I could go on, but I'll not.

If I want to dimension etc I will create a callout or draw the detail in a drafting view (depending on requirement). Yes there are limitations to what you can do in the legend view but these have little impact on the functional purpose of the legend.

BTW I remember the time before legends, now THAT was fun!

Roy

[patricks]

Yes Roy you are right that legends are pretty useful for most things.

However for some reason when you place a wall type in a legend, things get rather quirky. As the OP mentioned, you can't dimension or snap to them, you can't align to them or anything.

I prefer to create my wall type legend as a drafting view, and create the walls themselves using detail components. Much more control over everything.

Now for windows and doors, yes legends are awesome. Now if the factory would just fix that pesky issue with no view numbers when you place a legend onto a sheet. That showed up on either 9 or 9.1 I think, but worked fine before. We actually had a legend in our template with some general notes, and a view number on the sheet it was sitting on. When we upgraded our template to that particular release, the view number became un-editable. :roll: