Revit 2016 - R2 Family Type Properties Improvements

By Justin Doughty 

Recently I noticed another great improvement to the Revit 2016 R2 update. When editing Family Types, the interface has changed, this may be a little confusing to start with, but with the help of the below diagram you can see the changes:

So you will first notice that the 2016 R2 interface is a lot tidier, helping you concentrate and also giving more screen space to the parameters. Also all of the grey editing buttons have been transformed and moved to more intuitive positions, for example the edit/new type buttons are now located next to the “Types”. All of these buttons are now icons rather than a list of text and look more like icons we are used to in other applications (red cross to delete, pencil to edit/modify).

But the main addition and best feature has to be the search bar highlighted just below the ”Types”. This is a welcomed feature, stopping us having to scroll endlessly through every parameter to find the one we need. As we type each character the parameters filter all parameters, to show only those that include those characters, not just in the Parameter name, but also in the values and formulas. This could even be used to concentrate on a certain group of parameters for editing.