Everyday tasks

Find by category or parameter

Every daily job starts with “which ones?” A schedule, a filter, a three-click isolate. Then you do the actual work.

Count and group a found set

“How many of each door type on this floor?” means a schedule, a filter, or a copy into Excel. Then someone asks it again.

Export a found set

You just isolated the doors with no fire rating. Now someone wants that list in Excel. You build a schedule from scratch.

Isolate a found set

Temporary Hide/Isolate is a selection. Getting the selection took the last ten minutes.

Select what you just found

The assistant found 80 doors. You still want to nudge two of them by hand. Getting them selected was the whole point.

Colour by a parameter

Colouring by fire rating or status is how you see the gaps. Random colours on every re-run force everyone to re-learn the drawing.

Change a parameter in bulk

Fire rating, comments, room-bounding — a column in a schedule, or click-click-click. A dedicated toggle for one YesNo would be a second path for the same write.

Number marks in order

Numbering doors by creation order is how D-47 sits next to D-12. The mark should follow the corridor, not the file history.

Number by room or host

Holding-down bolts, furniture, fixtures — the mark has to say which room or pad. A 3D bounding-box test would report the whole set as ungrouped.

Swap types on a found set

Swapping a type resets writable instance parameters. Writing every value back looks thorough and quietly undoes the reason you swapped.

Duplicate a type

You need “Wall - 200mm - Fire” next to the 200mm generic. Duplicate in the UI, then rename, then hope nobody already used that name.

Copy a set onto other levels

Furniture, fixtures, toilets — the same set on eight floors. Copy/Paste Aligned, eight times, hoping the right workset is current.

Pin or unpin a found set

Someone moved a grid. Someone unpinned a link. Pinning is a right-click you forget to do on the whole set.

Delete a found set

Delete is easy. Delete the wrong 400 elements is a restore. A dedicated “delete tags” command would be a second path for the same job.

Override graphics on a set

A working view needs the architect’s link in halftone and the services solid. That is a Visibility/Graphics tour, per view.

Duplicate a view

You need a working plan next to the sheeted one. Duplicate with detailing, then rename, then hope the template still applies.

Create a floor plan

New plan, pick the type, pick the level, apply the template. Then do it for the next six floors.

Copy 2D from one view to others

Level 2 is annotated. Levels 3–8 are not. Copying 2D by hand is how marks land on the wrong host.

Place a view on a sheet

The view exists. The sheet exists. Dropping the viewport and aligning it to the floor below is the last ten minutes of every drawing.

Export drawings to PDF or DWG

Print to PDF is a dialog. DWG is another. A named set already exists and nobody can remember whether the exporter add-in is installed.

Show or hide grid bubbles

Left/right toggles the wrong end on grids drawn the other way and on rotated views. Mapping the box to the screen is how that bug usually ships.

Join walls and attach tops

Unjoined walls show a double line. Walls that should stop at the roof still run through it. Join and Attach Top/Base are different clicks, easy to mix up.

Work from the current view or selection

You already filtered the view. You already selected the run. Describing that set again as a category plus three parameters is the long way round.

Material take-off on a set

A material take-off schedule is a second table, usually for the whole model. You wanted concrete in these walls, not the project.

Chain a morning pass

A typical morning is five tools that do not share a selection: find the empty Marks, isolate them, tag them, colour the rest, export the leftovers. Each add-in starts from zero.