The Most Overlooked Revit Tools – Linework

We get to teach a lot of Revit classes and often the students have a fair amount of Revit experience. But there is always one of two commands that we discuss in class that even the experienced Revit users say “I didn’t know about that!” A piece of software as complicated as Revit has a LOT going on, and it’s easy to miss out on some functionality.

I think beyond the complexity of the software, another reason these commands get overlooked is because the buttons are TINY. No matter how much you stretch the ribbon, these commands are resigned to the smallest button size ever and literally get overlooked.

Linework Command

The first tiny tool I want to highlight is the Linework command. Track it down on the Modify tab in the View panel here:

See? It’s so small! Here’s a better shot of it:

What the Linework Command Does

Revit has a priority list of how it decides to draw things. It starts at Object Styles and works its way down to figure out what line to use when it displays the elements in a view. But every once in a while, you need to override an individual line that Revit has created. That’s where the Linework command comes in.

After activating the command, you select the new line style, then select the individual lines to change. Your selected lines have the new style.

That’s it. It’s view specific so that change only happens in the view you use the command in. And if you need to reset it, simply change the line style to <By Category> and your override is reset.

What You Can Use It For

We’ve already posted a great blog about using the Linework command to see overhead elements, and that’s one of my favorite ways to use Linework.

It also gets used a lot to clean up those seams in elevations when you have that little line between two elements. You can just override that line to be <Invisible> and it goes away. But be sure you use it twice – each element has a line you need to override.

You can use it on cut and project lines, so it’s a great versatile utility… that just happens to have a really small button.

We have a handful more overlooked tools that we are going to be writing about soon. Check back for more!