Tab Selection Tip

[JCM]

I'm sure most of you know this little tip, but for the beginners her it goes.

When making a selection of multiple elements that are connected, say beams for example, you can hit the tab key and revit will cycle through some of the elements until it highlights the beams connected together. Then you can click and make the selection of those elements.

However say you have a group of beams that need to be selected and then another group of beams that need to be selected as well. How to go about it???

You can hover your mouse over the first set, hit the TAB key until it highlights the elements needed.
Click to select the elements
Hover over the second set of elements then hit TAB key again BUT BEFORE Clicking again hold the CTRL key and then click this will add to the selection the next set of elements.

Repeat as needed.

Hope this helps

[Alex Cunningham]

Always a good tip. Rep for you. To add one more thing to Juan post.

You can also use TAB to select objects within a linked RVT model.

[Rick Moore]

You can also use TAB to select objects within a linked RVT model.

Which can be copy/pasted into your file. That surprised me when I first tried it.

[Dave Jones]

Which can be copy/pasted into your file. That surprised me when I first tried it.

that's a new one on me...most cool! Thanks for the tip!

[Ben-May]

Also if you have a number of elements you are tabbing through the selection for and you happen to go past, you can Shift TAB to go back through the selection cycle

Requires a bit of finger gymnastics though...:

[darryl]

you can also select a portion of a string of walls if you don't want to select the whole string!

1. click to select first wall
2. hover over the last wall you want and hit tab
3. after the string is selected and while the mouse is still hovering over the last wall, depending on which half of the wall you're hovering over, the selection will change between connecting the 2 walls clockwise vs. counter-clockwise

[elton williams]

Which can be copy/pasted into your file. That surprised me when I first tried it.

you can also select a portion of a string of walls if you don't want to select the whole string!

1. click to select first wall
2. hover over the last wall you want and hit tab
3. after the string is selected and while the mouse is still hovering over the last wall, depending on which half of the wall you're hovering over, the selection will change between connecting the 2 walls clockwise vs. counter-clockwise

thanks guys! :rep: :rep:

[Jerry]

More on Shift-Tab

An additional use for a SHIFT-TAB combination is handy in angled dimensioning of non co-lined objects, e.g. a corner of one wall to a corner of another "on diagonal".

For some reason Revit always picks the option you want as the last possible - in this case a corner point. Using SHIFT-TAB selects the desired option immediately, which of course follows the rule that SHIFT-TAB reverses the order in which elements are selected.

Similarly, when I try to align, say, hatch patern to an edge of an object, often using TAB alone I have to "loop" through several options. SHIFT-TAB usually helps here as well - as with the dimensions...

[sander.obdeijn]

One more thing I have found some people don't know. In the left bottom corner you can see the element name you are about to select this also works when you tab through different elements.

[rkitect]

Since we're on the subject of TAB selecting, you can use TAB to select only a certain portion of a loop of lines (useful in complex sketches) as shown in this video:

http://www.screencast.com/t/h6U6PCMg1

This works with chained objects as well. Select your first object, then hover over the piece in the chain you want the select to go to. Hit TAB. Which half of the second object your mouse is hovering over determines which part of the chain is selected. Does not work with CTRL to add selections.

HTH.