Thursday, December 13, 2012

Paste Aligned Won't Play Along

I recently encountered a situation where two Paste Aligned options did not work while the option for "Aligned to Same Place" did. In this situation I was moving elements from one building file to another because of a scope of work switcheroo.


Typical we can select elements in a linked file and then paste them into the host project. Ordinarily I can paste walls, for example, using "to Aligned to Selected Levels" or "Aligned to Current View". In this case the walls didn't seem to remember their level arrangement even though both models observe the same elevations and naming. Revit insisted on putting them on the level above or the level below.

I ran into the same disrespect using "Aligned to Current View". The only way I got what I wanted was using "Aligned to Same Place". I was in a hurry so I didn't back up and try to figure out what might be contributing to the issue. I've never had a problem using the other options with elements that were already part of the same host file, you know just pasting elements to other levels to copy them upward or downward. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that these elements were coming from the linked file?

Something to consider the next time you are copying and pasting elements from one file to another.

9 comments:

Erik said...

Could it be because the Levels have different GUIDs? Not sure why it wouldn't work for Current View though.

daveedwards said...

Dumb question - but where both projects open when you tried this?

Steve said...

Erik good thought on the GUID. That might explain it, since it is probably not really paying any attention to the name. Choosing the level from a dialog though is pretty explicit so I do not think that expalins it for all the different options.

Dave the project has links and I was copying elements from a link into the host by TAB selecting the linked elements and using copy and paste aligned. There was only one project open, the host.

smokeyspark said...

I did experience something similar to this issue, where I did a paste Aligned to Selected Levels for a bunch of my columns, but the results only seem to appear on the original level (meaning all my pasted columns are overlapping on level 1 in the same position)

later i found out that the issue was because I selected the elements and copied them while i was in the 3D view..

when i made the copy in my plan view, everything went well

Steve said...

Columns are special because they will usually paste down, using depth versus height. Seems to be hard coded for columns.

Daniel Hurtubise said...

Erik is right. Levels are treated with their GUID and not name.
A bit of a bummer but i can understand from a dev point.

Steve said...

Yeah I get the GUID bit. When I choose a specific level to use from a dialog you would think the walls would respect it.

If the second file was created as a Save As originally maybe there is something at play there?

As I mentioned in the other comment columns have always pasted poorly because of their legacy depth preference. This might be related or it could just be something quirky in this project file.

Studer said...

For me too, works to copy in plane view, not in section or 3D....

Unknown said...

I'd like to chip in that today I also found out that Paste Aligned to Selected Levels works differently if you are in a plan view or a 3D view. Thankfully I found this post and got past a problem that was very confusing.

I found that, in a 3D view, copying a grouped floor layout to higher levels gave them an offset of 195mm, the same distance those levels had been moved up from their original position. It was as though the 3D view retained some information about the previous elevations, but the problem was not there if I performed the exact same actions in a plan view. (This is on 2017.1, and I checked the group origin, offsets and all the elements within the groups.)

The behaviour between views certainly ought to be consistent!