Sticky Array

The other day, before I started teaching my class at the Boston Architectural College, a student from a previous class asked me a Revit question.  It took a few minutes and help from another professor (Jeff Hanson, one of my guest posters) to figure it out. 

The problem she was having was that while attempting to arrange geometry in a family, the geometry would not array vertically in the family but would only array in plan. 

Try creating a solid extrusion in a plan view in a family, and then switch to elevation view and create an array that copies the extrusion up.  You won’t be able to do it right away.  

The problem is cause because the solid extrusion is locked to the reference plane on the Ref. Level where you created it.  There is a quick fix to this problem.  You can disassociate the geometry from the work plane.  The trick here is that it is not totally clear where you do this. 

The key is the Edit Work Plane… button.

Once you click this button on the options bar (with the geometry selected) 

You can click the Dissociate button in the dialog box to remove the work plane from the geometry so to speak.  Once this is done just click Ok and now you can array the geometry in elevation.