Another good issue came across my desk the other day that I wanted to share. Some of you might run into this, but my guess would be that you will not.
A customer was working on some rather large projects and was running into a problem with being able to select all the elements in the file. They would go to a 3D view and attempt to window select everything in the model. In this case, they were grouping their curtain walls together and everything else was turned off.
When they would select everything, Revit would only select 16,383 objects in the view. If they selected half the model, they could get another 16,383 objects, and the other half would give them about 12,000. Something wasn't adding up.
Turns out that Revit prevents you from selecting more than 16,383 objects at a time. It was a mechanism implemented to prevent what we call "Runaway" selection and have a negative impact on the software and the model. It was an older "feature" so to speak, before there were Revit files that could get this big.
A obvious solution is that you can select the model in chucks that are smaller than 16,383.
By the way, 16,384 is 2 to the 14th power, (we let you select one less than this number), just some info for any geeks out there.
If you have run into this selection limit, let me know, I'd be interested to hear what you have done.
Just last night I had the same problem. Generally, we have been able to work with this limitation by isolating worksets and categories to select all the elements in a model. In my case, it was an old model started about 4 years ago that I was preparing for a team to use in a new project. There were over 29,000 elements even after I purged and cleaned the model.
Unfortunately, there were only three worksets (Import and Link, Workset 1 and Shared Levels and Grids). The content was incorrectly drawn on Import and Link and of the 29,000 elements, almost 90% were doors, walls and windows so even isolating by category did not work. Considered working backwards and deleting Workset 1 then renaming Import and Link to Workset 1 - but Revit will not allow this.
Also had to correct phases in the project and with a bunch of curtain walls, isolating the wall category does not help because I must grab the doors, windows and curtain panels at the same time to change a phase.
Needless to say, correcting will be tedious in the extreme. I will submit this to support but I welcome any work-arounds I have not already tried.
Posted by: Phyllis Robbins | June 10, 2010 at 03:21 PM
Hello gents-
Glad to read that were not the only ones having the issue. :) I certainly see the former necessity for a protective tool such as that, but im always thankful that hardware has come far enough that (hopefully?) this limitation will be gone soon, because it certainly is limiting.
Expanding on it, the bigger issue at hand isnt always being able to select MORe objects, but being able to select CERTAIN objects.
Regardless, the limitation itself NEEDS to go away. I need to have faith in the selection, and yes.... When you consider a type/instance object system like Revits, there are MANY times you will grab an object and say "gimme all of 'em" (as we were doing here), and.... you dont get all of them.
But even MORE interesting... In this case it wouldnt have mattered, as there were more than 16xxx of that one type of mullion (although mullion joins and breaks is another issue), but consider the following: Right now, Window-select-all, then Filter-down, is about the only intelligent way we have to select certain things. Or select all by type (in view or in project). But a LOT of the times, we want to keep selection sets, or better yet.... SEARCH sets, Like Navisworks.
While the intent of the limitation was to protect the users from Runaway Selection, its a band aid for a broken leg. WHY is someone window selecting the entire model? More often than not, its because they dont have a better avenue to select what they need. We already have the technology (Filters?) coded in... Now a streamlined version for SELECTING would be amazing.
Some of the External Commands have selection sets, but they are static, Element ID based. We need a search set that constantly adds to itself through the criterion set. "Include all elements of this type." "Include all elements with ICU in the Department Parameter," and so on.
But yeah... Back on topic. The limit was a pain. And selecting the model in chunks isnt really a viable answer. Imagine a building with a MASSIVE scale... Lets say, 60k of one mullion type. And you need to change an instance parameter for only the ones on the exterior of the building. Well, a schedule cant Filter by Workset, so you cant do the "unitemize every instance and enter the value" trick. So you make a view, that only has the Skin visible. You right click on one, select all visible in view (im pretending were in 2011. In 2010, as this project was, this was a NIGHTMARE). Select all in view (you only get 1/5 of them), change the value, then right click, hide in view. Rinse and repeat. Takes 5 times. Then you can unhide them all. Then EVERY TIME you need to alter data to that set of objects, rinse and repeat. (In 2010 where you cant select all instances visible in view, im not even sure how you go about it, without tedious amounts of window selection.)
Important to remember, we all rate our successes in minutes and hours. This workaround adds 10-15 minutes 9counting 2010 regen times) to something that should be 30 seconds or less. Time to axe the limitation. :)
Posted by: Aaron Maller | June 10, 2010 at 05:53 PM