Consistency

Consistency is an interesting topic in design.  Its often spoke that improving it is a worthwhile pursuit in its own sake but in reality its much more subtle.  The cookie cutter suburbs that now comprise large swaths of the U.S. might have been justified on some levels but often fail their eventual inhabitants.  Lost was the pleasing diversity represented by vernacular building styles and common sense mixed zoning that create lively walkable communities.  Much of new urban planning is a re-discovery of proven ideas that were casually tossed aside in the later half of the last century.

A co-worker Chauncey Wilson wrote a good summary of this topic applied to interaction design on a sister blog titled "The Consistency Conundrum".  I recommend it.

In testing Revit and other products and also in my teaching I've seen many places where consistency improves learning by providing a scaffold via interaction patterns. A new feature can be understood by leveraging a known feature.  In some cases the interaction pattern may not even be that great but once learned tasks are completed without trouble.

In the 2009 release there was a quiet effort to make our open and save dialogs more consistent.  I placed some animated GIFs on a separate page (less annoying) showing the differences from 2008.  In some instances it was just a layout fix but in others extra dialog bits were moved to occur before or after the save dialogs to better fit the work-flow and not overload the person performing the task with too many decisions.

To close I want to solicit comments regarding:

• Areas where you feel Revit is consistent in a good way.  reinforce good behavior.
• Areas where is Revit inconsistent in a way that causes frustration.  (e.g. renaming is handled differently in types and views)

P.S. Please no stories of short inebriated mythical celtic creatures.  I'm sympathetic and heard them all by now. I promise that bugger is on a strict coffee regiment and a cab has been called.

_erik

Comments

[Steve G.]

love that P.S. :)

[Adam Sheather]

Handrail tool is one tool that really stands out to me as inconsistent compared to the rest of the workflow options. The dialog, layout and creation is all so "foreign" in feel to Revit it's almost another package.

Also void creation is inconsistent. If I draw an inplace void I should have it cut whatever i want when i choose the cut tool. Rather then having it only cut certain elements, I figured that's what the cut/uncut functionality is for.

I'm sure there are others but I'll let others tell of their experiences, these two are standouts for me.

In regards to the PS I guess I'll leave out the goblin on the sugar high analogy then :)

[Chad]

One that stands out in my mind is pressing the 'Element Properties' to open a dialogue called 'Instance Properties'. Mixed terminology like this can be a problem when training at the most beginner of levels.

[Elmo]

As Chad has mentioned already the element and instance tends to give mixed interpretations.

A big one for me is the site tools. I find it strange that Revit hasn't updated it's site tools for a long time now.

[Mark]

The main thing I think about while using Revit, and one of the key things I try to reinforce while teaching it to new users is my belief that everything you 'create' in Revit falls into two main categories: Drafting and Modeling. When people get this idea and understand the differences in behavior and results of the two, they are usually more successful.

However, the terminology in the software for these two 'states' varies widely. It HAS gotten better in later version, e.g. Lines are now Model Lines, but here are (just a few) examples of where it differs:

Detail Lines
Drafting Views
Symbolic Lines...

I usually tell students that 'Detail' is another word for 'Drafting' inside Revit... which may or may not be true, but it gets the point across.

Another example I give is that when a DWG is Imported/Linked, the behavior is basically as a Drafting/Model element depending on the 'Current View Only' selection, but this is not expressed in those terms, and yet determines the un-changable behavior of this element.

Anyway, that's my MAIN terminology soapbox :) ...thanks for asking!

[mo]

Curtain wall tools are the best tool revit offer so far the worst and non consistent are
Handrail tool( difficult to use and understand please make it work like curtain tools)
Stair tool( not flexible enough)
Site tool( confusing and not flexible)
Insert and Link ( too many commands and menues could be just one doing all the stuff)
I think accessing critical commands from mouse right click menue is much powerfull and consistent than dialog boxes please look into this option as well.

[DoTheBIM]

Just ran into this one in testing. Revit is not consistent in places on how you can enter dimensional input. For example. Revit has a specific behavior for imperial entry (that works mind you for the most part) But going into the materials texture editor areas. the same rules don't apply. tried entering (14 2 5/16") and you get (14' 2 81789/262144") which is close but cuases one to look closer because the text box doesn't display all that at once. try entering the same in a later version and I get (1′–4–1/4″) which definately don't work. The measure tool also displays a dash seperating feet and inches which can't be immediatly used in a formula (via copy/paste) without removing the dash.

[eivendur]

for example:
renaming a view in the projectbrowser allows you to select letters while holiding shift and using the arrow-keys, and if you also press ctrl, you select the whole word - consistent with windows and almost all applications. if you want to rename a view via its viewproperties, ctrl doesn't have any effect, i have to repeatedly hit the arrowkey.
although a trivial issue, its one of the most annoing things in my daily workflow.

[Aristide Little-Lex]

I'd say the "Create Form" button could be described as inconsistent.

[Erik]

Can you say more? The conceptual modeling tools are different than the legacy form making tools. Sometimes something new is introduced to move things forward but in time this should be rationalized and unified.

DoTheBIM. These are great work flow issues. Thanks.

[DoTheBIM]

Erik. No problem. Can we get em fixed by the 2011 release? Seems like such a simple fix for the factory... ;D haha... couldn't resist.

[Mike Sealander]

The Highlight in Model feature in schedules has too many steps when the feature is not available in an open view. You have to back out of three dialogue boxes, when it should be one, or at most two boxes.

[Tim Waldock]

Sorry for delayed response . . . .
Category separation is inconsistent across Revit between filters & Vis. Graphics: Visibility graphics categories are confusing - Detail items should be under annotation; Grids, Levels & Reference planes (?) should not be under annotation - model?; Model and detail lines should be separated; Area boundaries and room separations should be listed as sub-categories of areas and rooms. I have many more examples - will send a document.

[Anthony Hauck]

Yes I recall some of these issues when investigating converting lines (between detail, model symbolic).  Some of these are in the core and not trivial to change but I agree and look forward to seeing your document

[DoTheBIM]

Another area for consistency checkup. I call it "Standard Windows File operations behavior" or "Shortcuts not available everywhere". For example... You can invoke shortcut [F2] to rename views and such in the project browser... but [F2] is non-functional for renaming materials. Another example is using the measure tool... Often I want to copy and paste the results from the measure tool into a property in an object. but you can't use ctrl+c to copy from the results box... you have to right click then left click copy to get the data on the clip board.

[David M]

I find that the inconsistencies across the project to family editor are difficult to explain to new users. The line one has been mentioned, but in a project we have model lines and detail lines. If we look at VG we see them instead listed as just Lines and turning off an item here controls both detail lines and model lines. I understand the programming, but is this consistent? Then when we look at a family editor we can find that there are symbolic lines, which act like either a model line or a drafting line based on the parameters we set for it. Shouldn't we just be consistent and incorporate a detail line or model line into the family editor?

Element properties, via the ribbon, gives us the option of instance properties and type properties. How do you explain to a new Revit user (2010 only) that instance and element properties are the same thing, especially when the ribbon says both, but the right+click gives the option of only element properties? And where do type properties show up then...they are under Edit Type.

[Tim Waldock]

The one that causes me the most grief in Revit is the inconsistency between how gridlines and section markers are handled in cropped views.

Good: Levels & Gridlines have a 2d/3d control which clearly separates the two operations; Even when grids are pinned, it is possible to change 2d extents (but not 3d); It is possible to re-link the 2d and 3d extents by dragging and snapping the 2d dot to the 3d circle.

Bad (really bad): Section markers have 2d/3d behaviour, but no obvious dot/circle controls - in fact they are almost impossible to control. Their 2d/3d extents can never be relinked once broken; their 2d extents (section heads) keep jumping around on random different views when the 3d extents are changed; if pinned, you have to unpin just to move the section head or broken line extents in 2d; if you break a section line it is sometimes broken in other views too, but not always (no pattern I can see).

Good/Bad: Levels and grids are automatically cropped at a system defined distance from the crop boundary (good); but the distance is typically too great for grids and typically too close for levels (Level name almost always runs over the crop line unless you redesign the level marker to have 2 lines of text, or tiny text) - this is bad because you often have to move levels out from the crop boundary, and grids in to the boundary and once that is done on a view, they no longer automatically update when the crop boundary is changed.

[Tim Waldock]

Something that is consistently good in Revit is that when any item that refers to another item by name (chosen from a list), Revit follows through the dependencies and updates the parent when child names are changed. eg. In a hosted slab edge, when the profile type is renamed, it automatically updates the slab edge type properties, so that the slab edge doesn't mysteriously disappear (many other software programs are not so consistently robust in this fashion).

BUT, I've just discovered an exception: In view filters for section views, if the filter is by family & type "equals" a type chosen from the list, the filter does not update if the type is renamed - and the filter breaks. It is only now when I find one exception do I realise that we've been taking for granted a hitherto brilliant record on consistency.

[Anthony Hauck]

Thanks for the good example.  This one in particular I think we can build on.  There are other opportunities where existing data can be re-used.

[DoTheBIM]

Although I haven't seen it inconsistent, but it is consistency for the worse... Another area for improvement is when Revit analyzes user input data for naming of things. For example, When I rename a reference plane or view name that duplicates another name, Revit will promptly and kindly let me know that that name is already taken, BUT after clicking OK or Cancel on the notice (kind of inconsistent in that too with different error dialogs for essentially the same error with different objects)... Revit returns me to a point as if I never even typed anything in. Quite annoying to have to type things twice and THEN add a tweak.

[Anthony Hauck]

Good call.  Naming is inconsistent in many ways.  Sometimes we allow things to be named in place like the browser and other times launch dialogs.  A consistent experience (including validation) that minimizes effort is needed

[DoTheBIM]

I also don't like how Create similar works great for families both system & components but when I want to create a similar line Revit doesn't have a clue that its a circle, 3 point arc, spline, etc.