Some years ago I was in two minds about implementing dynamic dialogue boxes for the apps I was writing in Visual Studio. Revit does employ this dynamic dialogues and users should be aware of this. The advantage is that on can have a much more concise dialogue if the context is understood, while the converse is also true: inferences about Revit’s capabilities should not be made on appearances.

For instance: the availability of system families for transferral between projects is limited to the system families that exist in the project to start with. When I investigated the creation of a custom DWG Export Setup I initially concluded that one had to create a text file, instead of simply transferring it between projects. This was because the default DWG Export Setups are not recognised for project transfer. Below the defaults are shown.

The default DWG Export Setup families are not available for transferring between projects.

A custom DWG Export Setup is created.

Now custom DWG Export Setups can be transferred between the projects.

The default notching thickness parameter for a member is applied to facilitate inaccuracies and welding spaces. It is a little confusing as when an un-notched framing member is selected the <Instance Parameter><Structural> parameters does not include the <Notching Distance> parameter.

After the beam has been notched, the Notching parameter is available.

Note the state of the Decal Types dialogue box when the bump pattern is set to <none>.

Now regard the change in the dialogue box when the BUMP pattern is set to select a file:

Investigate all the controls in Revit and use intuition as a guide while investigating the user interfaces.