Revit: Please enter some other value than what you just entered.

Editing arrowheads I got this error message. It would be even more helpful if it told me what values are allowed.

By testing I concluded that arrowheads can't have an arrow angle more than 90 degrees. I guess I should settle with my 90 degree stair arrow then, although it's not exactly how I want it:

Revit: online help not very helpful

While copying windows along a wall I got a rogue "can't cut instance out of Wall" error, and decided to try my luck with the promising "More Info" button in the error message window.

Well, turns out the info that button provides is not very helpful:

The button leads to an online help page, and lands on a nonexistent page. This isn't an isolated problem: I tried hitting F1 in a few other dialogs, and most of the time that led me to a similar missing page. The issue is not unique to Autodesk products, either: there's a growing trend to move from an offline help document bundled with a software product into an online help site, wiki, or forum. This wouldn't actually be that bad if the online help was kept up to date and the software links pointing to the site weren't broken; unfortunately, in my experience, this is not the case most of the time. At least an offline PDF is reliable and offers actual help, even if that help isn't always up to date!

Revit: Ramp Rants

We all love ramps, right? At least, we have to tolerate them when designing buildings that have ramps for one reason or another. Let's now ignore, for a moment, the usual issues about the nonfunctional up arrows and the lacking ability to join walls to ramps; I've got something even better this time.

Let's say I want to model a ramp leading down into a parking garage. I model the ramp with some additional walls next to it, and a cellar wall under it. All looks fine in the 3D view:

But what happens when we look at the ramp in the plan view? It's not a pleasant sight:

The ramp isn't properly rendered in plan views; in fact, it's rendered as a flat slab lying slightly above the bottom constraint specified in the ramp's properties (you can see that the ramp edge casts a shadow even though the lighting settings have a ground plane specified at the bottom level). Additionally, the wall that should be obscured under the ramp is now completely visible on top of the ramp-slab.

Use tilted Floors instead, you say. Seems that's the only option for acceptable graphical representation, and it's not like the ramp up arrow works anyway. This time I'm lucky, but next I'm going to have to model a curving ramp...

Revit: Bad UI design

Revit is full of dialog boxes which the user can't resize. One of the most annoying ones is the main menu. You have to hit a couple pixels high button to scroll up and down even when half of the screen height is not being used. And you can't even use the mouse wheel to scroll this menu.