Is WTZA the most powerful Revit command for navigating view windows?
One of the biggest efficiency challenges for Revit users is the management of open views. Whether you are new or a veteran with Revit, view management is a frequently reoccurring activity in every part of the virtual design and construction process. Therefore, is important to teams and project budgets that view management is wielded effectively.
Yes, there are supplemental apps to help you with better view management - apps like Palladio, COINS Auto-Section Box, and ViewIT. However, Revit has several useful functions to manage view windows that when used in combination become more useful. Some of these view management tools are on-demand right out of the box with a few keyboard taps away. In pervious blogs, we discussed a few of those shortcuts as well as making personalized shortcuts. But of them all, we think WTZA might be the most powerful combination for view management.
What is WTZA?
WT and ZA are default shortcut keystroke commands in Revit that tiles all open view windows and zooms all view windows in the drawing area - respectively.
Here is what makes these induvial commands more useful in combination. Say you have you have several views open in Revit. As you switch from one location in a model to another or even when switching to another task, changing views is likely required. The fastest way to see all the views currently open is WT/Window Tile.
Still, the result from WT presents an issue. Often many of the views will represent their current zoomed position. Thereby, it is difficult to identify the type and contents of a view visually. See image one below. Partially zoomed view or perhaps a view that shows nothing is only identified by reading the window title.
This problem is solved this with ZA/Zoom All. Image two indicates that all views zoomed to the extents of the model allowing the user to visually identify and holistically determine which views to eliminate, keep, or launch. When there many more views, using WTZA make the view appears like thumbnail images and make identification quick and easy.
Simple enough, right? When used together WT and ZA is an excellent power combination that should be a part of all Revit users Revit-Language.
Image 1 – Window Tile (WT) keeps the previous zoom position and prevents quick identification.
Image 2 – Zoom All (ZA) resets zoom to the extent of the model and provide a thumbnail-like window for quick identification.
