How is your experience with Work Plane?

[yaojia.hua39PZQ]

Hi Revit users!

I'm a user experience designer in Revit team. Our team is researching on the work plane feature. At this early stage, we would like to learn about your current experience with work plane.

Your answers to the following three questions will be of great value for us:

1. How do you currently use the work plane feature?
   • The main use cases in your work? (e.g. set work plane for 2D/3D views, sketching element, placing work plane-based components.) 
     • For work plane in views: What do you use it for? How do you feel about the current feature? 
   • When you set work plane for the current view, which one(s) of the following are used more frequently?  (Name-drop down list, Pick a plane, Pick a line and use the work plane it was sketched in)

1. • When you change the work plane of an element, which one(s) of the following are used more frequently? (Edit Work Plane, Pick New)
2. Is there anything that works NOT well when using the current feature?
3. What do you think is the opportunity to improve the work plane feature? 

If you're interested in participating in a potential follow-up interview, please fill out this survey.

Thank you! We appreciate your help. 

[Alfredo_Medina]

My opinion: I have not seen anything that needs improvement in regard to assigning, seeing, or choosing a work plane. 

I would rather see the team focusing on other areas that do need improvement.

[barthbradley]

Curious inquiry.  

I use the Work Plane Tool all the time.  I don't how one would not use the Work Plane Tool in Revit. What's the alternative?  

Regarding which one I use the most; it would probably be a tie between Pick a Plane and Name.  I seldom use Pick a Line.  

Regarding complaints; None.  

Regarding improvements; I can't think of any.  

[ToanDN]

Same here.  Why would you pick the very one thing that works well to find a fix for it?

[syman2000]

I've work with workplane a lot in family. One thing I find it annoying is when you create angle workplane in traditional family, the workplane always gets rotated if I host a workplane family on that angle workplane. If I placed in the workplane for adaptive family, it always come straight to where you drawn this. Not sure if this is part of the programming bug.

As well in adaptive family environment, I cannot adjust the workplace extent on plan or elevation. It always show up as 2d instead of 3d grips. I have to use the 3d environment and manually stretch the workplane. It is tedious but you get the point how these little nuisance does impact how you work with the family.

The other wish I love to see is able to rotate the workplane in 3d mode. Right now you are able to rotate workplane on plan or elevation.

[barthbradley]

FWIW: Align Tool works with a Work Plane Grids.  

[yaojia.hua39PZQ]

@barthbradley @Alfredo_Medina @ToanDN  Glad to know the current work plane feature works well for you.😀

Just wondering anything can further improve your efficiency? e.g. like a more convenient way to access the three options (Name, Pick a Plane, Pick a line).

[yaojia.hua39PZQ]

Thanks for the input! @syman2000  We will investigate the issues you pointed out.

[syman2000]

Thanks...also I have another issue with workplane. Most often if I create workplane, it doesn't know which side is positive or negative side. Often if I placed on that workplane, object is turned upside down. So I can manually tell the object to flip side or rotate the reference plane and the object position will be somewhere else. So I wish there is away you can flip the direction of the reference plane without changing the position of the family hosted on the reference plane.

[barthbradley]

I'd vote for that!  

[Sahay_R]

Workplanes - work well for me when I want to model stuff that is out of the ordinary 

[yaojia.hua39PZQ]

Flip reference plane - we've found this related idea in idea station https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/add-flip-controls-to-reference-planes/idi-p/7325849 

I think it's similar to what you guys wished for. @syman2000 @barthbradley 

[anthony_iskandar]

I found it hard to set a workplane in 2D. I cannot make sure which surface I click.  Because when I changed to 3D view, the shown workplane is for the 3D work area, not the workplane I clicked in 2D. I don't know, maybe I just need more trial here.