Navigating and Moving Stuff In 3D

[ldaenen]

Whats the best practice/ workflow for moving families and components in 3D?  Am learning Revit and have hit a wall with this aspect. 

Is there a way to use the Gimbal outside of the Conceptual Mass/ family building environment either in an Ortho or a Perspective View?  Any means to move along x, y and z axis's would be great.      I have started using work planes more and haven't fully utilized their functionality but it might be more set up than necessary. 

I like working in 2d allot but I prefer to work primarily in 3D and go into 2d when needed.  I find it very disorienting toggling between views when ever I'm trying to mentally trace complex forms through space. 

I'm having allot of difficulty getting things to move around in a 3D environment as the Move tool doesn't always figure out what axis im trying to move on.  Also using the arrow keys is awkward as I have to do allot of rotating the view to get the arrow-keys to correspond with the directions. Whats more because it wont snap I find I have to zoom in and out to change the amount that the arrows nudge by which makes it harder to use the context.    I like the Align tool allot and prefer to inference allot of geometry but It doesn't work in all scenarios. 

[barthbradley]

There isn't a "best practice/ workflow for moving families and components in 3D".  That's kind of like asking if there is a best practice for walking.  It depends.  

One tip that might come in handy though: activate the Move Command and look on the Options Bar.  See the  "Constrain" and "Disjoin" checkboxes.  Changing their statuses might resolve some of the issues you are having.  

[ToanDN]

It depends largely on what you are moving. 

[ldaenen]

I bet  a Physical Therapists-would beg to differ about the walking analogy. 

And that gets at it I'm finding the navigation tools very un ergonomic  to my thinking. 

I feel like I'm contorting myself trying to steer this thing 

[ldaenen]

a gimbal or anything like it would universally make moving anything way easier.  Is there a plugin for something like this ? 

[barthbradley]

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@ldaenen wrote:

a gimbal or anything like it would universally make moving anything way easier.  Is there a plugin for something like this ? 

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Almost sounds like you are describing an Adaptive Point-driven Family.  

The above desk is hosted to and driven by an Adaptive Point.  See the red, blue and green arrows? That's an Adaptive Point. You can move that desk all over the place - in any direction - by dragging that Adaptive Point around.  

About Adaptive Points | Revit 2020 | Autodesk Knowledge Network

..just to be clear: I'm not advocating that you do this.  I'm just throwing it out there for your consideration.  Frankly, I think the challenges you are facing will go away as you become more familiar with the software.  

[ldaenen]

why are adaptive points bad to use?  Or do you just mean trying to be in 3D more than I should in general? 

I should be able to turn anything into an adaptive component temporarily, use the conceptual environment to move it , then transfer it back  into a non conceptual element ?   

Thanks