Categorize Tabbed Views

[sampie]

The new tabbed views feature in Revit 2019 is great! Thank you for it.

It is a bit confusing when you have multiple project files open. You might have views in different projects that are the same name. It would be great if you can categorize the tabs per project by using color coding for example.

[antonjubani]

I Use pyrevit - Coloring Tab tool. until Autodesk makes it available

https://github.com/eirannejad/pyRevit/issues/1150

[Mark_Engwirda]

Hi Antonjubani, that's wonderful, thanks for letting me know! I do you use
pyRevit but never spotted the implementation of that feature!
What should really happen though is Revit should have a row of tabs for
each open project and get rid of those silly old scroll bars cause like who
needs them anymore!
A major overhaul is definitely needed.

[lionel.kai]

@antonjubaniAutodesk has basically said that they would NEVER implement colored tabs, because one of their "partners" (Parallax Team) created a paid add-in to do it and they don't want to take away his income stream. I have nothing against Aaron and his team - after all he provided the free version for pyRevit! And while the free version isn't nearly as good as his paid one (no colors in Switch Window pull-down, black and gray as 2nd & 3rd colors, thin lines instead of full color), it DOES relieve some of the pain, and I have a hard time justifying to myself (let alone upper management) paying an additional 10% just to have colors on the tabs because Autodesk was too lazy to do it themselves. I AM starting to think I'll "splurge" on it for a few of our heavy users one of these days, though...

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

@sasha.crotty  @lionel.kai  - Is that Ture? Autodesk NOT implementing color tabs so as not to tke away money form a paid partner?(Parallax is doing it)? Seems fishy!

[bweinreder]

If they recognise the value enough to protect it as an IP from their
partner, it should be in the base product to begin with. An obvious
oversight, and Autodesk can do a much better implementation themselves.

[tkrejci]

Parallax Team is charging $74.99 per seat/per year for the privilege.

It looks like there are more options than in pyRevit but pyRevit has been free.

[lionel.kai]

@GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1I've heard it said various ways from various Autodesk employees - I believe it was in one of the "Inside the Factory" streams on YouTube, or one of the virtual AEC "Meetups" during AU 2020, where they specifically said that they don't want to take away the income stream of their partner.

I can understand the sentiment. After all, would "partners" keep developing add-ins if Autodesk just took all their best ideas and rolled them into the base product? It would be a scramble to make money for a few years until Autodesk took your idea, and for some add-ins there's a significant investment. Part of what makes a great product (such as AutoCAD) is a healthy add-in community for niche uses.

MY SOLUTION: buy it! Autodesk's good at that. They did it with site tools (though that was a disaster since they just let it languish until they finally dropped it completely recently). The drawback, of course, would be that it probably wouldn't improve from that point on (see below).

But my biggest frustration comes from the fact that adding color to the tabs is a fairly basic feature and I was NOT the only one in the beta that suggested that we needed it (as probably the EASIEST way to differentiate views from different files). They gave a bunch of excuses about Microsoft UI requirements and color blind users, and wanting to wait for "input from the larger user base" - but if they made the colors user controllable that would have solved everything!

@bweinrederWhile I would agree with you for some (maybe even most cases) - for example, the implementation of this or this would require the addition of a Shared Parameter and a clunky add-in along with user re-training to use the new parameter, while Autodesk could do it with a TRIVIAL change to the code and the result would be a small change to the UI and a minor note to the users that a new option's available. ARGH!!! I don't think I'll ever make the add-in because if they DID implement the functionality at that point I'd be a combination of happy and pissed (I'm thinking back to my AutoCAD days when I started working on a LISP routine to use for General Notes just before they added bullets & numbers to MTEXT - luckily I hadn't spent TOO much time on it).

Sorry, I digress. Back to the "while"... in this case I actually think Parallax did a better job than Autodesk would have. And I wouldn't be surprised to see it get even better in the future. Sure, there's already some features I probably would use or don't need, but I feel confident that if users have ideas for new features/improvements, Parallax WILL deliver. Autodesk probably wouldn't.

From Autodesk, I just wanted to see colors, with maybe 10 new lines in Revit.ini to be able to change them. They could have even made them all gray/off by default to satisfy their issue with colorblind users. An options page in the UI would have been gravy. I wouldn't have expected any of Aaron's bells & whistles (multiple color sets, switching on the fly, coloring by types instead of files, auto-reordering tabs, etc.).

There are other situations where Autodesk implemented a feature already available through an add-in, usually in a way that wasn't quite as good. The free one's there, and if you want a little more/better, you can pay for it. Could that be done here? Maybe. Would it impact Parallax? Of course, and more so than pyRevit (which is pretty much advertising for them), but they might still sell some licenses for "advanced" users who want more features. Again, Autodesk should just pay Parallax for doing their job for them, maybe even for just a "basic" (but full color tab) version, and Parallax can sell a "pro" version.

[sasha.crotty]

@GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1 I am not aware of anything of the sort. In fact, I find the implication mildly amusing. Does the Revit team consider the impact to our third party community when making implementation decisions? Of course! They are a huge part of the product's success. Does that mean we will forgo implementing ideas that have a third party implementation when the right thing to do is to add it to the product? Definitely not. PDF Printing in 2022 is a recent example of this.

For this specific idea, the status says it all. All ideas under gathering support are under consideration for implementation in a future release. If the Revit team had made a decision to not implement this functionality, this idea's status would have been changed to "Archived." Hope that clarifies.

Thanks,
Sasha
 

[bweinreder]

Thanks for smashing a rumour 🙂
I really like the idea of native pdf printing. Windows also supports pdf
printing natively for a while but if we have something robust and reliable
to program against then I'm up for it.

[bweinreder]

• @lionel.kai 
• I think we're overcomplicating it. It's becoming too political, and we can't assume to know if 3rd party considerations are the leading factor not to implement it.
• Like the community manager said, the idea has not been dismissed yet. We're in the phase to generate support and frankly your motivations work discouraging, while you thought such a feature should have been present since before day 1.
  It took the team a couple of tries to get ribbons right, and now you can set part of the behaviour from settings. I anticipate that tabs aren't in their final form yet, either. And colours are not the only option. I would frankly already be happy enough if tabs pertaining to one project were next to each other, with a subtle divider in-between. But coloured tabs already existed in browsers, so why re-invent the wheel.

[Anonymous]

Title says it all.

It would be great to color code the different projects within the Revit tabs. I find it difficult switching back and forth between projects when I need to copy or reference; then get confused which "tab" belongs to which project. 

For example:

Project A tab: A-120 Floor Plan (colored in Black or Light depending on color scheme)

Project B tab: A-120 Floor Plan (colored in Blue [or some other color] for secondary project open)

Assuming most people usually have another project open simultaneously to copy/reference things from one another, this would make it visually easier to decipher which is Project A & B. In addition, it greatly helps when an end user is the type of person who opens 5 tabs within one project and never closes them (not me), then opens project B with similar tab names. 

[GustavoUbriaco]

Hi! this idea is already placed in the ideas panel 😁

[Anonymous]

Oh it is? Great! Glad someone got to it before me. 🙂 

[GustavoUbriaco]

yes! I had thad idea in 2018 to, and was merged with this older one https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/categorize-tabbed-views/idc-p/8317964#M37751 

I hate too can't distinguish which tab is from what project when multiple projects are opened at same time

[kimberly_fuhrman-jones]

@Anonymous  Yes, this has become a very hot topic very quickly! Do you mind if I combine yours with the existing one?

Thank you!

Kimberly

[GallowayUS_com_RonAllen1]

@sasha.crotty  I figured 😉 Thanks for clarifying : )

[Prlx_AaronM]

I want to clarify a couple of points (even though Sasha already took care of the big one), because [frankly] i'm tired of people "thinking" they know what's going on, when they actually don't have a clue.

1. As Sasha said, there is no "agreement" (official or otherwise) between Parallax and Autodesk, that Autodesk wont develop the tool.  In fact, we [Parallax] would LOVE to see Autodesk eventually develop it. Its great functionality, and we think all users should have it.

We even had an unofficial conversation with Autodesk about simply giving it to them, to put in Revit (which we still would/will, if they ever ask). 

The short version there, though, is there isn't an "official" API that supports this functionality (if there was, tons of apps would do it) The way we did it- while stable and awesome- isn't something that would probably "survive" an official Code QA, at a big outfit like Autodesk. So in light of that, UNTIL they decide to make their own feature doing the same thing, we kept the tool as an offering from Parallax. 

There are also a few other small things we added in, aside from just the coloring: The "Close window" buttons being persistent even in non-active tabs, the Color swatch picker icon, the font changing to white if the tabs RGB value averages out to less than 127.5, and so on. At one point we had the tabs shrinking to auto-fit, like in Chrome, but we had to remove that because it was behaving oddly (although id love to get it back one day).

2. Parallax did not give the free version to Ehsan, at pyRevit. Ehsan made it completely on his own.  For the love of all things holy, why do some of you write things that are 100% assumption, and not based on factual information? 

We are huge fans of pyRevit, and recommend it to everyone. But Ehsan (and John, of course) are both wildly intelligent people capable of doing their own development. Please don't minimize Ehsan's efforts by "assuming" we gave him something, because you are just wrong. Completely.

3. Yes, we charge for our version of Tabbed Views. Yes, pyRevit is free (although you should contribute to the Patreon!) We totally understand, if you don't see the value in paying for it! Hence, no pressure to buy or subscribe. 🙂 Yes, in a perfect world we (at Parallax) would be able to constantly just develop stuff, and toss it over the wall to everyone for free. But all of us have bills to pay, just like you all do. 🙂

Happy Monday!

[lionel.kai]

Apologies to Parallax and the pyRevit teams (& anyone else who may have been offended 😉 ). I believe my (now obviously incorrect) assumption was due to the 'Kudos to Parallax Team for "Parallax Tabbed Views"' link in the settings (a screenshot can be seen here). I had assUme'd that he was thanking you for contributing it... sorry.

@Prlx_AaronMBTW, that link goes to https://www.parallaxteam.com/apps/ which doesn't even show your Tabbed Views+.

And in brighter news, we now have an improved version in pyRevit as well: pyRevit Tab Coloring - More contrasting color scheme (& background fill) in 4.8.6+. I'll have to update our installs!

[Prlx_AaronM]

Thats alright (the hyperlink). Thats an old page, that was replaced by https://www.parallaxteam.com/products/ where the app is listed, so its all good.

[munderwoodTZNNN]

This would definitely be a nice feature!