Using the ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)

In this movie we're going to take an overview of two very important parts of the Revit user interface. The Ribbon, and the Quick Access toolbar. Now the Ribbon is the primary interface for most commands in Revit and it's located across the top of the screen in this location here. Now as you can see there are several tabs, architecture, structure, insert and each of those contains different series of buttons. Now right above the ribbon is the Quick Access Toolbar or QAT. And this can be thought of as really like a shortcut menu if you want to think of it that way. so lets look at the Revit in a little more detail.

So we have various tabs, now the specific tabs that you have on your interface might vary slighty depending on the settings or the exact verion of Revit you have. But you can see that I have architecute and structure and insert and annotate, and if I click on any of these, it does change which commands are available. Each ribbon tab is broken into panels, we have got panels like build, circulation and model. And these are just convenient ways to group the commands, which are similar to one another or related to one another in some way. And finally, on each of these panels we have a collection of buttons. The buttons come in a few varieties, so the simplest kind of button is a button you just simply click and it just does one thing.

Examples would be Malian or door, you will noticed that when I highlighted it highlights the single command, and if i clicked it, it only does one thing. Contrast to a command like model group Model Group when I highlight it, you'll notice there's a little tiny error right here. And if I click it, rather than just running a command like the door command would, it actually pops open a small menu. So we call this a Drop Down Button. Okay so, then you go in and you choose one of the commands of this menu.

now most of the bottons are actually a combination of the two. So we call these Split buttons. Wall is a good example of that. The top portion of the wall coming in, is just a simple push button. If I click it, it just runs that command. If I click the bottom half, I get a drop down menu. So the same button is actually in two pieces, and they call it a split button, or I like to sometimes call it a combo button. Because it can do one or the other. Here's some other examples. This one's oriented horizontally. The left-hand side is the default.

The right-hand side is the drop-down. Floor command is the same way. There's the floor command. If I just click it, or I can click the drop-down, an get the other commands. Now I should point out that a lot a people get in the habit of using, the drop-downs regardless of whether or not they wanted the default command or not. Like for example, with the wall command Is there any difference between clicking here and I get the wall command, I'm going to press Esc, or clicking here and choosing this first item on the list, wall architectural, no, there's no difference whatsoever, the only difference is it took me two clicks to the get there the second time versus the one click.

Now if you get in the habit of doing it that way, that's not that big of a deal. Some people prefer seeing all the choices they have available to them before they choose which one they want to click. I'm just simply pointing out that if you know that you want the default, you can go right to that button instead of using the drop down. Now there's two other little items that i want to point out to you on the ribbon. One is an expandable panel, as you can see here under room and area. What this signifies when you see this small little icon here and it highlights in blue, is that there are some buttons hidden away under this expandable portion of the panels.

So the panel expands out and then you can see there's additional commands under here... The other interface item I have to switch tabs to show you, I'll go over here to the annotate tab, and if you look at the text panel it doesn't highlight but notice here there's this tiny little button that has like a little down pointing arrow to it. We call these dialog launchers. And when I click that, it brings up some sort of a dialog, thus the name dialog launcher. So, usually when you click those little icons it's going to be some sort of a dialog with settings that relate to the commands in question on that panel.

So, I'm just going to cancel out of there without making any changes. Just be on the lookout for those very subtle little icons there that are sometimes stashed away on the panel titles themselves. Now let's direct our attention to the quick access toolbar. You can use the ribbons exclusively to execute all of your commands. You don't have to use the QAT at all. However, the QAT is there because there's certain commands you use frequently and it might be a little more convenient To go directly to the icon on the qat than it is to switch tabs all the time, so, if you prefer, you can do that, and you can see here that a lot of the standard commands are here, we've got open and save, and undo and redo, and some of the other commands here. You can simply click them and they function in exactly the same way they would accessing those commands in other locations, like right here on my annotate tab here's the text command.

And there's the exact same command right there, on the QAT, that's just an example. Now, at the very end of the QAT is a little dropdown, and we can use this to customize the quick access toolbar. Now, most commands that are eligible to be placed here are already here, you can see new is the only one that is not included. And if I just simply choose that it adds the new command to the start of the quick access toolbar, so that's a really easy way that we can customize what we see there.

Now for more customization potential what you do is you open up that drop down and you come down here near the bottom and choose this command here. Customize the quick access toolbar... This brings up a dialogue that would allow me to select commands. Move them up and down in the list. I can move it down or move it up. I can add separators. I can remove command. So if I decided I no longer wanted the new command to be on the QAT, I can simply select it. Click this X right here, that removes it. And when I click OK, it disappears off the list.

The other way you can add commands to the Q.At.T. is to simply right click the command on the ribbon, and you can choose this command, here, add to quick access toolbar. And if I do that, you'll see it will add that icon to your Q.A.T. and make it available on the list. Of course, it adds it to the end, so if want to move it around, then you would return to this customized command. To move it around. Now if you do that a lot and you add a lot of commands to the QAT, you're going to see here, you're going to run out of room pretty quickly. So the last thing I want to show you is, you can right click anywhere on the QAT and you can say, show the quick access toolbar below the ribbon. It will move it from here, drop it down here and now you have all this space to work with.

I'm going to right click this command again, remove it from the QAT and I'll right click again over here and show it above the ribbon just to reset myself. Feel free, though, to make whatever customizations you find appropriate. So most of the tasks you perform in Revit will begin with the tool either on the ribbon or the quick access tool bar. We'll get into the specifics of all the various tools in later movies. But I just wanted to start this off on the right foot by giving you a quick overview of the critical interface items.