Simple Windows-Revit tip

This is such a simple tip it's hardly worthy of a blog post, but it did take me a couple of years before it dawned on me that I could use it to speed up drafting in Revit, even if it's just by a hair. It's actually a pretty general Windows tip, (most of the shortcuts and secret tips associated with Microsoft's operating system apply to Revit ie: ctrl-c to copy or ctrl-v to paste) but this one is a slightly under-noticed trick you can use when selecting just about anything in a Revit pull down menu. Here's the scenario, you're drafting away details feverishly and feel that it's an utter waste of time to have to select which detail line style you want to use from that horrible pull down menu.

Ideally your firm will have settled on using just a few line styles; I like augmenting the standard line styles that come out of the box with a series of line styles that have numbers for names, where the name of the line equals the lineweight (linetype "1" prints at whatever lineweight you have set for "1") easy, simple and similar to a lot of CAD standards. Sometimes people like to add in other line styles for things like "vapor barriers" or "Egress routes" and sometimes, unwitting project saboteurs will explode an Autocad detail and create a billion new line types, each based on a layer in the CAD file (Ugh).

In any event, here's the simple tip: after hitting the pulldown arrow, type in the first letter of the line's name and you'll jump to that area in the pull down. In the attached example, I've hit the pull down arrow with my mouse then hit "M" on the keyboard to jump to "Medium Lines" Once you get it down you'll find it's also a handy way to skip through other long pulldown menus, like for detail or family components. Long post, simple tip.