I’m sure many of you have been there. You place devices on a wall as intended for construction.
But when you switch over to the floor plan, the symbols overlap each other.
While modeling has given us the ability to visualize our designs more accurately, projects still require drawings for construction and they have to be legible. Compromises and workarounds were often made in Revit to balance the 3D and 2D representations of families.
That is until the Displace Elements tool. Originally intended to show building components in an “exploded” 3D view, the Displace Elements tool was updated in Revit 2023 to use with any 2D view type, including floor and reflected ceiling plans. As a view-specific override, you can move devices in plan view without affecting the placement in the 3D environment.
After you select the device, you can find the tool in the “View” panel of the Modify menu.
You can either move the device manually or by changing the values of the X, Y, and Z Displacement parameters in the Properties.
To say the least, this update to the Displace Elements tool was totally overlooked (I mean, it should’ve made my Top 5 Reasons post) and is an absolute game changer for designers who lay out families with embedded symbols.