That’s Why It’s Called ‘Mirror’

Being the IT/Revit guy in my office means lots of things.  It means that chances are I am a giant nerd.  It means I get to help people work through their problems.  It does NOT mean that I have a Batman style red phone to call Autodesk and tell them what I want.

For some reason, people in the office seem to think that if they tell me something to change in Revit, I can just contact the developers and snap my fingers to have it done.  It doesn’t work that way.  The closest thing I get is to vote on the AUGI Wishlist like everyone else.

Here’s a “wish” that I get a lot.  And this post is my therapy to try to work past it.  You see, I can’t answer the people how I want to answer this.  It would be… unprofessional.  So you get to read it.  Lucky you!

We have multiple disciplines under one roof here: architects and engineers.  So, when it makes sense, we create one piece of content that works for everyone (SYNERGY!!!!!).  This problem always comes up when folks are using our lavs and faucets.  The architects LOVE to mirror these things around the plan to save time.  What they forget is that the faucets have hot and cold on them and when you mirror those, they get flipped around, because, you know, MIRROR.

Got an email from someone the other day complaining about this, and how I needed to get in touch with Autodesk to let them know that this is wrong and it should never do this.  I gnashed my teeth and filed the email away.  What I wanted to tell him was this:

The definition of mirror is “to show a reflection of”.  When we mirror elements, we see a reflection of them along the line that the user defines.  If this tool were to simply rotate the elements 180 degrees, then IT WOULDN’T BE CALLED MIRROR ANYMORE, WOULD IT?!!  And if ONLY Revit had a tool that could ROTATE AN ELEMENT.  Wow. That would be fantastic.

Thanks for letting me vent.  If you have to deal with these folks, keep your chin up and just keep fighting the good fight.