aText Premium using with Revit
I did some enthusiastic demo’s with aText and I’ve ended up with a lot of silly abbreviations that are disrupting my writing. So I’ve had to start considering how I’m using the program.
Also I did an AlternativeTo with AutoHotKey’s and wrote similar keys that did the same action as the aText keys. But not all of them matched, so I’ve now got to try and align them (example, putting arrows on text boxes started as ll and rr in aText then in AutoHotKey I used a1,a2&a3 where a2 was to remove the last arrow. So I had to decide on which abbreviations that I wanted and to use them in the other program.
I’m also trying to see if I can match some of the aText functionality in AutoHotKey. I’ve been pleased with what I’ve done so far with the HotStrings. I now want to develop some text blocks that I can put in pulldown lists.
Issues that I’m starting to run into in aText
I thought it was a really reliable program but I’m getting bugs occurring.
One big issue is in advanced settings copying to clipboard seems to not do as it should with some of the keys. I’ve had to shut ATEXT down and restart a couple of times. I wonder if that is because I’ve multiple clipboards in Win 10 enabled? I’m not sure. What does happen is when I flush (delete all items in clipboard) the abbreviations tend to trigger.
Bug 1. Auto-expand on abbreviated Keyboard Shortcut
Example. I was using L{Space} for Remapping Revit Keyboard Shortcut DL
What was happening was : Not very much.
When I looked into the abbreviation it looked fine, BUT there were a couple of new lines after the end of the keystrokes so it was basically exiting out of the command.
Solution. Go back and delete extra lines and leave cursor at the back of the Keystroke
Then worked fine, I checked the others nearby.
This may have come to pass as I was copying the info from the backup. I need to check on that. I need to keep a watching brief on it.
Bug 2. Poorly thought out abbreviations, these conflict with writing and other tasks
Example. I had “1” as an abbreviation, so that was very very disruptive, also “demo” and “iss”
These are all letters, numbers or expressions I’d use in writing so it would suddenly auto-expand to a long string that I’d need to delete, then find the bug and fix that too. Then re-write the word/text I was writing before.
Solution. Have weird, but easily accessible ones (eg a1, a2, who’s keys are in close proximity to each other. Also try for easily memorised ones so easy to use.
Bug 3. Revit Abbreviations/Keyboard Shortcut’s – conflict with other existing Revit Shortcuts
Example. I was creating a new one for Section to easily add to a view, and I wanted to use a longer revit Keyboard Shortcut so that there would be no conflict, in the end I used SECTI as Revit would only let me add a 5 letter Keyboard Shortcut , this I matched to a “ss” abbreviation, but I’m not happy with that as “ss” is not uncommon in words, so I’ll have to change it. If you are in a text block and type “ss” it auto-expands to SSECTI which is not what is wanted.
Solution. Change the “ss” to “s1” so it doesn’t conflict and try to use LONGER Keyboard Shortcut’s in Revit but be aware of 5 letter limit. Maybe be silly with numbers so that quicker to do.
It could be limited by using a trigger key at end, then it would only affect words where there were a double s at the end.
Standard Notes
Piping
The above note is for putting in a pipe note with the diameter symbol and allows you to write in the system that the note belongs to (HW, CW etc) and also moves the cursor to next to the dia symbol so you can add pipe size. A generic pipe note. I suppose I could add fall to the note and just delete that, or maybe a 2nd note to allow for drainage notes
Creating Lists of Notes with CSV export and import
I want to explore this , but only if someone wants to pay me to do it.
This is where I think AUTOHOTKEY may be better as it doesn’t require the GUID to create a unique string ID. I made a ahk script using an ini file but then found a script to use a .txt or .csv file.
End comment
I think I can get a bit more versatility out of AUTOHOTKEYs so am exploring that at the moment.
I’ve moved away from aText as I’m interested in making a Revit/AHK course so will focus on that for the moment.
Now that I have the AutoHotKey program running in aText that may need some further exploring later.
Although setup for grabbing notes in AutoHotKey is easier than in aText, unless you only use a few groups of notes in which case they can be setup once and used frequently.
aText gave me the ideas to expand Revit into this area so I think at some point I’ll be circling back to it for productivity.
