This is a follow-up to a previous post about creating an offset parameter to shift a symbol up or down when faced with overlapping symbols in plan view. In the comments, both Jay and Julian mentioned that offsetting the symbols left and right would be preferable to just having the symbols offset vertically. To do this, we only need to make a minor change to the nested family containing the symbol, which will give us the result shown here.
The center reference plane is shown in red and the Plan Symbol Horizontal Offset parameter changes from a positive to a negative value to allow right/left positioning, respectively. There is, however, one catch: a straight dimension between the center reference plane (in red) and the reference line where the symbol sits (solid green) won’t work in Revit. As Julian pointed out, Revit will throw an error if we try and make the value of that dimension a negative number. But as they say, where there is a will there is a way, and so with the help of a “pivot reference line” (my own terminology) we can achieve the same result.
Watch the video for a demonstration of the technique. I’m sure there are countless situations where this can be applied.
