Revit: MEP Copy-Monitor with System Tab Off

We made an interesting discovery today in Revit 2014 ("one box"), and confirmed that it works the same way in Revit 2015 as well. We had set up our architectural deployments to have all of the MEP System Tab tools turned off. The idea was to simplify the interface, and since we were not expecting architects to place any of the objects on that tab, it seemed like a good idea to turn it off.

We had an architectural user who was attempting to copy-monitor lighting fixtures from a linked electrical model report that while the link could be selected, once selected, the lighting fixtures in that link could not be copied. When two of us in the Design Technology support group opened the exact same model, we were able to copy-monitor the lighting fixtures without any problem. We did notice that the architectural user was missing the Coordination Settings tool on the Coordinate panel of the Collaborate ribbon tab and both the Coordination Settings and Batch Copy tools were missing from the Tools tab of the Copy/Monitor contextual ribbon tab, and thought perhaps there was a problem with the installation. We tried repairing the installation and deleting the local profile from the registry, forcing Revit to recreate it. Neither worked. Eventually my co-worker realized that one thing that was different on our machines was that we had all of the MEP System Tab tools turned on (since we have to support all disciplines), and that if we turned off all of the MEP System Tab tools, then we also lost those tools and could not copy-monitor lighting fixtures, either.

Ribbon tabs, with Systems tab enabled:

Ribbon tabs, with Systems tab disabled:

Something to keep in mind if you have the "one box" version of Revit and want architects to be able to copy-monitor MEP objects. Note that so long as at least one of the MEP Systems Tab tool sets was enabled, then the light fixtures could be copied; it did not have to be the electrical tools.