Stair Section Detail Level in Revit

Here is yet another problem with Revit Stairs that really needs to be fixed by Autodesk:  

The view 'Detail Level' display in section is not consistent between walls, floors and stairs (not to mention ramps!):

View Detail Level

When a view is set to Medium or Fine detail level, sections of most categories display the correct materials:

When the View detail level is set to 'Coarse', the cut hatching display of some elements is overridden by the Type properties 'Coarse Scale Fill Pattern'

This capability is available only for certain categories - meaning that the display of stairs is pretty hopeless at Coarse scale

 

Workarounds

What to do about this?  There are several possible ways to resolve this lack in Revit, but none is very good!

Visibility Graphics

You can over-ride the cut pattern of stairs - but this requires several steps (excuse the pun) on top of just changing one View Detail Level setting:

Due to the fiddly nature of changing this in the view (similar settings may need to be applied to other categories), you would certainly need to include this as part of a View Template - so it could be applied or removed at the flick of a switch.

Filters

You could also try using a View Filter, as it could potentially be applied to multiple categories

This has an advantage in that it is more "discoverable" than searching through all the category overrides - unless you have a gazillion filters applied!

Another advantage in Revit 2021 is the ability to "Enable" or "Disable" the filter without losing the override settings - a very useful new enhancement for Filters.

Downsides

The View Detail Level is very easy to switch on/off - and it affects all categories that have the built-in Coarse Scale override capability.  If you set the view back to Medium, the 'by category' cut pattern overrides get left behind - so you would need another operation to remove those (hence the need to use View Templates).

Another problem with the Visibility Graphics workarounds is what happens when you choose anything other than black solid fill as your hatching override:

If you make it grey . . .

 

The Stairs will show the joint lines between different materials - you may or may not want this, but it is clearly different behaviour to the Coarse Detail Level control that hides the material join lines and treats it as one material, for a nice clean look.

Of course, this is not helped by the inability to join walls/floors to Stairs !!  You still get the joint lines between those.  Refer to Stair Joint Lines

The Worst Workaround

Filled Regions are extremely useful for patching up Revit's inadequacies, but they are not popular with BIM & Model Managers because they cause so many other problems as soon as a model changes.

Filled Regions allow you to make the hatching look exactly how you want, because they allow some of their edges to be "Invisible Lines" - thus they can appear to join with adjacent "real' cut hatching.

Filled regions are placed per view, so if you have multiple sections cutting through the same or similar parts of the model you may end up with many filled regions.

One possible method to manage that problem is to include them in 'Detail Groups' - but they are also problematic to manage, not to mention a major shortcoming of really slowing down your Revit model if you have too many of them.

Conclusion

Whichever workaround you use the most important thing to do is to follow company standard procedures - and be consistent.  Agree with your workmates on which dodgy workaround to use, and stick to it.  This will make it so much easier to come back to make changes when the model is updated.

Levels By Scope Box Hidden in Section Elevation

Lost your Levels in Revit?

Here is some weird Revit behaviour that you may need to know about Scope Boxes and Level/Grid visibility - to help you find invisible Levels:

Example: Multistorey Building with podium and  two towers 

A common situation in Revit occurs when you have two sets of levels, that do not align - perhaps you have a building with two towers that have different floor to floor heights.

NB. In this example:

• All levels are displayed with 3D extents (so it ignores the effects of 2D view cropping of levels). 
• Same behaviour applies to grids as levels, but only levels are shown here.

Level Visibility

• From one direction the levels look good in elevation or section

South Elevation - Levels

•  Looking from the side, the levels might overlap each other (depending on the view extents) - a mess where you can see both sets of tower levels mixed together.

Side Elevation - all levels visible

• To make the side elevations and cross-sections look better, you need to adjust the view extents -

• Typically you should set 'Far Clipping' to 'Clip without line' and set the offset so that it extends into the levels that you want to see, but not the distant ones

South Elevation - Far Clipping through levels

Section - Far Clipping through levels

•  If the clipping is too short you won't see the levels

South Elevation - Far Clipping too short

Section - Far Clipping too short

• If the far clipping is too long, and extends through both sets of levels, they will both be displayed (usually - see Weird Stuff below)
• If Far Clipping is set to 'No Clip', you will see all the levels

No Clip

Far Clipping Options

South Elevation - No Far Clipping

Section - No Far Clipping

• Interestingly, when you set a section or elevation to 'No Far Clip', you can actually see levels behind the view.  In the example below, the section line is between the towers.

South Elevation - Section between towers; No Far Clipping

Section between towers - No Far Clipping

Where Are My Levels?

If some (or all) of your Revit building levels are not showing up in a section or elevation view, you can use the above 'No Clip' behaviour to your advantage:

• Check all the usual visibility settings, such as Category On; no filters; Not hidden in view etc.

• Set the view extents to 'No Clip'
• Set the view to 'No Cropping', so that you can see the 3D extents of all levels

If the levels are still not visible, it may be due this next quirk of Revit behaviour:

Weird Scope Box Properties

• If any of the levels (or grids) have a scope box applied to them, not only will the scope box crop their extents, it will also prevent levels from showing in a section or elevation unless the cutting plane of the section/elevation actually intersects the level.
• This means that 'No Far Clipping' has no effect on visibility

To resolve this:

• you have to set the Scope Box properties back to 'None'

• The level extents will not change, but they will no longer be controlled or locked by a scope box.
  
• You have to make a decision about which is the worst of two evils!

You may also want to check the 3D extents of levels in a 3D view by turning the Level category on in Visibility Graphics.  Refer to 3D Levels

Another Scope Box Quirk

 Scope Box visibility behaves differently to Levels and Grids:

• A scope box will always be visible in a section or elevation view only when the view cutting plane actually intersects the scope box.
• You cannot make distant scope boxes visible by changing the section/elevation Far Clipping property to 'No Clip' - unlike Levels, it makes no difference.

More info about Scope Boxes: 

• Scope Boxes Greyed out
• Changing the Height of Radial Grids
• Quick Fix Wonky Rotated Plan Views

Preventing Levels and Internal Origins appearing in new 3D Views

How many times have you seen a Revit 3D view obliterated by Scope Boxes?
Well, now we have Levels visible in 3D (2019) and Internal Origins in 3D (2020.2), which can also be visible by default.

There is a simple solution to prevent this happening:

Default 3D View

Typically, when you create a new 3D view, it has almost all categories visible, including Scope Boxes, Levels, Room Separation lines, Base Points and now Internal Origins. These can be very annoying in 3D views - particularly the Origins in perspectives.

Here is a procedure to prevent this:

• Go to a default 3D view 
• In Visibility Graphics, turn off the visibility for Room Separation lines in model categories

 

•  Turn off all three Origin sub-categories (Internal Origins visible in 3D from v2020.2)

• Turn off the Scope Boxes and Levels category (Levels are visible in 3D from v2019); 

• [Optional] turn off other datum and view control categories like grids, reference lines, sections, elevations (in case they become visible in 3D views in the future)
• Create a new View Template from the 3D view – called ‘3D Default – do not delete’- [NB. “do not delete” part of the name is to prevent accidental changes later]

• Untick all the ‘Include’ boxes except for V/G Overrides Model & Annotation

• Click OK to close and save the View Template
• Go to the Type properties of the 3D view

• Set the ‘View Template applied to new views’ property as your new 3D Default view template 
• Untick the ‘New views are dependent on template’ property – this means it just turns off those categories, without permanently applying a view template;

• You will subsequently be able to change other category visibilities;

• All new 3D views and perspective views will have those categories turned off by default (scope boxes, Levels, Origins,  Room Separation lines etc).

This should obviously be set up in your project template as well as all current projects.

Reveal Obstacles in Path of Travel - Revit 2020.1

Revit 2020.1 Enhancement

If you place a 'Path of Travel' using the new (in Revit 2020) feature, you may encounter a situation like that shown below, where the path appears to go through an object that should be an obstruction - such as the path through sofa example below:

 

In addition to other Revit 2020.1 enhancements to the Path of Travel feature  - Move Start/End Points, we have a new tool that may help you out:

Reveal Obstacles in Path of Travel -

This is useful for figuring out why your path of travel is not behaving as expected. 

• On the Analyze toolbar, click on 'Reveal Obstacles'

• This temporarily changes the view display to show in orange all categories that represent obstacles to the path.

In the example below (Autodesk sample file), some items are not shown orange

 

• The doors are not obstacles because that category is excluded
• Some furniture is not shown in orange (obstacle) because they are below the cut plane for calculation.  The reason is that the model is split level, and the living area is 500mm lower than the rest of the house - refer to Analysis Zone follow up for more detail on Split Levels and calculation heights.
• In the case of the large sofa family, one part of the component shows orange - this is the high back.  This demonstrates that Revit actually analyses the geometry of elements, not just a bounding box for each component - which is a good thing.

As the sofa is much lower than the main floor level, only the back projects up into the analysis zone.

• If the sofa is raised by 200mm (8"), then the sides of the sofa also project into the zone - they become obstacles, and hence turn orange (it may not be immediate - see glitches listed below).

However, the path itself does not change - you have to select it and click on 'Update Path' for that to happen;  then the path will go around the sides of the sofa.

Obstacle Settings

 

If you go the the Route Analysis Settings, you can add or remove obstacles by category - for example add Furniture and Casework categories to the list that are not obstacles

Initially nothing happens, but when you update the path it will no longer avoid those categories.  These will no longer be highlighted in orange by the 'Reveal Obstacles setting

Furniture no longer an obstacle

Casework category no longer an obstacle - path not yet updated

NB. There is some unexpected behaviour that can occur with the 'Reveal Obstacles' feature:

• If you already have 'Reveal Obstacles' mode on when you go into the 'Route Analysis' settings, then change the categories - Reveal Obstacles does not update the categories displayed orange/grey (you need to turn it off then on again for a refresh).
• If Reveal Obstacles mode is on, and you try to select an element:
• Initially it will highlight all of the obstacles as one item;  select it and you get Analysis results Properties (see below for more details)
• if you tab select, it highlights a component, but still considers it part of the analysis result;  Select it and you get Analysis Result listed but without any properties;
• Tab again and it finally selects just the element - you can then change its properties;  However, the Reveal Obstacles highlighting is not updated even when it should be - eg. if the sofa height is changed to 500mm so that the whole sofa becomes an obstacle, the sofa does not turn orange (when it should).

• If you select the whole analysis result, you get shown properties for the Analysis Result.

• It is not immediately clear what these properties are for.
• If you click on the 'Edit..' button (Results Visibility), as you would be tempted to do, you get some more mysterious properties

•  Make the dialog box a fraction wider, and one of the headings shows in full:  'Analysis Display Style' - it has a hidden button to the right of <By View>

• Click on the hidden button to reveal the Display Style dialog

• You can play around with the text and arrowhead settings

 

• And go to the Legend Tab
• Click on 'Show Legend'
• The end result means not much to me, but I'm sure it has a purpose

Arrowheads and legend displayed

•  You can move the legend on the view, if that is what you need

I am guessing that these analysis display settings are for some other kind of analysis, but have been enabled here too?

• I am not going down that rabbit hole today!

 

Conclusion

Sadly, useful as this new feature is, it does not address fundamental shortcomings - such as what you need to do when Revit fails to generate (or update) a path at all.

We need more help to be able to deal with that situation, as the Warning dialog box is not at all helpful!