Revit Tags Label Extents and Leaders

One of the things that always annoys me in Revit is the hardcoded spacing or sizes of certain elements or settings.  These include such things as:

• Default extension of grid lines and levels beyond a cropped view on a sheet - this appears to be just over one inch on the sheet (I was expecting it to be exactly one inch = 25.4mm).
  Why oh why does it have to be so big - all that wasted paper on plots;  or wasted time adjusting each one manually.

•  Tag Leader Offsets - it seems the leaders go to the opposite extreme, being really tight in to the text.  If your boss does not like that graphic, you are in trouble.

 

Text Leader Offsets

A few years back, Autodesk actually solved a similar issue for text in Revit - although with text, prior to that the leaders had a locked in 2.032mm offset, which was equally irritating.

In Revit version 2011, Autodesk added the parameter "Leader/Border Offset", which gave us the ability to control how far the leader started from the text (even when no border was applied to the text).

Default text leader offset = 2.032mm

• If you want the leader closer in, just change the offset to 0.5mm or 0mm

Zero mm text leader offset

 

• If you want the leader further away, change the offset to something larger

Text leader offset 3.5mm

• You can also add a border, which matches the leader offset exactly

The default offset in all the Autodesk templates is still 2.032mm, which is way too big.  Likewise in all projects that were upgraded in v2011, it set the value to 2.032mm.

I wonder how many BIM Managers around the world actually went in and set the value to a sensible number?  I like it to be say 0.5mm, but some people like 0mm.

Tag Leader Offsets

Sadly, Autodesk never finished that task (now where have you heard that before?).

Text labels inside tags do not follow these rules – leader offset makes no difference unless the tag-label has a border enabled.
Without a border, the leader just uses the extents of the tag family, and it considers tag-text with no border to have an offset of zero regardless of what it is set to.

For some reason the vertical and horizontal offsets are not consistent. If the leader is pointing up or down the offset is visually acceptable, but when it is left or right it is just a bit too small an offset, and looks wrong. 

• With no border and a large leader offset the leader is tight in to the text label

Tag label leader 3.5mm no border

Tag label leader 3.5mm no border

•  With a small leader offset the leader is still tight in to the text label

Tag label leader offset 0mm no border

•  The tag looks exactly the same (no leader offset)

Tag label leader 3.5mm no border

•  As soon as you add a border, the leader offset matches that border (as per text)

Tag label leader 3.5mm

This is yet another little inconsistency in Revit to irritate you. 

Does anyone know a way to address this?

Nasty Workaround

I hate to suggest this, but if your job depends on it you could try adding a border to the tag label and make it white, so it does not show on a plot/pdf (in label Type properties).  Interestingly, the text remains black.

But we all know what kind of trouble that might cause later on . . .

Room Bounding Structural Column Materials in Revit

I recently discovered yet another obscure, hidden away setting in Revit - when I was investigating the "Room Bounding" property of different elements.

It seems that some structural columns have a "Room Bounding" property - but not all.
This has to be one of the weirdest, arbitrary decisions made by the Revit programmers:

Material for Model Behaviour

Structural columns have a weird property - so obscure and arcane, not to mention hidden away.
'Material for Model Behavior'

This property that can only be set in the Family Editor – in ‘Family Category and Parameters’: ‘Material for Model Behaviour’.

It can be one of 5 settings, each of which enables different properties and behaviour in the model:

• Steel
• Concrete
• Precast Concrete
• Wood
• Other

Depending on which one you choose, it will enable properties in the family.

• Steel has Connection properties

• Concrete & Other have Rebar properties

 

These settings are hidden away behind the 'Family Category and Parameters' settings - in the project there is no way to tell which setting the family has, apart from the specific properties displayed.

You would have thought that this only affects structural engineers?

But wait.  It affects architects too . . . . .

• Concrete has ‘Room Bounding’ properties (it is the only one that does)

Why, oh why are wood and precast concrete not room-bounding?  There are a huge number of timber structures around the world that provide perfectly good enclosures.
Wouldn't it just have been easier to make all columns potentially enclose rooms, instead of hard-coding someone's bizarre ideas about how a building might work?

Room-Bounding

When working in a project, and you discover that a 'Room' is not enclosed when you expect it to be, this is one of many things to check.
There are some other quirky Room-Bounding behaviours in Revit, to be detailed later  . . .

• Room Computation Height

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.

Revit 2020 Install Postscript

I recently tried to install the latest SP2 update to Revit 2020, and had some difficulties:

The dialogue box above did not give sufficient information about which file it could not modify - but it is apparently part of the unpacked install files.
The problem was nothing to do with Administrator privileges.

The advice I received from Autodesk was to do a full uninstall of Revit 2020, and then reinstall.  It turns out that may not have been necessary - but it did eventually work . . . .

Hard Disk Space

My computer has a solid state drive (SSD), which used to be very expensive, hence it is only 200Gb.  That means that disk space is valuable - not an uncommon situation.  This is apparently of no significance to Microsoft or Autodesk - every version of their software consumes more and more disk space.  200Gb gets eaten up very fast by their software, but also by their upgrade/install process.

Space Junk

Each time that Windows has an upgrade, it often demands at least 10 or 20Gb.  Autodesk is not much better.  What this means is that I frequently need to remove junk files that have been installed or are part of the installer software.

• The Revit 2020 download is 12.2Gb
• When unpacked it expands to 15.7Gb

The unpacked software has many files for various different languages.  Having chosen English as my install language, I assumed that the installer would have no use for any of the other languages.  Wrong!
I like to keep a copy of the unpacked installer file on the disk, in case I need to fix or reinstall.  In order to minimise the "Space Junk" I often remove all the other language folders from the installer (but I keep a full copy elsewhere, just in case).

During the reinstall process that I had to go through recently, I discovered that Revit actually does need some of those different language files - it will not proceed until you put them back into the install folders.

• It needs some dll files from every single language folder

German dll files missing (and all the 13 other languages)

• It needs every single rfa Steel Connection family template  from every single language folder

Czech Steel Connection Family Templates missing

•  It needs all of the Sample files, even if you choose not to install any content.

371Mb of sample files

• There are 761Mb of Steel Connection family template files in your installer.  If you delete any of them, any future re-install will fail.

761 Mb of Advanced Steel Connection Family Templates

Installed Files

• There's 1.37Gb of steel connection files installed, whether you want it or not.

1.37Gb of Advanced Steel Connection Files

During the install process you can stop Revit from including MEP Fabrication - but you have to actively search for the settings and disable them (Default is to install).  It seems that you cannot stop it from installing Advanced Steel - and if you try (like I did), your install will fail.

What this means is that you have all those unwanted 14 language files and MEP/Advanced Steel files in your installer (several Gb);  And then you get exactly the same files installed in C:\ProgramData\...   its  "Double Space Junk"

If you ask me, this is very sloppy programming from the people handling the install software.  I believe that this is outside the control of the Revit team - but it sure as hell makes life difficult for the end-users.  If one person at Autodesk had written some more careful code that checks your chosen install language, and only uses that language to install the relevant files - just think how much disk space would be made available around the world.

All the hard work by the Revit programmers trying to speed up Revit is being undermined by the Installer team who are slowing down your computers.

As it is, we all need to spend time removing unwanted files.  Or we have to buy more hard disk space - not so easy if you have to retrofit a laptop with SSD.

If you need 700Mb space in a hurry, and you don't use 'Revit Steel Connections', look right here:
C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit Steel Connections 2020
Remove all the languages except your own (which will be about half of the whole lot)

(NB. Be careful! and make sure you have a backup somewhere before you start removing Space Junk - its at your own risk).

Edit:  If you don't want all these different language files to be installed, please vote for Dave Plumb's Revit Wish over on the Autodesk Revit Ideas website:
Stop Installing Other Languages