Scope Box View Property Greyed Out in Revit

Here is a little software trick to catch out the unwary Revit user:

There are some situations where the Scope Box property of a view is greyed out - so you cannot assign a Scope Box to the view.

The answer may be to do with the Crop Boundary - and it may not be obvious, especially if the crop boundary is hidden.

To track this down:

• Make the Crop Boundary visible
• It may or may not be apparent that the  Crop Boundary has been edited

•  Or it may not be obvious - if only a minor edit is done to the boundary

• Select the crop boundary

 

•  If it has been cropped, the Ribbon will show the 'Reset Crop' icon available

• Another way to check if it has been cropped is to look for the shape-handles on the crop boundary - extra dots indicate segments in a boundary

• Click on 'Reset Crop' - the edits to the boundary will be removed (along with the extra shape-handles)

• The Scope Box property will now be available for use.

•  The 'Reset Crop' icon will now be greyed out - indicating the crop is no longer edited.

This behaviour is quite logical once you know what is going on - but it can be confusing when you first encounter it.  Of course you do not want people to accidentally remove a Crop Boundary just by applying Scope Boxes - without realising what they have done.