Zoom in Family Types Dialog Box

Today I watched episode 99 of BIM After Dark, hosted by the Revit Kid.  The guest presenter was  Nicolas Catellier (Revit Pure), showing Advanced Revit Family Concepts.  However much you might think you know about Revit, there is always something new to learn.  

One tip that I picked up was the ability to zoom in the Family Types dialog box - this can be useful when you are editing families on a high resolution screen and the text is tiny.   Editing a complex formula is painful enough in Revit without having to squint to count the brackets at the end of a formula.

Family Editor Zoom

Just click in the Family Types dialog box, hold down the Ctrl key and use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in or out.

There is one problem with doing this:  it plays havoc with the column widths.

• The Lock column will most likely no longer fit in the dialog box 
• A horizontal scroll bar may appear at the bottom of the dialog box
  

• If you click in one of the formulas, it tries to display the whole formula column - which is logical
• It also shifts everything to the left so it can display the Lock column - this is illogical and intensely irritating as you can no longer see the values.
• You need to scroll left again to see the values
  

To resolve this you need to make the Formula column a bit narrower, and the Lock column much narrower (width of the checkbox).

It is not immediately obvious how to adjust the Lock column width:

• Drag (to the left) the right-hand vertical line on the Lock column header - it seems like nothing is happening, but keep dragging it left until you align with the checkbox.

• Drag the left-hand vertical line on the Lock column header to the right, until just before the right-hand line disappears.
• You may need to make the Formula column narrower again until the horizontal scroll bar disappears from the bottom of the dialog box - but once you have minimised the Lock column width it should be easier to do that.
  

 

 

For a more detailed explanation of this workaround trick, refer to my blog post of a couple of years ago:

 Family Types Dialog Column Widths

 Thanks again to Jeff and Nicolas for the BIM After Dark presentation.

 

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.

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.

Quick-Fix Wonky Rotated Revit Plan Views

Following an earlier post on correcting the rotation of section views in Revit, I recently saved someone lots of time with this simple advice:

Here is a quick fix for accurately rotating plan views where someone has rotated a plan view incorrectly.  It may seem trivial but it is actually important that rotated plan views are at exactly the same angle as the part of the building they are displaying - this is so that the view-based orthogonal directions match the building.  If this is a fraction of a degree out, you will end up with all kinds of tiny but incremental differences that will surely cause problems.

When rotating a view, the simplest method is to make the view crop boundaries visible, then select the boundary and use the rotate command.  If someone types in an angle that is not to a whole degree, it will almost certainly not be the same as the actual rotation of the building elements.  Even if you snap to elements, it is easy to make an error.

Quick Fix

• Go to another view that is correctly rotated ;
• Create a 'Scope box' in that view - it will be perfectly orthogonal to the correct view;

• Go back to the wonky view and change the Scope Box property of that view to the new scope box; 

 

• It will rotate the view perfectly to the scope box (even if it is only a fraction of  a degree);
• It will also re-crop the view to match the scope box - this may not be desirable, but can be fixed easily;

• Delete the scope box if not required for other purposes;
• Otherwise, just set the 'Scope Box' property to None;

• Re-crop the view to what you need.

It may seem obvious but not everyone thinks of simple techniques like this.  I hope this saves someone a few minutes or hours and avoids a lot of pain.

New in Revit 2019 - Levels in 3D Views

One of the new features in Revit 2019 is the ability to see Levels in 3D views.

Personally I don't like this enhancement!  Yes, I know that occasionally someone might have valid reasons to see a level in 3D, but I don't think it is worth the pain it will inevitably cause around the world over the next few years!
I can foresee levels being accidentally moved, copied and having their model extents inadvertently changed on a regular basis.

Reasons why I don't like it:

Cropping View Extents vs Model Extents

• The grip handles for levels in a 3D view are typically model grip handles (a circle), not view grip handles (a dot).  It is not possible to adjust just the 2D view extents when levels are  uncropped in the view - so any changes you make to the levels will affect the model extents and therefore many other views. 

• When I say 'uncropped levels' in a 3D view, I don't mean uncropped by the 'View Crop Region' because that has no particular relevance to levels in 3D - they just get partially hidden like all other elements at the crop boundary.  This is quite different behaviour to a section or elevation view where they would independently extend beyond the view crop boundary.  This behaviour in 3D is not unexpected or unwelcome as rotating a 3D view could cause havoc if they did extend past view crop regions.

There are ways to crop levels in 3D views, and to adjust view extents, but its a whole lot more complex than doing so in a section/elevation view:

Section Box

• If you apply a section box to a 3D view then it will also crop levels, in a similar way as it does in a section/elevation view.  But not the same!
• The levels will automatically be cropped to the section box, plus a default extension past the crop - much the same as a 2D view.  

• But that means their view extents can be made smaller or bigger, depending on the size of the section box - if the section box is bigger than the original level model extents, they will be bigger in the view (sometimes dramatically bigger).  Yikes, that doesn't happen in section views!

• There is an exception to this rule, and that is when the levels are controlled by a Scope Box - see next method.

Scope Box

• When a level has a 'Scope Box' applied to it then all the above rules go out the window, and the Scope Box takes precedence, and it completely ignores a section box.

 

• This can be good if you want the levels to be cropped to something small while the section box is large
• Or it can be bad if you have a very small section box

This can be interesting to manage if you have two sets of levels in one model (eg. for different towers):

• Starting without any cropping or scope boxes it looks OK in 3D

 

 

 

 

 

Two sets of split-levels; no section box, no scope boxes

• Add a section box and all hell breaks loose:

Add Section box - view extents overlap for all levels

•  Once you apply Scope Box properties to the levels it gets it back under control

Add Scope Box control to levels

•  Until you make the section box really small - yuk!

Not so good with a small section box

• I guess you'd have to then use a crop region on the view and start hiding the levels you don't want to see, to solve that one.

2D vs 3D Grip Handles

When a level is uncropped by either method described above, the grip-handles on a level in 3D only show model extents (circle grip)

• Once the level is cropped (either by a scope box or a section box), the grip-handles become view specific (blue dot) - this is the only way I can see to get this to happen in 3D views.

• Unlike a section or elevation view, you cannot toggle the grip handles between 2D and 3D (whether the levels are cropped or not)

• When the grip-handles are view related, they do give you the option of aligning and locking the ends of multiple levels, so that you can adjust several at once - that is a good thing.

• You cannot lock a series of aligned levels and drag their model extents all at once in a 3D view - Unlike a section or elevation view,where you can lock them. 
• Yes, I know that most of the time you would not want people to be able to change the model extents of a level in 3D at all, let alone multiple levels;  however, a 'Model manager' may want to fix up levels in 3D since it is sometimes really tricky in section when they don't show up.  

• Unlike a section or elevation view, when you drag the grip handles in 3D, the level extents do not snap to line up with other levels.  That is really irritating.
  
• It will be a waste of time trying to align model extents of multiple levels in a 3D view by dragging the grip-handles (reasons above), as they will never perfectly align with each other.  OK, so use Scope Boxes instead!

•  When a level is pinned (and cropped in a 3D view), you can still adjust its view extents without unpinning it - thank goodness.

 

• Levels can be accidentally selected in a 3D view and then deleted, moved, copied etc  - previously this could only be done in a section or elevation view, where levels were much more obvious (hence less likely to be accidentally selected).  Now there are many more chances for people to mess up your model!

During beta testing I lobbied really hard to stop this feature being released in its current form (if at all), because of the reasons above.  I lost that battle, but a few good things did come out of the discussion - they gave us a new safety check feature:

• We now have a new warning dialog box when you delete a level - it warns you that associated views and elements will be deleted.  This is a very welcome side-effect of the 3D Levels.

View Visibility

• When you upgrade an old project to 2019, Levels will not be visible by default in existing 3D views - you would need to go to Visibility Graphics to specifically turn them on.
• However, in new projects they will be visible by default in 3D views. Apparently Autodesk were keen for this new 'enhancement' should be more discoverable!
• It appears that for new 3D views in upgraded projects, they will also be visible by default.   Aaargh.
• Thankfully that does not apply to perspective views, where
  Incidentally there is a way to set up your projects so that new 3D views will have levels hidden, using a default 3D template - more on that in another blog post.

Conclusion

Over the last few years Autodesk have been slowly but surely giving us more ways to lock down our models and make them more secure.  And now they have opened another can of worms - largely as a response to significant user demand (on the Revit Ideas Wishlist, amongst other places).  

Ah well, that's the danger of listening to popular votes (open wishlists) instead of the experts!

So where does that leave us?  There are several things you can do to minimise the risk:

1. Don't upgrade to 2019 until Autodesk fixes the issues described above (2019.1?   .2?   2020?) - but you'd miss out on the other goodies such as view control / multiple monitor support etc!
   
2. Make sure that all levels are pinned all the time.  ALL THE TIME.   Make sure that your users understand the selection locks so they can prevent selection of pinned elements.
   
3. Use Scope Boxes to manage the model extents of your levels. This would be good practise anyway in most cases, as it gives you better control and locks them down somewhat.
    
4. Teach your users how to manage these issues and make sure they really understand the difference between view and model extents of levels (and grids, and sections), and between scope boxes vs section boxes.
    
5. Set up a default 3D view template that has levels (and scope boxes) hidden, and set it to apply to all new 3D views.