Weird Callout Behaviour in Revit

A few months back I wrote about some of the weird rules for Revit Callouts when you use the 'Reference Other View' option.

There are some strange and frustrating restrictions, which mean you need to plan carefully about what view types/families to use for callouts, and in fact for any views.

There are also some weird restrictions in how Callouts work when you don't use 'Reference Other View' - I refer to those as "Real Callouts".  I am going to record those here.

Stop and Think - Which Parent View?

Before placing any "Real Callouts",  stop and think about which view you want to place the callout on - you should already have a good plan for how your drawing set referencing is going to work.

The reason for this is that once you place a Real Callout on a view, it does two things:

• It creates a new view that is automatically cropped to the extents of the callout that you just created.
• It places the callout element on your view - typically a dashed line rectangle with a circular reference bubble.

It is  really important to know that once you place a Real Callout on a particular view, it can never be moved to another parent view.

The only workarounds are:

• Start from scratch - delete the callout + view, which means losing all your annotation and any other reference callouts to that view.
• Hide the callout on the parent view, and make a Reference Callout on another parent view.  This means that the old parent view can never be deleted - you would lose the callout view (refer to Deleting Callouts below). 
  This is a last resort workaround that I would not recommend.

Callout View Families

Detail Views vs Plan Views

The first issue to watch out for when creating Real Callouts is which view type you select (or don't select if you just accept the default).  For plan callouts you have two family options (and then choices of any view types that you have created):

• Detail Views
• Floor Plan Views

The really important thing to know here is that once you have made a decision between Detail or Floor Plan family, you can never change your mind - the families are not interchangeable.

View types are changeable - so you can change a callout from one plan view type to another plan view (but not to a Detail view).

Once you have chosen a callout view family/type, there are many weird and inconsistent rules about which view families can be referenced to and from callouts - refer to weird rules for Revit Callouts for 'Reference Other View'

For those and other reasons, I normally try to avoid using Detail views at all in Revit - see more reasons below, and refer to Weird Stair Path Stuff.

Detail Views vs Section Views

When creating Section view Callouts you also have two family options (and then choices of any view types that you have created):

• Detail Views
• Section Views

Unlike plan details, section details can be changed to normal section views - this is inconsistent, although it is welcome not to have that restriction.

 

Weird Detail View Behaviour

Detail views behave quite differently to other view types:

• Plan and Section views are typically grouped together in the project browser - it does not distinguish between them.  This can be confusing when searching for views.

• Detail views can be rotated in section (or elevation) from a vertical (section) orientation to a plan orientation.  If you know what you are doing you can use this to your advantage - but is not advised for inexperienced users.  It will most likely cause much confusion.

• When creating Real Callouts from a Detail view, they can only be another detail view.

• Stairs and railings are displayed as cut 3D models (wherever the view cutting plane is), rather than the Revit conventional 2D representation on other plan views - refer to True 3D Stair View in RCP.

• Symbols nested into families (such as electical fittings - switches, power outlets) are not visible in Detail views.

• Section and Plan Detail Callouts have the ability to set the depth of view the same as the parent view or independently - however, the controls are by 'Far Clip Offset' for both section and plan, not by view range.

Plan Detail Views

Plan Detail views have special rules (different to Section Details):

• Plan Detail Views don't allow Stair Path Arrows -  refer to Weird Stair Path Stuff.

For Plan Detail views, the callouts are generally only visible in the views they are placed on, with one exception:

• There is a ‘Show In’ property that can override this behaviour

• Plan callout views are normally set to Show In ‘Parent View Only’ 

• If this is changed to ‘Intersecting Views’ then the callout can potentially be visible in other plans within the same view range (thus behaving more like section detail callouts) - be warned, this will confuse the heck out of most Revit users.

• Be aware that ‘Intersecting Views’ detail plan callouts can also be visible in sections – they may appear as a line or with a reference head depending on the properties of the plan view

Section Detail Views

Section Detail callout views are potentially visible in section views other than their parent view.  They behave as if they have a hard-coded 'Show in Intersecting Views' property.  They might be visible under the following conditions:

• The callout view crop boundary is wholly within the crop boundary of the other section view
• The callout view section line is within the Clipping Distance of the other section view
• There are no other scale-related, category visibility or filters hiding them. 

Duplicating Views

• If you copy and paste a real callout, it actually creates a new view (and new callout).  In most cases this is not especially useful, as you are more likely to want the same reference to the original callout view - in which case it would need to be a 'Reference Other View' callout.

• If you copy a parent view by ‘Duplicate with Detailing’ it creates a new view for each callout – each would have a different reference on the duplicatd parent view. 

Deleting Views

• If you delete a parent view (plan or section), it will automatically delete any callouts placed on that view, and the callout views - although it does prompt you with a warning that it will delete those views.
• There is no way around this because once a callout is placed on a particular view, it cannot be moved to another parent view.
• This is a major drawback to using callouts in Revit.

Next Time . . .

In addition to the issues above, there is a limitation on not being able to have a callout rectangle that is slightly larger than the crop region of the callout view - thus making your drawings messy and hard to read.  Refer to Callout crop boundary mismatch

In the next blog post on this subject I will suggest an alternative working method that avoids some of these pitfalls and inconsistencies.

If you can remember all these rules and exceptions, congratulations!  Try remembering them again in a few months time.

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.

Creating Revolves in Revit Mass - CME Part 3

This is part 3 of my series on  comparing the five traditional form creation tools with equivalent techniques in the Revit Conceptual Massing Environment.
Previously we analysed the creation of extrusion forms and Blends in the CME.  Now it is the turn of 'Revolves' (pun intended):

Part 3:  Revolves

Creating a Revolve in the Conceptual Massing Environment is relatively simple, but it does not give you the option to nominate the Axis of Rotation - you just have to draw a straight line and hope that Revit figures out which element you want to use as the axis:

• Draw a straight line (for the axis of rotation) and a profile (closed or open) 

• Select them both and ‘Create Form’ 

• If the profile is closed it will just create the revolve (maybe!); 
• If the profile is open, it will suggest two options: a revolve or a flat surface connecting the line and profile

• A closed profile can allow a nested loop to create the form, but only if the profile is made from lines – not from a loaded family profile 

• This is only one of two situations that I have found where you can include a loop within a loop during the 'Create Form' process in the Conceptual Massing Environment.

Once the Revolve has been created, the form will have properties for Start and End angle - these can be changed to reduce the form from a full 360 degree revolve.

YouTube

Below is a short YouTube description of the Create Revolve in CME process:

Accurately Rotate a Section in Revit

When you have a non-orthogonal building model in Revit, you often need to create sections (or elevations) at various angles other than orthogonal.  Normally you would want sections to be perpendicular/parallel to the angled model elements - the image above shows a section somewhat off parallel (much exaggerated version of a typical example where it may be slightly off).

If the section is not exactly perpendicular (or parallel) to objects in the model you can encounter some very frustrating problems:

• You may not be able to dimension sectioned elements
• 2D Symbolic lines in families may not show up (eg. door swing in elevation)

If you try to rotate the section to make it exactly perpendicular (or parallel) to objects in the model, it is not as easy as you might expect:

• One thing to avoid is measuring an angle and then typing in the measured angle during the rotate process - it is never accurate enough, even if you use several decimal points.  Revit is extremely fussy about this - even a difference in angle of 0.000001 degrees may be enough to play havoc with dimensions and symbolic lines.
• It is much more accurate to rotate by snapping start and end rotation points to the section to be rotated and some other reference element.  The other problem you will encounter is an inability to snap to section lines.

Workaround

The trick here is two preparatory steps

• Create a reference plane snapped to the section tail end, and exactly parallel to the angled wall
• temporarily turn off the section markers at the ends of the section line - use the little cycle symbols et each end of the section.  Then you can accurately snap to the section line when rotating. 

 

To rotate the section:

• During the rotate command, snap the centre of rotation to the point where the reference plane and section tail end meet (they must meet exactly)
• Snap the start of the rotation to the section head end
• Snap the end of the rotation to the other end of the reference plane

The section should end up exactly perpendicular (or parallel) to objects in the model.  Unfortunately the annotation on the section will have moved (much exaggerated in this example), so you may need to do some tidy up, and replacement of dimensions.

• Don't forget to turn the section head/tail marker back on.

You should now be able to dimension to sectioned elements, and the 2D symbolic lines in families should now be visible.

It is your call as to whether it is worth rotating the section line or just create a new section - it all depends on how much annotation there is, and how often the section has been referenced in other views.

Once you have the section oriented exactly right, you surely don't want to lose it, so most likely you will pin it in place.  Revit is very annoying in that you cannot change the 2D extents of a pinned section (as you can with datums like grids).  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to pin a rotated section and have it never move again, but still be able to adjust its 2D extents per view, without unpinning it.  If you would like that, please go to the Revit Ideas forum and vote for 'Allow us to change 2D extents of pinned sections'


[Edit:  Now we have a new way to do this in Revit 2019.1, which has an 'Align Section' functionality, using the existing 'Align' command. ]

Moves with Nearby Element - Non-Hosted Revit Families

Following on from my previous post about 'Moves with Nearby Element' in Revit, here is another use case for this under-appreciated feature:

Plumbing Fittings: Use 'Moves with Nearby Element' Instead of Wall-Hosting

The logical Revit methodology for placing plumbing fittings is to make them "wall-hosted" - and that is how most of the Autodesk supplied libraries are set up.  The obvious reason for doing this is the fact that wall-mounted basins, WCs, urinals etc need to be attached to a wall - and when that wall moves, so should they.
However, many long-time Revit users and BIM managers are trying to avoid using wall-hosted families for a number of reasons:

• Wall-hosted plumbing fittings will be deleted if the host wall is deleted - seems logical, but how many times has this happened unintentionally?  It is especially easy to do when the fitting is off screen on a very long (or high) wall.  The plumbing fittings may have all kinds of data and annotation attached so it is no joke replacing them.
• If the wall and fittings are part of groups, you will almost certainly run into trouble sooner or later.  Someone will inevitably put the fitting in a group, but not the host (or vice-versa);  worse still, they could be included in different groups.  Either way, a hosted object and its parent not in the same group becomes very hard to manage, and you will most likely end up with conflicts of group ownership or ghosted plumbing fittings (excluded from an instance of the group) - a very messy situation that only expert Revit users can resolve.
• Non-hosted plumbing fittings can be used in varied situations like in vanity units without needing to have two versions (non hosted & wall-hosted), or nested families

There are a number of ways that people avoid these issues:

Face-Hosted
One technique is to create "face-hosted" components, which do not get deleted when their host is deleted.  I am not so keen on this option for a few reasons:

• 'Always vertical' is not an option with face-hosted families, so they may become hosted directly to floors instead of walls, in the wrong plane.  
• They also need to be modelled in the 'wrong' orientation, which is counter-intuitive
• The plumbing fittings can end up above the view range cut-plane, if you don't adjust the height first (there are clever ways to avoid this with non-hosted)
• The extra placement options can cause confusion 

Face-hosted placement options

Non-Hosted
My preferred technique is to use non-hosted plumbing fittings, in combination with 'Moves with Nearby Element'

Advantages:

• Components are not deleted when wall is deleted
• No issues with missing hosts in groups, automatically excluded members, or group edit ownership clashes

Disadvantages:

• Components will not rotate with the wall when the nearby wall is rotated
• User needs to remember to tick the checkbox (either during or after placement)

 

• Angled placement is not so simple - user needs to force component rotation (using the space bar):

Angled placement

• Hover the cursor over the wall edge

• Press the space bar while wall edge is highlighted - component rotates to match wall

• It even works on curved walls

Work Plane-Based
Some people like to make their (non-wall-hosted) plumbing fittings 'Work plane based', so that they can avoid issues with them getting 'stuck' to floors that Revit automatically hosts them to - an issue that occasionally shows up when components are grouped and copied to other levels - but that is a bug, which should not happen.

Unfortunately work plane-based families do not allow 'Moves with Nearby Element' so you cannot combine the two techniques.