From the course: Revit 2024: Essential Training for Architecture

Understanding visibility and graphics control - Revit Tutorial

From the course: Revit 2024: Essential Training for Architecture

Understanding visibility and graphics control

- [Instructor] The subject of the videos in this chapter is visibility and graphic control, and this video is devoted to a high level overview of that topic. When contemplating visibility and graphic controls, folks often jump to commands like visibility graphics or hide in view. This is because often what Revit displays by default in each view is suitable most of the time and we therefore don't think about it until something is not to our liking. But if you really want to understand what is happening behind the scenes, you cannot start with visibility graphics or any of the other similar tools. This is because the first question you need to address is what, not how. Visibility graphics changes how elements will display in a view. But before its effects kick in, we need to determine what will display in the view. So how do we do that? Don't start with the visibility tools. Instead, start with the view's extents. Consider standard drawing types like plans, sections, and elevations. How does Revit generate these views? Well, it starts with a cut of the model. In elevation, this would be a vertical cut, usually outside of the building and facing toward the model. For a section, it would be similar except that this time the cut slices through the model, thereby excluding elements that fall behind the cut. The most dramatic example is a plan. Here the cut is horizontally oriented, showing only a thin slice of the model. Now consider any element category after such a slice. For example, the model overall may contain many more windows than what we end up showing in that floor plan slice. Therefore, if you seek to control the display of an element using customizations like visibility graphics, it may prove wasted effort if the element in question is outside the view extents and therefore not eligible to display in the first place. The specifics of controlling the view extents will vary slightly by view type. Elevations and sections are easily manipulated with on-screen controls, for example, but plans require a little bit more effort using the view range dialogue. But once you're certain that the extents are correct for your view's purpose, you can move on to any required visibility and graphical customization. To do that, you can use several options, and here's a short list. Keep in mind that the effects listed here are progressive. So let's take a look at each one of these. Everything begins with object styles. They set the overall default display characteristics for each category in your project and apply to all views that have not been overridden. So this is a global effect and it's usually determined by some office standards. Now, you can override the effects of object styles in several ways, starting with visibility graphics. Visibility graphics are still category wide but they apply only to the view in which they're applied. Next comes filters. These are limited to a selection of elements determined by user-defined rules. This makes filters very powerful and flexible, and because the selection is rule-based, they continue to apply as long as the conditions that triggered them remain valid. Finally, overrides can be applied manually to individual elements. Preferably this should only be done on rare occasions and when absolutely necessary. I've also included temporary hide isolate here in the chart as well, but naturally the most significant difference is that the effects are temporary and they do not persist with the model. So with this general overview in mind, the remainder of the videos in this chapter will move systematically through each of these topics.

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