Subregion Error Message - What does it mean?

[artitech]

(1) I received the following message when doing a "complicated" sub-region of my parking lots...

"A point is outside the surface boundary. Insert the Point on the boundary instead, and then drag it to the desired location."

Nice message, but it doesn't really tell me what or show me "where" the problem is...???
Any suggestions?

(2) Since it took me "over an hour" to outline this particular subregion, when I received this error I copied and pasted the outlines incase there is a way to use them next time I attempt the subregion.

Is there any way to use these lines for my subregion outline without having to re-trace them?

[Wes Macaulay]

You are not alone. But this thread may have some tips to help you out:

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=20083

The point is that Revit is having difficulty resolving the nasty geometry created by the combination of the topo itself and the subregion you're dropping onto it.

[beegee]

Complex subregions can be difficult to setout. This is due to the triangulation that Revit performs on the topo surfaces. Any overlap of boundary lines can cause the calculation to fail.



The procedure for a complex subregion is :-



Create a new detail line subcategory.



Layout the subregion boundaries with these detail lines.



Use the pick option to snap subregion boundaries to these detail lines.



When complete, turn off the detail line category.



In your case – paste the sketch lines of one subregion back in as model lines ( paste aligned current ) and then pick those model lines to create the adjacent subregion using an exact common edge.

[Max Lloyd]

even using that technique I have still had problems with 'supposed' overlapping lines. It seems to me the more subregions you get on the site, the longer the process takes (and it can take ages to complete subregions) and the more likely you are to get error messages.

The message regarding points outside the boundary has happened to me many times and seems to be to do with the amount of points on the toposurface? Well it usually resolves itself if you can split the topo somewhere to reduce its effective size. However, this usually comes back to haunt me when you want to have a subregion which goes over 2 topo's (you can't!), so then you can get back into joining topo's etc.

It is workable, but as many have outlined before, the site tools could certainly be easier to use.

[sbrown]

I recently worked on a 640 acre site and it was really poor. First I thought that I should split up the topo into smaller pieces to improve performance, this worked ok, however then when I tried to do a subregion, I learned as you pointed out that they can only be on one surface. Even worse, I had got all my topo surf. created and decided I wanted to merge them so that the line at the split wouldn't show(no other way I know of to get rid of it) and that deleted all the subregions on one of the 2 surfaces. This was/is a huge problem. I currently know of no workable solution for large sites. Graphically and performance wise I had issues. The only way to get the graphics you want, is to not use subregions and truely split all the surfaces, this however creates performance issues. placing one point to modify the topo surface literally took 5-8 minutes. Revit would regen the entire site for each point instead of wait until you place all the points and then rebuild the site.

The other very poor graphic issue with sub regions, is they change the topography. Heres the situation, I created a small island for a golf course hole. looked great, I wanted a subregion for the fairway, when I created it, it added contour lines connecting the "dots" from one side to the other, I thought a subregion just change the material not the grade.

I hope we see some site improvements very soon. I don't need to do civil engineering, just get the graphics right.

[Wes Macaulay]

I should think that the problem has less to do with the size of the site as with the number of points that make up the toposurface? Couldn't you simplify surface to remove some of the points out of the topo?

[artitech]

sbrown, etal:

I hear you. Only being my first site in Revit, I can't say that I'm doing things efficiently, but it is "slow" and cumbersome. Subregions and modifying toposurfaces are extremely slow and today alone I crashed my computer twice (Pentium 4 w/ 512 Mb RAM, 128Mb Video and 30 Gb free space on harddrive... and it's a Dell dude). Hence, I lost some work as well.

I must say, once I get things to work (and save) I am extremely impressed with the results. I'll just keep plugging away (I can't imagine who would want to pay me for all this time it is taking...).