STEEL BEAM STICK VIEW SETTINGS HELP

[residarchitect]

I am a residential architect and am attempting to use steel shapes and
columns for the first time in Revit. I have always shown my steel and
columns as 2D representations. I have taken the plunge and like the
shapes, etc. however, I can not get the Steel Beam to show up as a
stick line despite clicking on Stick View On Top.

Help. What am I not doing correctly. Here is a screen print of what I
see. I want the beam to be shown as a broken dashed line.

[rmcelvain.103137]

What you are seeing is the fine representation of the steel beams. If you need to have the rest of the view set to fine then you can go into the steel beam family and change the visibility there. I am at home right now but will put some screen shots together tomorrow morning for clarification if you need it.

Best of luck!

[Paul Andersen]

A couple of other tips. Right click -> properties on the beam and note it's Structural Usage under the Structural Heading. It should be one of the following: Girder, Horizontal Bracing, Joist, Other, or Purlin. As Rick has already pointed out the stick symbol for structural elements typically shows in coarse view only. After you select the appropriate structural usage for the member you can set it's object style to display how you would like. Go to Object Styles -> Structural Framing -> Girder (for example) and set it's Line Weight, Color, Pattern, etc. to your liking. Finally, If your view is set to anything other than coarse you will want to override the Visibility/Graphic for the Structural Framing Category. View -> Visibility Graphics ... (VV or VG) -> Structural Framing -> and set the Detail Level to coarse.

[rmcelvain.103137]

-> Structural Framing -> and set the Detail Level to coarse.
That is definitely a much cleaner way (nice one Paul). Just remember it will affect all structural framing members not just the WF shapes.

[tedg]

I have a related problem and for the life of me I can't find the problem.
My steel framing will not show the appointed "Stick Symbol" line weight when in "Detail Level: Course".
I have verifed the framing has not been over-ridden in the view.

I have a line weight of "10" assigned to stick symbols, which according to the settings for 1/4" = 1'-0" should be .0394" = 1mm.
I can select the beam(s) and force them on linweight 10 and it works, so it's something about the global settings for stick symbols I think.

This is a new project I started this week, so it could be something not set correctly in the template I started with, but have looked everywhere.

:banghead:

Anyone have any ideas?

[tedg]

Additional information... While in View Detail: Course, I change the "Primary Framing" line weight to 10 and it works in this plan, which tells me it's not switching to stick symbols while in course??

[david_peterson]

What discipline are you set to? Arch, Struct, coord?

[tedg]

What discipline are you set to? Arch, Struct, coord?
Structural

[Craig_L]

edit the family, click on the extrusion in the family here it will have a setting for visibility in the properties dialogue box once you select that extrusion, and you can set to "course" "medium" "fine" etc, this way depending on the detail level of the view it will show as a stick symbol or not. Make sure coarse is unchecked and in a coarse view you should only see the single line representation. We also adjusted some of our families to have a graphical option to offset the stick line (for example for purlins) because to model them correctly it looks like one continuous line, but we wanted to show laps and built in the parameter to offset the line 120mm (our standard but works nicely on the page) either up or down with a simple checkbox toggle in the family. Note that its only the SYMBOLIC line that moves, the element is still modelled exactly where it should be. Also for things such as raking angles to show them set away from the wall, otherwise you see the line almost hard up against the wall and it loses clarity on the page (just something to keep in mind when working with stick symbols)

[kmarsh]

Hi Ted,

The coarse representations are managed by Revit, unless you specifically ask Revit to let the family manage it. If Revit is managing it, changing the settings for stick symbols will have no effect (unless you have other symbolic lines in your family set to "stick symbol" sub-category), If you want to adjust the coarse representation, you will need to adjust the view settings for the particular type of framing that you want to adjust (Girder, purlin, etc.).

If you want to manage these things yourself (with symbolic lines in the family) you can change the family setting shown here to "From Family" and then any symbolic lines in your family set to "Stick Symbol" will be controlled by the stick symbol setting in Visibility Graphics.
94816

Otherwise, stick symbol does nothing as the structural framing type was intended to deal with most issues. (I should also mention that it's not "either, or" if you add symbolic lines to your family and let Revit manage the coarse, you will still see your symbolic lines, but Revit will add an additional coarse representation too)

Hope that helps you figure out the behavior you are seeing.
-Ken

[tedg]

Hi Ted,

The coarse representations are managed by Revit, unless you specifically ask Revit to let the family manage it. If Revit is managing it, changing the settings for stick symbols will have no effect (unless you have other symbolic lines in your family set to "stick symbol" sub-category), If you want to adjust the coarse representation, you will need to adjust the view settings for the particular type of framing that you want to adjust (Girder, purlin, etc.).

If you want to manage these things yourself (with symbolic lines in the family) you can change the family setting shown here to "From Family" and then any symbolic lines in your family set to "Stick Symbol" will be controlled by the stick symbol setting in Visibility Graphics.
94816

Otherwise, stick symbol does nothing as the structural framing type was intended to deal with most issues. (I should also mention that it's not "either, or" if you add symbolic lines to your family and let Revit manage the coarse, you will still see your symbolic lines, but Revit will add an additional coarse representation too)

Hope that helps you figure out the behavior you are seeing.
-Ken

Thank you Ken, that was a huge help.
I did not realize I needed to assign weights per framing funtion too, such as "Primary", "Secondary", "Other" (etc).
Once I did that, all is well.

(have some rep!)

[kmarsh]

Thanks for the props Ted,

I'm glad that helped!

-Ken