Unexpected behavior of Columns

[DaveP]

I just had a problem with a Structural column I thought I'd share. Took me a while to figure it out.


We placed a Structural Column in plan & everything looked right, but we couldn't see the column when we cut a Section through that Room.
After much Visibility checking, I finally noticed that there was a single line showing in the elevation.
Finally got into the Family editor, and I found out that the Structural Columns are set to display only a dashed line in Elevation in Coarse mode.

Switching to Medium (or Fine) mode fixed it, but it was a real WTF for a while.

It does make sense. It's just not what I was expecting. This is a Structural Column, after all and that's most likely what the Structural Engineer wants to see, but not what the Architect wants.

This particular column was:
C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/Autodesk/Revit Building 9/Imperial Library/StructuralColumns/Steel/HSS-Hollow Structural Section-Column.rfa
but I suspect this is the case for all Structural members. Beams, too.

[Scott D Davis]

Yep, all structural framing shows the "stick" view in coarse mode, and the actual 3D member in medium or fine views. It's been this way for as long as structural members have been in Revit! :-)

[Steve_Stafford]

In architectural views you can override the detail level (visibility/graphics) for structural framing and structural columns so they use medium or fine instead. This way you can use coarse for the architectural modeling and whichever you need so the steel shows the way you want.