If i delete a level...

[twiceroadsfool]

Can anyone tell me how much geometry will actually disappear?

I *think* what will happen is a lot of things that are associated with that level will suddenly be *unassociated,* but that they wont vanish in to thin air.

Is this assumption correct?

We have a Revit model that was an early on learning exercise, that we now see as staying long term. I planned on completely rebuilding the model, but the project is moving fast enough that it would take some serious time to catch all the changes between when i started, and when i finished... So im just going to clean this model up.

Thing is, we were using levels as constraints, per se... And we have about 40 of them, LOL...

I want to start pruning the tree, but dont want to blow everything to pieces. I know ill lose a lot of dimensions, but thats life...

[sleimgruber06]

That is not true at all.
In my experience, deleting a level also deletes everything associated to it:
Floors, Walls, Doors, Windows, Lighting Fixtures on the walls, everything touching that level including furniture will be erased.

Hope this helps and that you can find a way to 'unconstrain' everything from the levels.

[dsw98]

I totaly agree, anything on that level is gonna be deleted also. Unless it spans above and below that certain level.

[sleimgruber06]

I totaly agree, anything on that level is gonna be deleted also. Unless it spans above and below that certain level.


Exactly...

Let us say that you have a wall starting on Level 1 and extends up to Level 3, but you decide that you need to delete level 2. That wall will not be deleted because even though it passes through level 2, it isn't associated with that level.

Hope this helps,

[cphubb]

All items associated with the level will be removed.

Here is a good method fro doing this. It does take some work and careful thought but it should work and have minimal problems.

1. Use various views to determine what is associated with that level. We have moved the level up and down to see what moves with it.
2. Take all those items and associate them with another level offset as necessary
3. Delete the level
4. When the error box pops expand all the errors and write down the Element ID for each remaining object. You can also use the show button to help you locate the items.
5. Cancel the delete
6. Find by ID and fix the remaining items
7. Repeat 3-6 until no errors.

If you find most of the items in the first pass you will only have a handful of errors in step 4. and even fewer on the repeat. Should not take very long.

A note for the future, we segregate or worksets by level so we can turn off all but the 1 level and do what we need with those objects. Makes level work very quick and painless

[davidcobi]

Do you find segregating levels into worksets easy with split level projects that meander down hillsides?

[sleimgruber06]

Do you find segregating levels into worksets easy with split level projects that meander down hillsides?

I find that using worksets for split levels, such as a workset for walls on level 1 and a different workset for for walls on level 2, is much easier, especially when dealing with a client.

[davidcobi]

So I'm guessing that all families that are hosted on levels go into your Level-based worksets. If you had a roof hosted on a Top Plate level then you'ld probably have a workset for all families hosted on the Top Plate Level. Besides helping to identify what families are hosted on which levels what other advantages do you find in assigning families to Level-based worksets?

[twiceroadsfool]

Yikes... not the answers i was hoping to come in to this morning.... Bummer, haha.

Looks like its going to take a little longer than i thought to clean up, lol...

[davidcobi]

You guys must also enable worksets as soon as the project is initiated to avoid having to shift every model object to it's correct level workset later on down the line.

[sleimgruber06]

You guys must also enable worksets as soon as the project is initiated to avoid having to shift every model object to it's correct level workset later on down the line.

Yes, you should start out your project WITH worksets to avoid the mass confusion, and labor of changing later.

Good Luck!

[twiceroadsfool]

Well, we do now. This was the first MAJOR project we attempted, and its spanned quite a long time. When we first dove in, before we had a solid understanding of worksets, people likened them to Layers in Acad, and there were too many, that werent doing the job they were intended for. So i combined everything in to one workset this morning, then divided it up in to buildings, like we typically do.

The levels though... I dont know what to do with them. Theres literally 35-40 of them, and many of them are duplicates of the same elevation (3d extents werent maximized early on, and we didnt establish who was controlling levels, so EVERYONE was, lol) and i want to delete a great deal of them.... But i cant. :(

[sleimgruber06]

The only thing I can think of at the moment would be to just hide them in the views; by selecting the level, then right-clicking, then selecting "Hide Annotation in this View".

[twiceroadsfool]

The only thing I can think of at the moment would be to just hide them in the views; by selecting the level, then right-clicking, then selecting "Hide Annotation in this View".

Yeah, thats what weve BEEN doing... Trouble is, 35ish levels, all sitting on top of one another, every time we make a view........ (lol). With elevations for every tenant space coming up, thats a lot of hiding. We've resorted to turning the levels off in Visib, and using spot elevations. I more or less want to get rid of them just to have the file cleaner, for the future, you know?

[Paul Andersen]

Just a thought. You could add the 35 offending levels to a filter and toggle off the filter's visibility in the view. That way your done in a couple clicks versus 35 right clicks per view and can still keep the levels you want on without having to resort to spot elevations. Even quicker, you could add the filter with its visibility already toggled off to a view template.

[dbaldacchino]

I created a workset called "Schematic Levels", placed those levels I didn't need there and now we just don't load that workset. Problem solved.

[twiceroadsfool]

Thats a great approach, i hadnt thought of that. I can tell that workset not to be visible by default, as well, right?

Granted, for any new modeling to get done, im not sure itll help (will they still populate the constraint dialogues if theyre not loaded?), but thats definetely the closest solution im going to find.

Thanks a bunch for that suggestion...

[dbaldacchino]

NP, yes uncheck the "visible by default in all views" and you should be ok. Objects constrained to those levels should still show up. If I remember correctly, those "unloaded" levels shouldn't show up as options when setting a workplane etc.

[twiceroadsfool]

NP, yes uncheck the "visible by default in all views" and you should be ok. Objects constrained to those levels should still show up. If I remember correctly, those "unloaded" levels shouldn't show up as options when setting a workplane etc.

Your method worked great for cleaning up drawings, and saving the time of hiding the annotation everywhere... But i thought id let you know, they still show up as potential base and top constraints when we put walls in.

But thats so minor at this point, its practically immaterial. We arent really putting any more walls in at this point. Its just tons of documentation left to do...... :)

[dbaldacchino]

You are correct, they still show up.

This method helped me clean our drawings too. During schematics, we created a few levels at the major roof heights. When in documentation, we created more levels to attach tops of walls to, so we can manage parapet heights etc (if we had a better spot elevatioin tool with the same annotating capabilities as the level annotation, we probably would not have created additional levels). So we ended up with 7 additional levels and a headache when cutting sections or adding elevations. Placing those schematic levels on a workset and turning it off in offending views made life much easier.

[miguel.108116]

This thread and the work around (placing unwanted levels in a separate workset to control visibility) is very useful and addresses the over-abundance-of-levels enthusiasm that seems to affect early revit projects. A must read. thanks!

[twiceroadsfool]

This thread brings up bad memories of ugly Revit models and days and days of workset cleanup and level issues, lol...

[dbaldacchino]

LOL! Same here :) After all this time, I still don't have set rules as to how many. As long as you have a good reason for creating a level, it's fine to do that. But try to keep them to a minimum. It's really all about anticipating how the project might change during design; about managing change. If a certain building block might need to move due to the structure getting deeper etc., than it makes sense to create a few extra levels so you can make changes easily by moving the level up and any plan views with that associated level keep on working as before (which wouldn't be the case if things move upwards and now your cut plane is too low!). Another example of a good reason to create extra levels is managing parapet heights.

[bclarch]

If you are using "phantom" levels for reference or to attach things to you might want to consider using reference planes instead. Elements can be attached or aligned & locked to the ref planes and you won't end up with as many superfluous levels to manage.