Structural items, and hatches in general, at different levels of detail

[ron.sanpedro]

I am sure part of this has been answered before, but for the life of me my searches aren't finding the answer.
Anyway, I am looking to change two setting in our office templates by default.
1: We want Structural stuff to show up as the item in Course view, not as an analytical line. Seems to me with the advent of Revit Structure that Revit Building should have this as the default anyway, but we at least need to change it in our templates.
2: We would like to turn off cut plane material hatches in all but Fine Detail. Actually, we really want anything larger than 1" to hatch in Medium Detail (for example brick), and smaller stuff (GWB, etc.) to only hatch in Fine View. The only approach I have found is to remove the hatch from wall families and such on the smaller stuff, and then manually add it back with Detail Components, but it sure would be nice to find a way to show certain hatches at certain scales, and others at more limited scales. Anything to minimize the need to add Detail Components while still showing only what is appropriate at the given scale makes some sense.

Thanks,
Gordon

[dhurtubise]

1 - Change that in the family template itself
2 - You can nest a detail component in pretty much every family and manage the level of detail for that detail component

[ron.sanpedro]

1 - Change that in the family template itself
2 - You can nest a detail component in pretty much every family and manage the level of detail for that detail component

1: So there is no way to just tell Revit I am an architect and I need to see structural stuff as objects not concepts, even in Course Detail? I could have sworn I read about a way to do it, and just can't find the reference.
2: Kind of the same reaction. It seems like this should be something I can do globally, rather than needing to fix every family I ever use. Perhaps a wishlist item. Something along the lines of a system setting, beyond which thickness a material shows hatch in Medium Detail. You could set it to 2" or even 3" for commercial projects where most plans and sections are at 1/8" to 1/32" scale, but set it to perhaps 1" for residential projects where most things are 1/4". Not only would plans look better (no little blobs in your sheet rock layer), but your details, in Fine Detail, would be that much more complete because they would have all the hatches needed.

Best,
Gordon

[dhurtubise]

1 - Yes, but since all architect are different you will need to tell exactly Revit want you wanna see and where.
2 - Agree, but since there's no way to code everyone's display wishes in the library you need to build your own based on your standard.

One of the first thing i do during the implementation process is to review family template based on the customer needs

[Adam Mac]

1: So there is no way to just tell Revit I am an architect and I need to see structural stuff as objects not concepts, even in Course Detail?

Hi Gordon -

I think you need to edit the structural families and change the visibility settings within the families..... it's not a major operation. I'd then save all the ones you've edited to a company/private directory somehwhere so that the next revision of Revit doesn't overwrite the work you've done.
HTH

Regards,

Adam

[Scott D Davis]

You can set view overrides so that structural items show "medium" even thought the view is Coarse. Change in view/visibility settings. Obviously this is per view.

[ron.sanpedro]

You can set view overrides so that structural items show "medium" even thought the view is Coarse. Change in view/visibility settings. Obviously this is per view.

Scott,
Thanks! I think you may have been the poster in the thread I was vaguely remembering. I will continue to keep my fingers crossed for Revit Building to become a more Architecture focused app now that Revit Structure is available for the Engineering side of things, but having the ability to give users a View Template that is actually useful for design work will be a big step in getting people into Revit as a design tool as well as a documentation tool.

One thing I noticed as I was playing with the view/visibility settings. With walls, I have a Cut Pattern sub-category, which I can just turn off in a view. Now with walls I don't want to turn off all cut patterns in plan & section, but with structural I do. I just have no need to show the steel hatch in a 4" tube steel column at 1/8"=1'! And yet, under all the Structural stuff, there is no Cut Pattern. It is there for Roofs, Walls, Floors, etc. In other words, it is there for all System Families, but not for all other families. I can only assume there is an intent behind this, but for the life of me I can't think of a reason why to not have the option to turn off the hatch for structural stuff too. And stair treads, and casework, and... Anyone have any insights here? Also, I would assume that the hatch being on has some affect on performance, with Revit trying to resolve the hatch, even if only to dots that are lost in the lineweight of the structural member. Kind of the "Don't model it unless you can actually see it at that scale" mentality. But perhaps cut patterns behave differently from modeled stuff?

Thanks,
Gordon