mechanical views

[rrubert]

we have a problem in our current revit model. when we upgraded to 2008, our mechanical views would not open, and we got an error message saying "An error has occurred while drawing the contents of this window. This window shall be closed." our electrical views are fine and when we make a new view, it is fine until we change the discipline to "Mechanical". This is a major problem as this project is due in a few weeks and we need to be able to show our drawings correctly. We have already submitted a report to Autodesk, but I wanted to ask here as well in case it's happened to anyone else.

thanks

[mjdanowski]

we have a problem in our current revit model. when we upgraded to 2008, our mechanical views would not open, and we got an error message saying "An error has occurred while drawing the contents of this window. This window shall be closed." our electrical views are fine and when we make a new view, it is fine until we change the discipline to "Mechanical". This is a major problem as this project is due in a few weeks and we need to be able to show our drawings correctly. We have already submitted a report to Autodesk, but I wanted to ask here as well in case it's happened to anyone else.

thanks
electrical views actually get the same error, we just don't have a problem since we don't use an electrical discipline. (as it isn't a big deal for us).

[kyle.bernhardt]

We have already submitted a report to Autodesk, but I wanted to ask here as well in case it's happened to anyone else.

thanksWhen you say you've submitted a report, is this with our Product Support team? I just want to make sure you're using the best available resource for this issue.

A couple questions for you.


Can you reproduce this on a fresh project?
Can you reproduce this on other machines?
Have you tried to select one of these mechanical views in the Project Browser (without actually opening it), go to the View Properties and change the Model Graphics Style to Wireframe?
Same as #3, but change the discipline of the view to Architectural or Coordination?
That's what pops to mind initially.

HTH,
Kyle B

[rrubert]

1. Can you reproduce this on a fresh project?
no, I couldn't not reproduce this

2. Can you reproduce this on other machines?
yes, it happens on both my machine and matt's

3. Have you tried to select one of these mechanical views in the Project Browser (without actually opening it), go to the View Properties and change the Model Graphics Style to Wireframe?
yes. when I did this, the mechanical view did open. however, when I went to change the graphics style back to hidden line, I got the same error. for our final documents, we will not want the wireframe view. we would prefer the hidden line view.

4. Same as #3, but change the discipline of the view to Architectural or Coordination?
yes, when you change the discipline of the view to architectural or coordination, the views open. however, we would really like to show the mechanical view on our documents as the settings are correct.

[kyle.bernhardt]

I totally understand wanting to utilize the Hidden Line display on your Mechanical views. I was not suggesting that you don't use them, but rather I was trying to narrow down the cause of this issue.

It sounds like the problem here is occurring when the program tries to draw the elements in the view when using the MEP Hidden Line graphics mechanism. You defnintely need to report this to our team, relay this information, and send them the model so they can reproduce. This is your best method for getting this issue resolved.

Cheers,
Kyle B

[mjdanowski]

I totally understand wanting to utilize the Hidden Line display on your Mechanical views. I was not suggesting that you don't use them, but rather I was trying to narrow down the cause of this issue.

It sounds like the problem here is occurring when the program tries to draw the elements in the view when using the MEP Hidden Line graphics mechanism. You defnintely need to report this to our team, relay this information, and send them the model so they can reproduce. This is your best method for getting this issue resolved.

Cheers,
Kyle B

I have sent this through a support ticket, uploaded the file and what not and it was apparently "elevated" to the development team. :)

[Phil Palmer]

HAve you played around with different Graphics Settings - Under your settings options menu

It may be related to OPenGL being on or off and your graphics card struggling to display with the hidden lines in a mechanical view.

Its an error I get quite often and trying different settings normally gets me out of trouble.

I know a lot of Revit Arch 2008 users have had issues with these settings and sounds a similar problem ?

[rrubert]

We fixed our problem with this. The problem was that when we upgraded to 2008, the hidden linetype we were using didn't transfer over or didn't exist in 2008 or something, so Revit didn't know what linetype to use and it gave an error. In the mechanical settings window, the hidden linetype box was blank. When I specified a linetype for the hidden lines, the mechanical views opened up with the correct conventions.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

[mjdanowski]

Another issue I have come across however is that now I can only set the "gap width" (the setting that specifies the gap when you cross wires) to a minimum of 1/4", which is entirely too small. I need it to be like 1/64" or something and when I try to set it to that, it just sets it to zero automatically.

[kyle.bernhardt]

Check your Project Units, that would be my first guess.

[mjdanowski]

Check your Project Units, that would be my first guess.

this worked

[dmb.100468]

For future projects and releases:

Our reseller recommened that whenever you are upgrading you should always do an Audit of the project. We ran into a few upgrade issues, especially with our custom project template, that we found could have been avoided by doing an Audit when we first opened the old project with a new version of Revit.