"Not exactly orthogonal" HELP!

[guy.messick825831]

All,

I just "dropped in" to one of our larger projects to assist with detailing, to discover that I can't perform horizontal dimensions to ANY of the sections, and therefore detail view callouts of those sections. I get an error message (see attached screenshot) telling me that "The planes of one or more references are not exactly orthogonal to this view". Vertical dims are fine. Does anyone know a fix for this, other than recreating all of the sections?

Thanks,

[s.messing]

I can't perform horizontal dimensions to ANY of the sections
Get this to the factory immediately.
I think that this is a problem that they have seen before. I think the problem is that the sections were somehow laid down not completely orthogonal. In other words, the view plane is not perfectly parallel to the objects inside it that you are dimensioning. The solutions will be to either remake the sections or rotate them.

I would recommend making an angular dimension style with its accuracy to several decimal places and then trying to dimension to the section marker. See how far off it is in plan and try to rotate it that number.

Good luck,
Stephen

[guy.messick825831]

I've been trying to create an angular dim from the grid to the section object per the tip above, but cannot get the dim to snap to the section - any ideas? Am I missing something. Life would be much better if I could just rotate the sections.

Thanks,

[sbrown]

You can rotate sections. Just make sure you move the rotate icon to one end point of the section tag and then snap perpendicular to the wall.

[chadr]

I have had the exact same thing happen to me but with 4 building plans in one model. I tried rotating the plans back to orthogonal but that created more headaches with cleanups so I just went back and recreated some parts and aligned walls to an orthogonal line in other. It went really fast but of course was not happy to have to do it. Sorry to hear it happened to your sections.

Chad

[guy.messick825831]

Thanks for all the help. It's been booted up to the factory as well. I'm still working on the "rotate section to perpendicular with wall" technique - and I thought I was slick! What I would like is to prevent other users from getting here. And none of the walls are out of alignment with the grids. When I get this down, and/or hear back from autodesk, I'll post a reply.

[gsucci]

I had the same problem, in version 8 and 9.

One wing of the building was not hortogonal to Revit default reference plane, but rotated.
Althoght I aligned the structural axes and created hortogonal elevations and sections, Revit would not keep the alignment, and now and then it would give me the error about hortogonal elements...Also, axes would move ever so slightly, so that once dimensioned in plan they would read some fractional value, while originarly they were whole numbers...

Rule of thumb for me is try not to rotate your project, unless absolutely necessary. Forget about North orientation, Revit is too dependent on its own "world" reference system.

Hope 2008 improved on this issues...

regards

gio

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Not a cure but, if all your sections will be horizontal or vertical you can hold your shift key down while placing the sections to force them orthogonal.
If your sections aren't ortho then create them on or near a wall that is parallel to the section and then drag the section into the correct location.

[s.messing]

Not a cure but, if all your sections will be horizontal or vertical you can hold your shift key down while placing the sections to force them orthogonal.
If your sections aren't ortho then create them on or near a wall that is parallel to the section and then drag the section into the correct location.
Great trick Dimitri! You can use this method when placing anything from furniture to views to anything. Nice pic. Now we all know what you look like and we can hunt you down at AU! jk

The general recommendation from Revit Factory is to always check your angular accuracy in a non orthogonal project from the very beginning to a high decimal place by using the angular dimension technique described above.

[guy.messick825831]

All,

I heard back from the factory; if you set an angular dimension family to 12 decimal places, you can find the wayward walls, but the grids are perfect. So, perhaps a user set "something" wrong from the beginning, thereby altering the automatic alignment of the adjacent walls (see attached screenshot for a plan, GSUCCI was correct). I cannot get this to repeat in a fresh project, using the same grid pattern, yet when placing new walls in the "bad" project, the dashed Green line "helper" comes out and places them wrong. My main issue with this is: Why does dimensioning in elevations & sections so incredibly sensitive (12 decimal places!), but I can dimension the same objects fine in plan. I appreciate accuracy (really) but....

Thanks again for the responses

[D_Driver]

This sometimes happens (walls not true othagonal) when users bring in an autoCAD drawing and "pick" the lines to generate the walls. This has been know in past releases to cause grief in weird places like trying to generate a roof by footprint from those walls.

[jeffh]

I have also seen this kind of problem when a DWG file with geometry very far from the origin is used as a background and an incorrect angle is picked up when placing Revit elements.

[guy.messick825831]

Actually, this is all new construction, I can't use the old "bad Acad underlay" excuse this time.

[steve922542]

OK, I am in trouble. I have an plan made from a CAD overlay and all the walls are out of square by just a couple of hundredths of a degree. Someone have a solution other than completely redoing plan?

I appreciate the fact that Revit wants to make sure my dimensions are accurate, but I am starting with an asbuilt plan. Nothing is perfectly orthogonal. The contractor needs a true dimensional layout plan for the new walls and at this point I feel like I need to export it to autoCAD. In autoCAD I would dimension between the walls on both sides of the room if the walls were not parallel.

Is Revit useless for remodels and as-builts or what?

- Steve Layne

[sbrown]

Just change your dim tollerance to 10-12 digits, then pick one wall as the starting point and dim angular from it to the next, then highlight the wall and type 90. repeat for every wall in the project until your square. As for revit being worthless in remodels and as-builts, its awesome for those applications. you just have to understand that a view has to be perpendicular to be able to dim to grids. You can still project elevations, note them and use detail lines to dimension items that aren't orthangonal.

[steve922542]

Just change your dim tollerance to 10-12 digits, then pick one wall as the starting point and dim angular from it to the next, then highlight the wall and type 90. repeat for every wall in the project until your square. As for revit being worthless in remodels and as-builts, its awesome for those applications. you just have to understand that a view has to be perpendicular to be able to dim to grids. You can still project elevations, note them and use detail lines to dimension items that aren't orthangonal.

I have definitely outpaced my limited experience with Revit here, but I am dealing with one floor of a 20 story building, built in the 1940's. This is a complete remodel. Structure is modeled based on accurate as-builts. So everything is just a little off of arch grid. Making everything 90 degrees would defeat the purpose of this exercise. I am working for the contractor to coodinate the mess. Archs and IDs use fantasy grid lines. As builts are reality of what is there.

When modeling the walls it was fantastic. I built families for all the partition types (40 different) and used the arch/ struct / asbuilt CAD overlays. The model is exactly the 'split the difference' that it should be. The problem is that I can not dimension it because I did not fully understand that Revit does not work that way.

Building plan is complicated with different sections at different angles (no nice 45's!) Is there a UCS-esqe (as in rotating z axis) way to keep things orthogonal? 3DS Viz had something like that if memory serves.

Even with my admitted experience deficit, I really believe that unless I am missing something obvious, that Revit is the wrong tool for the job and the exports are weak. I feel like I have failed if I have to export it to CAD for dimensions. Seems like a waste of time. I love the way Revit handles the colors and lineweights of imported CAD files, but since it does not export them that way, going to CAD is a cluster.

Very frustrated right now because I have no output and a ton of time invested.

-Steve Layne

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Steve,
I feel your pain.
The as-built/existing conditions that you need to dimension should indicate how far off square certain elements are in relation to one another. The example below is slightly exagerated but I hope the idea is workable for you.
To that end you can layout some ref planes or short line segments, where required, to provide a reference that is parrallel to what you need to dimension. You can create linear dims by picking a 'plane' first then a point.
Once you begin to layout your new walls I assume they will want to be square to each other so those should be easy to dimension. If they are going to be 'applied' over the existing conditions then they will be parrallel to the existing const so you should be able to dimension from face to face there.

Sections can create their own set of problems but we can leave that for another conversation.
Hope this helps. Don't give up on Revit for reno work. It is a very useful tool.

[guy.messick825831]

Steve,

A question, and comment

Do you work for the contractor or the owner?

I have done quite a bit of remodel work, including complete renovation and restoration of older buildings, both in an architectural as well as builder mode. If the walls are slightly off, this is perfectly normal, and not something you typically model, according to most architectural "standard of care" clauses. Contractors are usually well versed in translating architectural intent into the reality of the building itself. In short, the walls would have to be pretty whacked from 90 to justify incremental adjustments in my book. V.I.F., a lovely term.

[steve922542]

Steve,
Do you work for the contractor or the owner?


My client is:
Developer / Owner / Contractor

These guys are good at what they do and try to solve their problems in preconstruction. We are downstream of the architects now, and this is the VIF exercise.

I won't / can't give up on Revit. I was just hoping you gurus would hear my problem, smile, point out a rookie mistake, and give me a magical solution.

-Steve Layne

[guy.messick825831]

Aaaah! I get it. After going through some pain on our new building, I can feel yours. What may help, is finding some angles from the walls, creating new elevs/sections THEN rotating them to match the angle of the particular wall. We did this on a few walls, but ours were so strange I stopped. If your angles are on "on the degree", you may be able to rotate the existing elev & section references to match. It sounds fussy because it is, as is modeling a 1940 building. Good Luck, and don't hesitate to ask more questions.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

a magical solution.

I've heard of certain mushrooms resulting in one of two outcomes...
1. everything starts looking perfect when, in fact, it's not
2. you just don't care ;)

Good luck