Perspective lineweights

[ron.sanpedro]

an someone perhaps point me at a resource that explains lineweight usage, especially Perspective Lineweights? It seems to me that the Perspective lineweights just match up with Projection lineweights, but are only used in perspectives. Thus an item that uses a lineweight of 3 in Projection also uses the Perspective lineweight of 3.
This doesn't make much sense to me, as the graphic needs in 3D are radically different. Also, it seems like the Projection lineweights are used in non perspective 3Ds, which also makes little sense to me, as the graphic needs of an axonometric drawing are more like a perspective than an orthographic.

I am hoping I am actually misunderstanding the usage, and someone can point me in the right direction. The ultimate goal is to get to better lineweights by default in 3D views, so those views are more useful as design presentation drawings. At this point the best looking view is with all perspective lineweights the same thin line (which is a littler thicker than lineweight 1, which is used exclusively for hatches), then manually profiling with a profile linetype that uses lineweight 16, which is used for nothing else. This works ok, but only in perspective. All other 3D views require a separate View template, where I have set various objects to use different Projection lineweights than that defined by the Categories, and still manually profiling. Then again, I now have the problem of mismatched lineweights in Axon and Perspective, because I have some things in the Axon that both use the same lineweight in orthographic views, but different ones in the 3D. Or can I change the Projection lineweights by view, and the alternate Perspective lineweights will be used in that view only? Hmmm...

Anyway, hoping someone can shed some light on how Revit is intended to work here, so i can avoid doing stuff that fights the tool, so to speak.

Thanks,
Gordon

[sbrown]

Think of the cut and projection lineweights as defaults, set them to cover the common views, then use VV to overide them as your "special" views require.

[ron.sanpedro]

Think of the cut and projection lineweights as defaults, set them to cover the common views, then use VV to overide them as your "special" views require.

But how does that then work in perspective? It certainly seems that whatever projection line weight is set for the Category, either by category or by view, the corresponding Perspective lineweight is used. So if I had a very small thumbnail type perspective, I might set all my items to use a projection line weight of 2, and get a nice thin line, assuming the Perspective Line Wight of 2 is actually thin. But if that is so, why even bother with perspective line weights at all. At that point, wouldn't just using the applied Projection line weight be simpler and less confusing? There must be some reason that Revit even has this set of lineweights? Or is it a hold over from the old days that has become redundant, but not removed? I am still rather confused, tho' I think I can successfully get an image that looks like I want.

Thanks,
Gordon

[smullen]

This is a great question Gordon. Could you please let me know if you ever found an answer?

Thanks!

[twaldock]

Yes it is a good question. And 5 years later I don't think anything has changed. It is not easy to find information on this issue, so I am going to list all the things I found out about printing perspectives with sensible lineweights:

1. Perspective views use the projection lineweight number (as Gordon states), which is the same setting used for projection lines in plans elevations etc.
2. You can use View Visibility to override the lineweight number (as Scott states) in a given perspective view.
3. The actual display (and printing) of perspective lineweights is partly controlled by the Line Weights Settings (Manage, Additional settings), Perspective Line Weights tab. By default these are set to ridiculously large values - unless your template has been fixed.
4. The "Thin Lines" tool only affects how the lines look on screen, not how they print or export to an image.
5. Most people want thin lines on perspective views, so it is sensible to set the Perspective Line weights as small as possible (0.025mm in metric) - but they still end up looking a lot thicker than that.
6. There are other things affecting the line weight - the further your eye point is from the target point, the thicker the lines will appear.
7. If you change the Perspective Line weights in your active file, it does not affect the line weights in linked files - you need to change the settings in each linked file to match.

So, even after doing the right thing with line weights you may still need to use a couple of tricks to get thin line weights when your eye point is at a great distance away:
- Increase the size of the crop on your perspective view, and don't forget to set it to "Scale (locked proportions)" before changing it. This makes the lines look thinner. [Thanks to "Patricks" in another thread for that trick].
- If you want quick results (especially for linked files when you don't have time to change the line weights in them), override elements or linked files and make them Halftone. When you print, just select the option to "Replace halftone with thin lines". I haven't worked out how to apply that for exporting images, but you could print to PDF then convert to an image in Photoshop.

I hope this is useful to someone out there.

Go to this link for more info:
http://revitcat.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/revit-perspective-line-weights.html

[ttiefenbach]

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are refering to, but if you're getting thick line in a perspective view it's because your Size Crop is incorrect. I've attached 3 images, the first, Thick Perspective Lines.jpg shows how a perspective looks REALLY thick. To fix it, you click on the Crop Region and select Size Crop, see Size Crop.jpg. With the Scale (locked proportions) button selected, make the crop size larger, I changed it from a width of 1" to a width of 6" and then screenshot the view again as Thin Perspective Lines.jpg.

I hope this helps!

[patricks]

Our perspective views always default to 6" x 4.5", which makes for really thick line weights. We usually always (or I do anyway) change the size of the perspective to around 18" wide, maintaining the view angle, and then the line weights look much better.