Elements Too Small or Lines Too Short?

[thredge]

OK, I looked at a couple of posts, about this subject, so let me see if I understand correctly.

1) Revit has a feature to keep you from moving something accidentally a very small amount or drawing something to short dependent on the view scale you are at, which zooming in closer can sometimes allow you to do still if you really meant to do it.

2) There is a real world size minimum for a line length etc… that Revit cannot draw a line at or under. It didn’t seem really consistent what this size was as some posts said 1/128” or .97mm or 1/256” I seem to find I can’t make a line shorter than 1/32” which is around the .97mm size.

These were a couple of the posts I found that I pulled this info from:
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=902&highlight=element+too+small+screen
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=49345&highlight=element+too+small+screen

Am I correct in these statements?
Has there been any changes to address fixing this issue that anyone has heard of yet?

I understand the concept of why this was done as 1/32” or smaller isn’t a legitimate dimension in the architectural world. The problem is, that these sizes are still needed in some cases to prevent massive amounts of additional work in redrawing and work arounds.

In addition to the logo issue that was brought up in one of the threads, and the ‘key plan’ issue where a building outline couldn’t be scaled down to a certain size because of the ‘too short lines’ I have found another one. In our firm we practice using online CAD details to include the products we are specifying in our models. Details such as window frames, expansion joints. Many of these details have small line segments. So now, instead of just importing the drawing files and making them a detail component to work with our Revit detailing, we have to devote additional hours to redrawing something someone already took the time to draw.

I understand the reasoning in keeping the model simple and as minimally complex as possible to minimize size, but the loss in time this ‘too small’ problem is causing, is quite frustrating. I’m willing to trade a little file size for saved time. Until this problem is fixed I don’t believe Revit can be as good of a platform for detailing as Autocad currently is. It is nice when a program just works and doesn’t fight the user.

[atbergma]

I don't have a complete solution for you, but I believe imported or linked CAD files can have lines shorter than Revit's minimum length, as long as they are not exploded. If you need to stay completely within Revit, like with a key plan on a title block, you can export a full scale view from Revit, import it to a family or project (wherever it's needed), and scale (resize) it down. Again, this will work as you don't explode the imported CAD.

If you needed to modify CAD details by others (and not use CAD yourself), you could import them to a separate Revit project, scale them up by 12, set the project units to decimal feet, edit them in a faked-out "inch" world, export back to DWG and link them into your project, scaled down again by 12.

Admittedly, this is a workaround in every sense of the word, but not massive amounts of redrawing.

[thredge]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm still just starting out, so I'm not sure about getting the autocad line types to translate properly in revit yet, so for now, I'm just doing something temporarly that unfortunatly will probably become permanant with deadlilnes and such on the horizon.

Yes, I find it frustrating that Revit doesn't feel like an all inclusive solution. It would be nice if the scale option didn’t think it was so smart in not letting you scale families etc…if I could make the frame detail elements as a nested family and just scale it down in the final detail family, I could use Revit line types and not have to convert autoCAD line types or anything.

I seem to keep running into these things that they went to the extra effort to program out, that just cause people more headaches than they solve.

While working on the same issue today, I ran into another issue where I simply wanted to make an instance parameter in the file to be able to adjust the extent of the glass portion of the detail depending on how far I needed it to extend for the specific detail. Adding this parameter in freaked the family out basically in that the complex linework that I did get to leave wanted to try to adjust itself with the parameter changing…finally had to do the nested family to calm everything down and make it work OK.

[thredge]

Well, the best I have come up with, is to import the CAD file into a detail family and then load that as a nested family into my actual detail family. It seems to calm down when you do it this way some. it still will delete the small lines when you explode the element, most of which you can't really read unless you get to a really big scale, so not a big deal. But I hate that a work around is required. Also dislike that the revit version of the nested detail component is much larger in Revit than it was in Autocad...doesn't seem like as clean or efficient of a tool to me.

Anyway, using the nested family, if I have to adjust something on the frame detail I can just open the nested family edit and reload it into the detail family. So still editing it within Revit then, instead of reloading a link or some other work around that would involve AutoCAD.

This seemed to make the families content enough for me to use parameters etc.. as I should have been able to do before.

Hope this will help someone else with thier work.