Elevation Background Control

[Roger Evans]

Came across this as a problem

In an Elevation or Section view how do you control the background views of either parts of the same building or even of adjoining buildings.?
In other words I want to see them but need them to be hazed / greyscaled in the background ~ I would like to have control for both colour & standard line drawing elevations.

It would also be cute if for eg I could set say the adjoining background buildings in hazed greyscale with the featured foreground elevation in colour.
Is there a method for this?

[Roger Evans]

I just tried an experiment using a glass wall between buildings in an attempt to haze out the background building thinking this would work for both colour shaded & hidden line ~
... it didn't work & just blotted out the background completely.

[beegee]

There has been discussion / wishes about using "zones" to control the appearance/ linework of elements at a distance from the view plane.

Until we get that sort of control, you could try shortening the elevation view to exclude the buildings in the background, then export a dwg of the elevation of the background buildings and re import it and overlay both views on the drawing sheet. You could tweak the lineweight and colour of the background view. You could use a similar process in a paint program also.

[Roger Evans]

Thanks Beegee

That method has potential ~ in this case the job does not warrant the effort .. but I was hoping for something easier and more straight forward.

On the zoning idea ~ I think it would be useful If we could have a number of additional options for dragging, grading & colourising the view distance.

[PeterJ]

I have a U shaped building. Thinking that it would be good to show an elevation that highlighted the top ends of the U and showed the inside of the curve in outline only, I set up an elevatiopn with a far cut plane set short to just show the highlighted area, duplicated this and moved the near and far cut planes so that all I should see was the outline section and then set the view properties to half tone. When I tried to overlay the two on one sheet there was intereference between the two views and it didn't print as I had expected. I imagine beegee's trick may work better.

[Phil Palmer]

Roger,

Another possible option would be to have the background buildings in a seperate revit project and link them in.
You should be able to then use visibility overides on your views to give you different effects.

[sbrown]

Here are a couple options.

1. create a filled region by tracing the background buildings outline with a grey line and a solid white(or none) fill. This will leave you with just the outline of the stuff beyond.

2. over ride the view graphics to all be grey, then use the linework tool to "punch up" what is close(this can take for ever) you can use filled regions with model hatch patterns of diff color(grey) for surf patterns as needed.

All this is obviously just drafting work arounds but works if you need the graphics a certain way.

[rhys]

I just tried an experiment using a glass wall between buildings in an attempt to haze out the background building thinking this would work for both colour shaded & hidden line ~
... it didn't work & just blotted out the background completely.
This will work if you view the model in a 3d view. The glass will then be transparent. Then orientate the view to the elevation you want. can't rememeber how to do that bit a workplane I think.

[Roger Evans]

Some very useful tips there guys thanks

Rhys I'd forgotten about that .. tried it ..set glass to be extremely dark & opaque but found the glass material not very responsive in elevation view .. it would have to work in a rendered elevation but is very muted in normal coloured elevation .. I'll need to experiment further

[beegee]

Here's a quick test.

Glass set 6mm thick, Colour RGB 250-244-225 / Transparency 51 / Smoothness 50 / Shininess 0 / Texture Revit Clear Semi Transparent. Brightness Contrast Indirect tweaked. Region raytrace over 3D view oriented to elevation. Glass in front of standard brick wall.

There are so many possible settings that it looks like you could get close to what you want.

[Roger Evans]

Thanks Beegee but I was after more of a graphic control on the elevation drawing

Here is the case example ~ the red roof in the background is the neighbouring building I want to haze out ..here shown with a glass wall filter between buildings ... and also a rendered version of elevation with the same glass wall filter

I was hoping for a more positive grey scale on the elevation drawing.. probably tweakable but I have not got there yet.

[gordolake]

This problem has always been associated with CAD drawings whether 2d or 3d.

Getting linework to fade as its distance from the front face (view plane) increases is extremely hard to control and time consuming on complex designs.

Drawing always look flat and uninteresting. Depending on the number of returns in a wall (or objects) then dictates the numbers of levels of "haze" (greying, lightening, masked, etc ) required to give the elevation view visual depth.

Zones could be a way of achieving this end. But how many zones would you need for your triple fronted dwelling with complex roof shapes.

Surly a graduated scheme would be better so that incremental distance would lighten off all objects line weight and shading in the view. I guess the other issue with idea is the way your printer handles the full 16.7M colours available.

Using the paint tool with lighter duplicated materials is a work around I have used in Revit.


Steve.

[luigi]

Roger, is it even a possibility, since the neighboring building is existing, to put that in an existing phase and control the visibility of existing phase components to have a different look?

[SCShell]

Hey there,
Well, Luigi beat me to it. I was thinking that you could create a new phase which would contain all of your buildings which are technically, not part of the project, such as neighboring buildings and other existing adjacent construction. You could name the new phase "Pre-Existing" or "NIC (not in contract) or something. Then, just control the visibility of this new phase to show as gray rather than colored. (much like "show all" if you have new construction and existing phases.)

Might be worth a try.
Steve Shell

[dannycerezo]

Hi Guys,

I ran into this issue today and did not find a solution in the forum so I came up with my own using project parameters and View filters.

1. I created a project-wide parameter for ALL categories (everything! doors, windows, ceilings, etc). I called mine "Unit"
2. In 3D View I selected all necessary items, clicked on Properties, and in the "Other" group (that's where I placed the new "Unit" parameter) I named those items with a number corresponding to the unit number of the project. I have 4 units in my project.
3. I created an elevation view with no clipping.
4. I typed VG (visibility graphics), and under the filters tab, I clicked "Edit/New".
5. I created a new filter, called "See Units 1 & 2 Only" and selected all categories. I set the filter to "Filter by UNIT is greater than or equal to 3."
6. Then, back in the VG dialog, I made that filter "Halftone".

This worked great and is actually a lot easier than it sounds.

See pics.

[Scott Womack]

I was thinking that you could create a new phase which would contain all of your buildings which are technically, not part of the project, such as neighboring buildings and other existing adjacent construction. You could name the new phase "Pre-Existing" or "NIC (not in contract) or something. Then, just control the visibility of this new phase to show as gray rather than colored. (much like "show all" if you have new construction and existing phases.)

The easiest way is to make one elevation where the clip is short of the "background" portion of the building, and another that is full depth. In the full depth, using the View Graphics overrides, select all categories, and either half-tone them etc. Place that on a sheet. Now take the second elevation where it is clipped short, and place it overtop of the the grayed out view. You'll see the grayed out portions in the background, and the darker portions in the foreground. Both elevations stay "live". The only issue is managing the second elevation symbol on the plan. Typically I set it to not show in anything smaller that 1/2", and a keep a duplicated plan set at that scale, so I could access that elevation to adjust it if I need to. Revit will produce green lines when the two elevations are in line with each other.