Room Fills and Transparency in RAC 2009

[jcoe]

I am creating a color fill diagram in RAC2009 but I want some of my families to be transparent so the color fill shows through. When I override the family and set it to transparent, the color fill covers everything up all together. I know that this did not happen in RAC2008, so I am wondering if anyone know what the issue might be.

Thanks

[Scott D Davis]

The transparancy settings for Color Fills was moved to the View Properties. Its called Color Scheme Location and can be set to forground or background. Don't override the object.

[jcoe]

Scott,

I did come across this earlier but I did not like how the color was forced to the center of my partitions and walls. Alghough not critical for what I am working on, I did not find it graphically pleasing - especially at exterior wall conditions. I will have to make do.

Thanks

[brethomp]

I filed a support request on this, and was told that it was an intentional change, and that it functioned incorrectly in Revit 2008. IMHO it worked much better in Revit 2008.

When the color scheme is moved to the foreground the color shows through all objects, regardless of category. So as you mentioned there is color inside the walls. Graphically this looks dumb. The color also shows through the doors and windows, and all other objects.

In Revit 2008, you could leave the color in the background, and then make the color show through only specific categories, or specific objects using the transparency check box. A lot easier and a lot more logical.

Selecting the transparency check box on a color plan in Revit 2009 makes the object invisible, not transparent.

To work-around this, you can set the color to the foreground, and then for all element/categories that you don't want color to show through, you can add an override for a solid fill pattern. Takes a lot more time but you can get a similar result.

[sfaust]

I agree, I liked the way 2008 worked better...

[Scott D Davis]

if you apply a coarse fill to the properties of the walls in the view, then the color fill does not "bleed" half way through the wall. I just tried it and applied a solid fill with white as the color and it works.

[brethomp]

if you apply a coarse fill to the properties of the walls in the view, then the color fill does not "bleed" half way through the wall. I just tried it and applied a solid fill with white as the color and it works.

Scott,

That would be the long way, since you would have to set that in each wall type, and the setting would be project wide, and mess up other views set to course. Instead use the cut pattern Override in the Visibility/Graphics with a solid fill pattern with a color of your choice. The same has to be done for other categories, like windows and doors, to block the color fills from them as well.

[ron.sanpedro]

if you apply a coarse fill to the properties of the walls in the view, then the color fill does not "bleed" half way through the wall. I just tried it and applied a solid fill with white as the color and it works.

And then you have a view that does not show what you want, specifically enough wall detail to understand some of the major massing of the building. I have to agree with the others, while the 2008 approach left a lot to be desired, the 2009 approach is much more problematic, and making color plans only viable in Course view is just as bad as turning off floors. I NEED to show my wall construction and floor finishes in colored plans. And yet because of how Revit works I can't do it without compositing images in InDesign or the like. Not exactly happy making. ;) Then again, the graphics subsystem is only capable of so much, and is horribly broken on the openGL front, so maybe we will finally get a graphics rewrite in 2010 and all sorts of wonderful things will become possible, like colors fills on top with true transparency (no more manually transparent stair kludge), imported images with true transparency (for trees in front of the building elevations without PhotoShop!), etc.

Until then we kludge along. But when the new release is more broken than the last, I wonder about the whole process.

Gordon

[john.negus]

if you apply a coarse fill to the properties of the walls in the view, then the color fill does not "bleed" half way through the wall. I just tried it and applied a solid fill with white as the color and it works.

Color Schemes are an ongoing frustration for us. With this so-called "fix" in 2009 it seems we are going backwards again. This, combined with the need to limit the view range for plan views having color schemes mean that most of our users use filled regions instead.

It's potentially a great tool, but it's no good to us if it doesn't work the way we need and expect it to.

John Negus

[patricks]

if you apply a coarse fill to the properties of the walls in the view, then the color fill does not "bleed" half way through the wall. I just tried it and applied a solid fill with white as the color and it works.

Bringing this back alive.

I just tried this, but in Coarse views I like to have my rated walls still show my wall rating tape pattern, which I set in the Coarse Fill property of the wall type. Doing this, I can still see the color bleeding through the walls, since the rating tape is actually a drafting pattern of many lines very close together, with various numbers of spaces.

So yet again, it still does not work properly, in 2009 that is. I have not tried it in 2010.

[brethomp]

:( No change between 2009 and 2010. Color plans still worked much better in 2008. Autodesk, please change this back. Transparent <> Invisible

[patricks]

Yep, confirmed that a category set to Transparent STILL actually disappears if a color scheme is used in 2010.

So much for that "total re-write" of the program. :roll:

[sbrown]

has anyone posted a suppport request on this? This was big when 2009 came out and we reported it. I guess we all should again.