Detail Views

[greg.gebert978266]

I have been working on creating a wall section with all elements being a detail component. I just tried to do a detail callout of a window head in that wall section. When I went to the view I noticed that no detail components were brought over to the view, only the model information was there. I know in Architectural Desktop you can put all of your components in a wall section and each detail created is just a shot of the original wall section. Then you only have to go to the wall section to update a detail and the information would change globally. Is this not an option in Revit, or am I just missing a check box somewhere?

[patricks]

Detail components are view specific. So no it doesn't work like AutoCAD/ADT does.

I never liked that function of ADT anyway, because then you end up with a solid black mass in certain areas of your small scale overall building sections because they're so cluttered up with junk meant for the larger-scale wall sections and details.

[dhurtubise]

Detail components are view dependant, therefore they exist only in the view they are created.

[greg.gebert978266]

We only put this level in information withing the wall section. We controlled it via layer and lisp in AutoCAD. In your experience with Revit where do you take the step from model detail to detail components detail in your drawings? Do you start putting pieces in at the wall section level or do you hold off for the detail level?

[sfaust]

as a half-way, you can add what detail you need in section, then group the detail stuff and copy/paste aligned in the detail view. Then whenever you need to edit that info, you just edit the group and it's updated both places. Then you can add additional detail in the detail view...

[greg.gebert978266]

as a half-way, you can add what detail you need in section, then group the detail stuff and copy/paste aligned in the detail view. Then whenever you need to edit that info, you just edit the group and it's updated both places. Then you can add additional detail in the detail view...

In your experience, has this practice led to any issues?

[greg.mcdowell]

One thing I don't like about the Group method is that you end up with a lot of them and there's no way to organize them beyond alphabetically. There's likely an additional overhead in memory but someone else would need to chime in to verify or rebuke.

One way of dealing with the lack of detail in wall sections is to add detail components to families such that when they’re cut they look more complete.

We're taking a different and somewhat unconventional approach. Instead of detailing the wall section we're detailing the details (I know, radical concept) and only adding in a bare minimum of drafted elements to the wall sections (like repeating details for masonry).

Detailing the wall sections in AutoCAD never made sense to me considering, for example, you often have the same parapet detail in numerous wall sections and a change to one requires a change to all and exponentially increases the effort to effect change. If we were drafting by hand we wouldn't go back to the wall sections for these detailed changes unless the change was significant enough to be readily apparent. I think we can and should use the same thinking in Revit.

Some will likely call this a shortcoming of Revit but perhaps, if we can get past our biases about how things should be, we can figure out how to turn it into a benefit. New tools demand new processes.

[sfaust]

yeah, it is harder to organize, but we would mostly just work back and forth between the two views. In my experience you don't have to really use the project browser for them much if at all. One other draw back is that it's a little harder to work with since you have to go into edit group mode, and you can't duplicate a type when you're in edit group mode. That gets annoying once in a while, but it's not too bad.

It's not perfect, but we find it pretty effective if there is a lot of shared information. If it's just a few basic detail components it's probably not worth it, but with many I think it is.

My $.02...

[greg.gebert978266]

I appreciate all of your feedback and lessons learned. I think I am going to try to convince them that we put as much detail as possible in the wall section just to see relationships of components and how they work together, then we can copy the components as necessary over to a detail. After that, when something changes we should just update the detail not the wall section unless it is something drastically different. It seems like this industry is so afraid of change. Just as Lee Iacocca said..."lead, follow or get out of the way". I digress.