Thin Lines On or Off

[azmz3]

Are people drawing in Revit with Thin Lines on or off? I am finding that alot of people, including myself, in our office to have Thin Lines turned on for clarity. It also seems that having thin lines turned off is not a true representation of the object when it is actually printed out.

[mickaeL_renauD]

Depends ... but i hate thick lines...

[Craig_L]

I was gonna vote but I find both helpful for different reasons, and your vote options didn't allow for "I think both are useful".
I find drawing a filled or masking region using anything other than an invisible line it's almost impossible to draw with thin lines off. Most other times I use thin lines off because that way I can see if my pen settings or visual graphics need adjustment to allow for how it will appear when printed. So where possible I use the thick lines, and when necessary I turn it off for clarity. I think it's a pretty useful feature.

[iandidesign]

I use thin line most of the time while modeling. I switch only to check the relative weights before printing. Printers are capable of much finer lines and much finer variations than monitors (at present). I find anything on screen wider than two pixels looks gooey, and generally reduce the OOTB line weights of most graphic programs (including Revit) as I find them too heavy for my liking as well.

I also feel that color is vastly under utilized in line drawings. And I challenge any repo business or in-house department to justify the continued overcharging for color prints or copies. It may indeed be more expensive, but it‘s often charged at 5 to 10x as much, which is a gouge based on long obsolete historical costs.

[STHRevit]

We don't use one or the other primarily.
I like to model and detail in thin lines and then turn on the lineweight as i go/need to, to gauge how it will look.

Thick lines are important to see how the final output will look, however I find it bulky and annoying to have the thick lines on continuously.

[azmz3]

The way we are looking at it, that with Thin Lines off, it is still not a true representation of how the final printed product will look on a sheet at 1/8" scale on a 36x24 or 42x30, it more closely resembles the view with Thin Lines on. I did make a change in the object styles for common edges to have a lighter appearance than the outer boundaries, and that will make a large difference as well. When the drawings are printed, we do not get over lapping lines we get with Thin Lines being turned off in the mode.

[kingjosiah]

I can't begin to recount how many times I've asked team members to turn thin lines on when modeling. I've often watched many an entity being modeled incorrectly.....thin lines are turned off and the user snaps to nearby geometry rather than where it should snap.

So yes, here's another vote for thin lines on while modeling.

[Chad Smith]

Even when documenting Thin Lines should be On. Lost count of the number of times when I see a dimension from inexperienced users that has gone to the outside of the wall finishing instead of the wall structure. Since you can't turn the finishings off, it typically displays as a thick line. This is fine for representation on the sheet, but bad during annotating.
As far as I'm concerned, working in Revit with Thin Lines Off is a dangerous combination. You only use it Off for checking.

[mmiles]

I appreciate the WYSIWYG aspect of having thin lines "off". However, I often turn it on to more clearly see what lines I need to "snap" , or align to. The whole ACAD color coding for line weight is something I do not miss at all, though I have found reason to change object styles to use colored lines for clarity, or analysis.

I think when people find themselves wanting to print the thin lines version of a view they should pay more attention to view scale, and/or consider adapting the line weights for the scale they are using. The look of thin lines however, is that all lines are the same lineweight, which from a drafting point of view makes little sense. When it comes to some views - less is more. In other words, the view detail level should possibly be tweaked to allow defining which lines of an assembly (i am think of walls, especially) appear as heavy and/or not at all.

So I find it useful to have on, and I find it useful to have off. If Revit evolves to make use of color coding lineweights, and black screen (by default) I would be seriously disappointed.

[Les Therrien]

I always have thin lines ON.
I only turn it off if I'm checking something for scale just before printing.