Visibility mystery

Picture this…you have a Site project linked into an Architectural project. You go to a 3D view and nothing from the site file shows up. The treasure hunt begins.

It could be as easy as the workset assigned to the Site link being turned off. Or the link being turned off in the view. Or all the object categories that exist in the Site project file being turned off in the host view. Or having the link visibility being set to “custom” and all categories being turned off. Or the link being overridden in the view and turned off (yikes!). Or a filter’s visibility being unchecked. Or a particular workset in the Site project was closed when initially linking it in. Or a hidden section box was clipping the site project elements out of the view. Phew, I’m out of breath!
However, there is a condition where none of the above are the cause of the problem and could leave you scratching your head for some time. It’s a condition that exposes another little Revit shortfall which makes us beg for even more visibility control.
The problem is a workset in the Site project file that is set to not be visible by default in all views. In this particular case, the users were able to see the information in a plan view set to “By Linked View”, but in 3D views the Site project was invisible. It turns out that all site elements were on one workset set to not be visible by default. We don’t have control over the visibility of worksets in linked files and I think we really need to. The fix was to create a new workset that is visible by default in all views, delete the offending workset and move all objects to the new workset, and then rename it back to what the original one was. Mystery solved!

EDIT:  As of Revit 2011, we now have control over the visibility of worksets in linked files. Thanks Factory!

Visibility mystery