Multi-Disciplinary View Coordination

Back in 2008 I posted a response to an AUGI thread which contains tips that are still relevant to this day and might be unknown to some users. So I thought of echoing it out here.

The main question was about what the best process is to ensure that view extents (ex: plans) are coordinated between different sheets and different disciplines. The discussion then centered on Scope Boxes:

“When you create a scope box, it's just like drawing a rectangle in plan. You can specify a height too (that's why it's a scope box and not rectangle!). Make sure you give it a good descriptive name (Ex: Area 'A'). You can then go to a plan view's properties and under Extents, assign the Scope Box that defines the area you want to see. The crop region will automatically coincide with the scope box. In fact to change the crop region, you now have to modify the scope box by moving the drag handles and the crop region will follow.
So for a large project, the workflow would be as follows:

1. In an overall plan view, place scope boxes to "chop" your plan in meaningful pieces so it fits on your drawing sheets. Name them accordingly and place any matchlines and view references here;
2. Create dependent views (let's say you have 5 plan areas....create 5 dependent views and we'll assign them to the 5 scope boxes created in step (1));
3. Go to each dependent view, name it something meaningful (ex: Area 'A') and assign the appropriate scope box to it. You can turn off scope box visibility to remove clutter as you typically overlap scope boxes so you can show some context (you have to do this to properly use matchlines);
4. If you want to make changes to the crop region, always go to the parent view, turn on scope boxes or use the Reveal Hidden Elements button (if scope boxes were hidden, they'll become visible in magenta)....you can now modify them and when you're done, click on the Reveal Hidden Elements button once again and they'll go away or hide the category. Your crop regions would have automatically followed the changes in your scope boxes;
5. The above is done typically by Architectural. Now consultants just link in as usual, they set a plan view that shows the scope boxes, match lines and view references (perhaps set to "By Linked View" to facilitate this) and copy all these elements into their project file. You do that by tabbing until the object in the link is highligted, then copy and paste in the same location*. Now you just need to carry on from step (2) once you have the same scope boxes residing in your project.”

* As Steve Stafford noted in the thread, scope boxes tend to paste exactly in the same spot automatically, regardless of the paste option picked.

Multi-Disciplinary View Coordination

Subtlety - Crop Region

Here’s one for Steve’s Department of Subtle. Prior to Revit 2012, when you assigned a scope box to a view and the crop region adjusted based on that, the view control bar still showed the crop region icon as follows:

When a view is assigned to a scope box however, you cannot disable the crop region, even though the icon leads you to believe you could (and so does the properties palette). I have no doubt this confused some users, myself included.

To make matters worse, if the crop region was “disabled” and then you removed the scope box from being assigned to the view, the crop was still in effect. To get it to function properly, you had to re-enable it and disable it once again.

In Revit 2012, the crop icon is now greyed out if a scope box is assigned to a view in both the view control bar and the properties palette. I think these subtle changes help users realize why those shape handles are missing from the crop region!

Now once you remove the scope box, these controls are enabled and with one more click, the crop region can be disabled. Thanks Factory!

Subtlety - Crop Region

Crop Regions - subtle change

This would probably make the cut for Steve's "Department of Subtle".

Over the last few weeks, while helping a team on a Revit Architecture 2009 project, I noticed that crop regions in plan views did not have drag handles. I couldn't figure out what was going on and made a note to try and get to the bottom of it.

Today I was showing someone how to use scope boxes...what they're intended for, blah blah blah, and how to assign a scope box to a view in the properties, thus automatically adjusting the crop region extents to those of the scope box. And then, epiphany...

I noticed that once a view is assigned to a scope box and the crop region extents are then determined by that scope box, the crop region ceases to show drag handles.

In previous versions, drag handles still showed up in this situation and when you tried resizing the crop region of such a view, the extents would return to their original position, puzzling a lot of users in the process! Here's what it used to look like (similar to crop regions of views not assigned to a scope box).

It might seem trivial to some, but I really like this little change. This makes it clearer that you have to modify the scope box if you want to control the crop region extents.

Crop Regions - subtle change