Revit 2010 – UI oversight?

EDIT: As of Revit 2011 the issue below is no longer a problem thanks to the new Properties Palette. Thanks Factory!

Prior to 2010, when you selected one or multiple views in the Project Browser, you were able to click the Properties button to bring up the View Properties dialog. However in 2010, there is no Properties button on the Options bar and no context menu is activated when views are selected. The View Properties button in your QAC stays grayed out nonetheless, so was this an oversight? I tend to think it was.

However, don’t freak out. The View Properties are still accessible via the right-click context menu.

Revit 2010 – UI oversight?

Where's my drafting view referenced?

A workflow I see all the time is for users to create a series of drafting views for "standard" details and reference them in sections, elevations or callouts on various views. Some get referenced once, but some are referenced multiple times (one-to-many relationship). Think foundation details for example. You can have multiple cuts that reference the same view, whether it's a drafting view or a live detail section that was annotated and embellished.

Revit tells us where a view is referenced in the View Properties.

But this only tells us the first view that referenced our other view. There is no way of finding out which other sections, elevations or callouts reference a particular view. We know that Revit is aware of this information, but it gives us no way to tap into it. Perhaps a good use of the API to create such a tool?

When right clicking a view name, you can also use the Find Referring Views option and you'll get some more information, but this isn't exactly what I'm after as it just reports what level it's referenced on (and other information if available).

So here's what I would like to have Revit do:

• Select a view and have an option to have all the referencing annotation highlight, similar to when you click on a live section (one to one relationship) and it highlights on the view.
• Have additional parameters in a View List that would report the referencing view names/detail numbers.

What prompted this is that we had a drafting view detail that potentially applied to other conditions around the building. The area that referenced this drafting view changed, so we needed to make some dimensional adjustments, yet we were not sure if this was being referenced elsewhere. We need to check if that's the case before making adjustments and causing problems in other areas. Obviously if you cut and detail live sections, you would not have this issue, but we all know that it's not feasible to do so for repeated conditions.

Where's my drafting view referenced?

Display Model parameter

A view property that is often overlooked is Display Model, under the Graphics section. This is useful when you want to quickly turn off the visibility of model elements or set them as halftone/grey scale. This leaves view-specific elements such as detail lines and text visible or easily distinguishable from model elements.

To turn off model visibility in a view, go to the view properties and under Graphics, set the "Display Model" parameter to Do not display. This will turn off visibility of model elements. Keep in mind that tags will disappear since the model elements they belong to are no longer visible. If you use the option As Underlay, model elements will display similar to half toned elements and tags will also stay visible.


I have run into multiple occasions where not all model elements turn off. I filed a Support Request about this a year ago, and it was confirmed to be a bug. If you come across a case like this, please report it and quote SR# 1-2045600292 as a reference. Visibility of elements with overridden line work seems to be respected, but if you hover over their location, they can still be selected, which I don't think is right either.

What I like about this view property is that you can isolate detail lines. If you turn off the visibility of the lines category in V/G, detail lines turn off also, as the line category contains both model and detail lines. So if you have both model or detail lines in a view, you can use this parameter in combination with some other tools to isolate and convert those lines to your liking. See Steve Stafford's post for how to do the conversion.

Some teams like to "draft" their wall sections from scratch rather than using Revit's live wall sections and then embellish them as necessary. There are cases where this might indeed be faster, but I think it all boils down to technique. I don't advocate the former approach, but if you absolutely have to, use a live section view and set the "Display Model" parameter to As Underlay. This way you can at least have some visual reference to see if you're matching up with the model or not. Due to schedule, sometimes this approach might get your drawings done faster as you don't have to wait for all model components to be accurately placed (such as structure, etc.), but please understand that by doing so, you're giving up the true benefits of the BIM approach and will require manual coordination of systems. To make sure it's closer to a BIM work flow as possible, leaving the model as an underlay ensures that the big skeleton and skin of your building conforms with your detailed wall sections.

Display Model parameter