Saturday, February 24, 2018
Transparent Elevations and Large Coordinates
Transparent Elevations and Large Coordinates
Back in December 2011 The Revit Clinic shared a post called Interior Elevations and Large Coordinates in the Project. Its worth echoing it again four years later.
It boils down to this. If you link a DWG file that has geometry that extends beyond Revits 20 mile threshold then you may find elevation views (or section views) look transparent. In 2016 I find that some views just stop responding to Visual/Graphic Style settings at all. If you remove the offending file the problem goes with it.
It is necessary to clean up and reduce the size of the offending file so that the threshold is not crossed. I shared this list in the past, in particular consider using the WBLOCK technique.
- Import multiple Survey files individually (dont nest them as xrefs)
- Purge everything you dont need, purge again
- Use Wblock if you cant get Zoom Extents to focus on just the relevant portion of the site
- Remove Named UCS (Revit only wants the World Coordinate System)
- Set UCS (User Coordinate System) to WCS and Plan to WCS
- If the survey isnt oriented to WCS, North is "up", have the civil engineer/surveyor change their file first
- Identify a specific location within the relevant part of the survey, put a marker, identify its coordinates, better still make those coordinates easy to use, even clean numbers.
- Make sure everything actually aligns correctly in AutoCAD first, no point setting it up in Revit if it doesnt work there
- Once you get a working first survey file, pass it back to the surveyor so they know what you need in the future
That might be a lot of work...so fortunately there IS an easier fix. Just make sure the offending DWG file is NOT visible via Visibility/Graphics in views that are acting up. It should restore normal behavior.
I prefer elevations that arent see thru. Watch out for those surveys folks.
