simple stuff

Aligning 3D Section Boxes

A quick one that came up today.. “Ryan, how do I align a 3D section box with an object that is not at right angles to the view?”

So what we’re talking about here is when we have a plan view that is rotated away from a straight up and down orientation.

 

When you create your default 3D view, it might end up looking something like this. You can rotate the section view but it’s a “near enough is good enough” approach and you can never truly align your section box.

 

That is unless you think about things a little differently. I’ve been preaching this method for quite a few years now but it seems be be a tool within Revit that not a lot of people know about.

Simply draw a 2D section that aligns with your building. If you need, you can draw detail lines to help in aligning your section, but Revit should automatically align with elements such as grids and walls in your model.

 

In your 3D view, right click on the view cube and then select Orient to View -> Section -> Section xx

And that’s it! You’re done!

Tagging Invert Levels

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of err.. solutions for tagging invert levels. From adding shared parameters to your pipe families through to using Dynamo and everything in between.

Ignoring the fact that you can’t add parameters to system families like duct and pipework, there is a far simpler way to get what you’re after.

Ever heard of the spot elevation tool?

The key is in the settings that you use.

The settings that I use in my templates are as follows, the settings to change are highlighted below

In the units format dialogue, change the your settings to match the following

And of course, don’t forget to select the bottom elevation!

Importing DWGs to Revit While Still Displaying MTEXT Correctly

For those of you that still heavily rely on DWG based details and schematics that are bought into Revit from AutoCAD, you might have experienced issues maintaining the correct alignment of MTEXT once imported into Revit.

There is actually quite a simple solution, and no it’s not exploding the text.

In AutoCAD, MTEXT has grips that define the bounds of the MTEXT element.

The location of the grip indicates that the MTEXT bounding box doesn’t actually fully enclose the text contained within it. When the DWG is imported into Revit the text is displayed differently, it gives a completely unexpected result by placing the MTEXT word on the same line as TRUNCATED

If we modify the bounding box in AutoCAD to not truncate any of the text with the bounding box like so

And once we reload the DWG file into Revit and the text will display correctly.