Revit View and Visibility Issues

BACKGROUND

One of my tasks in the com­pa­ny I work for, is to give sup­port to oth­er users of Revit, and the most fre­quent­ly ques­tion is, of course: I’ve just placed this ele­ment and can not see it. Where is it? , or: How on earth can I see this as I want to! But before they ask me, they have usu­al­ly spent a long time look­ing for it unsuc­cess­ful­ly, and usu­al­ly come to me with a crim­i­nal mind that, at the begin­ing is not against me, but they would be able to change if I did­n’t solve it quickly.

In the inter­est of pro­tect­ing my secu­ri­ty, I have been devel­op­ing dur­ing my qui­et nights (it’s time that I ded­i­cate to this blog) a guide of how to deal with Revit vis­i­bil­i­ty issues.

My start­ing point was this post at Revit Forum. Here is a list of pos­si­ble rea­sons why an item is not dis­played in a par­tic­u­lar view. I’ve enlarged it with more cas­es, some deriv­a­tive of oth­ers, grouped and detailed them with the approach of mak­ing it acces­si­ble for users with very dif­fer­ent levels.

I hope you find it of inter­est as much as it reas­sures me :-)

You could also check out this link from Autodesk Wik­i­Help and look into there what you need.

IMPORTANT

Con­sid­er whether it is pos­si­ble to get the desired result in less time by dupli­cat­ing anoth­er exist­ing view, apply­ing a view tem­plate already pre­pared or in any oth­er way, after mak­ing the nec­es­sary changes, which can lead to find out the rea­son why an ele­ment or cat­e­go­ry is not displayed.

It is very help­ful to use sched­ules to locate ele­ments not found in mod­el views, using right click > Show … or from the Rib­bon with High­light in Mod­el.

Anoth­er option for fam­i­lies is to go to Project Brows­er, select the fam­i­ly there, and then with right-click choose Select All Instances> In Entire Project. It gives you a clue if you don’t have many iden­ti­cal elements.

Well, good luck.

1. Checking view settings

1. Go to VV (Vis­i­bil­i­ty / Graph­ics Over­rides) and ver­i­fy that the ele­ment cat­e­go­ry or sub­cat­e­go­ry is not turned off for that view.
2. Go to Reveal Hid­den Ele­ments (RH) (bulb on the View Con­trol Bar) and check that the item is not turned off.
3. Check that it isn’t tem­porar­i­ly turn­ing off, turn­ing on all ele­ments, typ­ing (HR) (Tem­po­rary / Hide Iso­late) or on glass­es of View Con­trol Bar. If the view does­n’t have the blue frame, there is no ele­ment or cat­e­go­ry tem­porar­i­ly hid­den.
4. If the view is a floor plan, in the Prop­er­ties Palette, go to Extents > Edit View Range and check that the item is not out­side the range indi­cat­ed.
5. When it comes of an ele­va­tion or sec­tion view, under the Prop­er­ties Palette, go to Extents > Far Clip­ping, and do the same check than with floor plans.
6. Under the Prop­er­ties Palette, check that the view is not cropped on Extents > Crop View, or with the Icon on the View Con­trol Bar too.
7. If it’s an anno­ta­tion ele­ment, we must also make sure that we don’t have the Anno­ta­tion Crop area turned on and small­er than the area in which we have placed the anno­ta­tion. Look at Extents > Anno­ta­tion Crop, and uncheck it.
8. Typ­ing VV (Vis­i­bil­i­ty / Graph­ics Over­rides), under Fil­ters tab, we check if there is any applied fil­ter turn­ing off the affect­ed ele­ment or cat­e­go­ry.
9. On the Prop­er­ties Palette, look at the Dis­ci­pline of the view on Graph­ics> Dis­ci­pline, because it might not dis­play the hid­den object in the dis­ci­pline of that view. For exam­ple, the lines of sec­tions, of course, belong to the same dis­ci­pline as the views of the sec­tions, there­fore they are not dis­played in views that are not in the same dis­ci­pline. In oth­er words, do not expect to find the line of a sec­tion of the dis­ci­pline of struc­ture in a mechan­i­cal floor plan.
10. Be sure we do not have anoth­er lev­el hid­ing the item in Prop­er­ties > Graph­ics> Under­lay. — Ase­gu­rarse que no teng­amos otro niv­el ocul­tan­do el ele­men­to en Propiedades > Graph­ics > Under­lay.
11. Sec­tion lines, Call­outs from sec­tions and Ele­va­tions Marks are not dis­played in floor plans at scales below the indi­cat­ed under Prop­er­ties> Graph­ics> Hide at scales coars­er than. You should go to the spe­cif­ic view to change that data.
12. To show the divid­ed parts of an item in a view, you must acti­vate Prop­er­ties> Graph­ics> Parts Vis­i­bil­i­ty> Show Parts or Show Orig­i­nal to see the orig­i­nal wall.
13. Some­one hates you and has changed, with­out you notic­ing, the para­me­ter Graph­ics> Dis­play Mod­el to Do not dis­play, and every­thing dis­ap­pears from your sight. Recon­sid­er your friends or be more care­ful with what you touch.
14. If you did­n’t find a view in the Project Brows­er, it might have been delet­ed, but before you engage look­ing for some­one to blame, you should check if there is a fil­ter applied to remove the view once it is locat­ed on a sheet, or any oth­er fil­ters that may have moved it from place. You should go to View> Win­dows> User Inter­face> Brows­er Orga­ni­za­tion> Edit> Filter.

2. Checking on the location of the element

1. Check that there is no anoth­er ele­ment hid­ing what you’re look­ing for. For instance, some­times sand­wiched between two floors: one struc­tur­al floor, and one fin­ish­ing floor. To be sure, change the view to wire­frame.
2. Check that the ele­ment is not in a phase that it’s not dis­played, in the Prop­er­ties Palette with­in Phas­ing> Phase Fil­ter should be Show All, and at the last Phase of the range of phas­es cre­at­ed (usu­al­ly New Con­struc­tion) To check phas­es, nave­g­ate to Man­age> Phas­ing> Phas­es.
3. If you are work­ing with Design Options, you need to con­firm that the ele­ment does not belong to a hid­den one, in the View Con­trol Bar, chang­ing the dis­play from one option to anoth­er until you find out where it is. In Man­age> Design Options> Design Options, you can also find out if there are any Design Options set. Also check at VV> Design Options which option is con­fig­ured for that view.
4. If the item belongs to a group, it might be exclud­ed from it. If we hov­ered the group with the cur­sor, exclud­ed ele­ments should be dis­played at wire­frame, and if select­ed it is dis­played as the oth­er ele­ments. If we want the ele­ment to re-join the group, we must hov­er with the mouse over the group, and select the item click­ing the Tab key. When select­ed, press right but­ton, and into the menu can click on Restore Exclud­ed Mem­ber.
5. If it is a cur­tain wall mod­el­ing with­in a wall, you might not see it because it isn’t still cut the geom­e­try of the wall to make the open­ing, and you have gone unno­ticed this Warn­ing: High­light­ed walls over­lap. One of them may be ignored when Revit finds room bound­aries. Use Cut Geom­e­try to embed one wall with­in the oth­er. If this were the case, go to Mod­i­fy> Geom­e­try> Cut and select both ele­ments.
6. The object can be found with­in a Plan Region with a range of view out of the ele­men­t’s posi­tion. Select­ing the Plan Region, you can edit the View Range on the Prop­er­ties Palette.
7. If it’s a room that is par­tial­ly hid­den, one rea­son may be that it is in con­tact with a plan region with a view range beyond the dimen­sions of the room. If this is the prob­lem, to fix it you have to detect the plan region, and change the view range.
8. Some­times, link­ing dwg files with very dis­tant objects, with wide­ly sep­a­rat­ed coor­di­nates, or wrong units, when typ­ing ZF (Zoom to Fit) every­thing dis­s­a­pears from view. You should be done wide selec­tions in order to locate lost ele­ments, find out the cause and fix it on the orig­i­nal file.
9. Mys­te­ri­ous grids. If it’s a grid lost in a floor plan view, its height might be (from a sec­tion or an ele­va­tion view) below the floor lev­el. Grids are 3D ele­ments, but we can for­get it. Must be cor­rect­ed in a sec­tion or ele­va­tion view, rais­ing its height above the lev­el at which we want to see the grid.
10. Any anno­ta­tion ele­ment is asso­ci­at­ed with the view, so if we delet­ed a view, do not expect to find tags, dimen­sions, etc, on anoth­er dif­fer­ent view, except that you have dupli­cat­ed it with detail pre­vi­ous­ly. It also hap­pens with the areas and the view type Area Plan.
11. We recent­ly came across a case where a user had mod­eled sev­er­al options of the same floor plan in dif­fer­ent parts of the same view (resis­tance to dis­card habits from Auto­CAD) and we could not find some ele­ments because they were not in the mod­el where we expect­ed. Please, use Design Options.

3. Checking element properties

1. It might it’s a fam­i­ly set up to be not dis­played in a par­tic­u­lar view type. If it were a floor plan, try to find it by chang­ing to anoth­er view type, e.g. ele­va­tion view, 3D view, or sec­tion view. If you can access the edit mode of the fam­i­ly, check the vis­i­bil­i­ty set­tings select­ing its geom­e­try, at Prop­er­ties Palette on Graph­ics> Edit Vis­i­bil­i­ty / Graph­ics Over­rides under the sec­tion Dis­play in 3D and.
2. It might it’s a fam­i­ly set up to be not dis­played in a par­tic­u­lar detail lev­el. Change the view to anoth­er detail lev­el to find out where the ele­ment is. If you can access the edit mode of the fam­i­ly, check the vis­i­bil­i­ty set­tings select­ing its geom­e­try, at Prop­er­ties Palette on Graph­ics> Edit Vis­i­bil­i­ty / Graph­ics Over­rides under the sec­tion Detail Lev­els. To rule out that this is the prob­lem, go also to VV (Vis­i­bil­i­ty / Graph­ics Over­rides) on the Mod­el Cat­e­gories tab, and check that it is not forced the lev­el of detail (Detail Lev­el col­umn) for the cat­e­go­ry to which the ele­ment belongs (it might be the strange case that you have a fam­i­ly con­fig­ured to not dis­play in the low­er lev­el of detail, and that the view in ques­tion has forced the fam­i­ly cat­e­go­ry to show only in low detail lev­el).
3. It might be because the fam­i­ly has a vis­i­bil­i­ty para­me­ter that is wrong­ly assigned and it’s not dis­played in the project. As in the fam­i­ly edit­ing envi­ron­ment you can always see every­thing (only changes to a slight­ly more sub­dued tone) mis­takes can be made on occa­sion.
4. If it’s a face based fam­i­ly and placed on a non-hor­i­zon­tal plane of the project (e.g. a light switch on a wall), we must con­sid­er the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the fam­i­ly in dif­fer­ent views, will not match between the fam­i­ly edit­ing envi­ron­ment and the project. That is, the view of the ref­er­ence plane in the fam­i­ly is an ele­va­tion in the project, so if you place a sym­bol on the floor plan of the fam­i­ly, we won’t see it on the floor plan of the project, but in some ele­va­tion view.
5. If it’s a mass, it may be turned off, since it is a cat­e­go­ry not vis­i­ble by default. Check in Mass­ing & Site> Con­cep­tu­al Mass> Show Mass Form and Floors. — Si es una masa, puede que esté apa­ga­da, puesto que es una cat­e­goría no vis­i­ble por defec­to. Com­pro­bar­lo en Mass­ing & Site > Con­cep­tu­al Mass > Show Mass Form and Floors.
6. Some­thing real­ly unlike­ly, but could hap­pen, is that the ele­ment has the col­or of their lines as the back­ground (usu­al­ly white) or invis­i­ble, and we are in the visu­al style of Hid­den Line. It may be due to changes in view­ing through Over­ride Graph­ics in View or Mange> Set­tings> Object Styles. The invis­i­ble lines may have changed over Linework> Line Style> Invis­i­ble Lines. To fix this we need to select the ele­ment, and for that we can change the visu­al style to Shad­ed either make mul­ti­ple selec­tions with a cap­ture cov­er­ing the area where the object is, and use the selec­tion fil­ter.
7. It might it’s an object too small or large due to a fam­i­ly scale. If it’s too small will be lost among oth­er ele­ments, and if large could go unde­tect­ed until you type ZF (zoom to fit).
8. With MEP fit­tings can hap­pen that being loaded in the project they’re not prop­er­ly assigned with the Sys­tem Type. It must be cor­rect­ed on the Project Brows­er> Fam­i­lies> Pipes> Pipes Types. The same path also for ducts and con­duits. The first image shows the dia­log box on the 2012 ver­sion, and the sec­ond one on 2013 ver­sion. Fam­i­lies of ducts, pipes and con­duits are only dis­played on the Project Brows­er once they’re cre­at­ed, unless it has already been done in the tem­plate with which the project began.
9. Anoth­er prob­lem with the MEP fit­tings, though it does­n’t have to do with visu­al­iza­tion, is that even being assigned cor­rect­ly with sys­tems, they don’t work when plac­ing pipes or ducts, keep­ing the Sys­tem Type and Clas­si­fi­ca­tion Unde­fined and dis­con­nect­ed. The cause is in the project tem­plate. We have found that when you start from scratch a tem­plate, with­out rely­ing on Autodesk already con­fig­ured tem­plates, this error hap­pens. The solu­tion is to copy the mod­el out and paste into a new tem­plate with­out this prob­lem. It would be bet­ter, if you did­n’t have to do it.
10. As an alter­na­tive to pre­vi­ous cas­es, it may be a fam­i­ly with a select­ed cat­e­go­ry that does not match with its use. For exam­ple, a fire extin­guish­er as a gener­ic mod­el instead of Mechan­i­cal Equip­ment do not dis­play cor­rect­ly in a view of the mechan­i­cal dis­ci­pline.
11. As an alter­na­tive to pre­vi­ous one, con­nec­tors only work with fit­tings and ter­mi­nal equip­ments, either mechan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, light­ing fix­tures, etc. In oth­er words, even though you can place con­nec­tors on MEP acce­sories, they’re use­less.
12. If it’s a grid, a lev­el line or a ref­er­ence line not vis­i­ble, it might be because it’s restrict­ed to a Scope Box, and at the spe­cif­ic view is not vis­i­ble. To check, you have to detect anoth­er view in which you can see the ele­ment and look at Prop­er­ties> Extents> Scope Box, or locate the Scope Box­es and change the views where is vis­i­ble under Prop­er­ties> Extents> Edit Views Vis­i­ble.
13. The mate­ri­als edi­tor can also play you a trick if you’re not accus­tomed to its use. It’s com­mon to save Prop­er­ty Sets of mate­ri­als to apply them by groups. When dupli­cat­ing a mate­r­i­al with a Prop­er­ty Set assigned, the first thing to do is go to the Appear­ance tab and change to Inde­pen­dent under Prop­er­ties (Revit 2012) if you don’t want to change the dis­play the oth­er mate­ri­als with the same Prop­er­ty Set. With Revit 2013, you know that the Prop­er­ty Sets are equiv­a­lent to Assets, and it’s this fea­ture what you should replace or dupli­cate in order not to affect oth­er asso­ci­at­ed mate­ri­als.
14. If you change the mate­r­i­al asso­ci­at­ed to an ele­ment and it does­n’t mod­i­fy its appear­ance, it can hap­pen that is paint­ed by the Paint tool (PT) at Mod­i­fy> Geom­e­try> Paint. In this case, the answer is to remove the paint, click­ing the drop down menu to access the Remove Paint tool.
15. Anoth­er behav­ior that can dri­ve you crazy is to lose con­trol of how to dis­play an ele­ment when chang­ing its mate­r­i­al, or its vis­i­bil­i­ty para­me­ters when it’s a fam­i­ly. This is usu­al­ly because between two or more ele­ments, there is a joined geom­e­try that makes them behave togeth­er tak­ing the prop­er­ties of the first high­light­ed. There’s no choice but to unjoin geome­tries to solve it.

4. Checking Worksharing Environment

1. Check if the­work­set to which the ele­ment belongs is vis­i­ble on Col­lab­o­rate> Work­sets> Vis­i­ble in all views (box checked). This affects all views and users of the cen­tral file.
2. Check if the work­set to which the ele­ment belongs is open under Col­lab­o­rate> Work­sets> Opened (Yes). This DOES NOT affect all views and users of the cen­tral file, only affects local files where is select­ed.
3. Check if the work­set to which the ele­ment belongs is vis­i­ble at VV (Vis­i­bil­i­ty / Graph­ics Over­rides > Worksets)

5. Checking on work environment with linked files

1. Check if the link to which the ele­ment belongs is loaded on Man­age> Man­age Project> Man­age Links> Revit> Sta­tus.
2. Check if the Work­set to which the ele­ment belongs is open on Man­age> Man­age Project> Man­age Links> Man­age Work­sets.
3. Check if the Work­set to which the ele­ment belongs is turned on at the view. Go to VV (Vis­i­bil­i­ty / Graph­ics Over­rides > Revit Links).
4. Check on VV> Revit Links> Dis­play Set­tings if the vis­i­bil­i­ty set­tings of the link does not pre­vent to see the ele­ment or cat­e­go­ry.
5. Make sure you’re link­ing the right file with the ele­men­to you’re seek­ing. To do this, you may have to open sep­a­rate linked files and do some of the above checks.
6. Check if shared coor­di­nates of the linked file to which the ele­ment belongs, are the same as the host file. The eas­i­est way is to go to a floor plan view of both files and type RH to dis­play all hid­den items. Mak­ing a selec­tion of the Sur­vey Point to ver­i­fy the coor­di­nates, they must be matched.
7. Phase Map­ping. It would be real­ly con­vo­lut­ed, but it is pos­si­ble that between a link file and its host, there is no iden­ti­cal phase rela­tion­ship, and that makes a phase of a link not vis­i­ble in a view, although the phase with the same name is turned on in the host file. To see it you should go to the type prop­er­ties of the select­ed link.
8. You can want to see anno­ta­tions from a view of a link with­in a host file. To do this, go to VV> Revit Links> Dis­play Set­tings> Basics> By linked view, and choose the appropi­ate view.

Thanks

To the emi­nent “Revithol­o­gists” Car­los Toribio, Nacho Urrib­ar­ri and Oscar Albar­ran, for their con­tri­bu­tions in some cases.