Rotated elevation marker with orthogonal symbol?

[timwaldock5907]

With the new(ish) Revit elevation markers, the help files show how to set up an elevation marker that has a horizontal line through it, with detail number above the line, sheet number below it.  That works well for orthogonal elevations, but when the elevation is at an angle the central line rotates.  How do we stop this - I want the central line to stay horizontal like it does in East, North, South & West elevations (likewise the label locations)?

[davidwilliamedwards]

Here's part of a note I wrote: “Does it Really Work This Way” Department I’ve been trying to get the Custom Elevation Tags to work so that no matter the angle of the wall, the body of the tag stays horizontal. The first tutorial I read had you inserting the Elevation Mark Pointer only one time. However, this doesn’t work for this particular Tag because the entire tag rotates to the angle of the pointer. One of Paul Aubin’s books has a tutorial where you create the tag using four copies of the Pointer family – each at a different angle. This works for walls at 90 degree increments, but not at 45 degrees. I also noticed that a Selection Box is now available for each of the Pointers. This got me wondering – I can understand the need for multiple pointers as an option for the elevation tags, but why doesn’t the body just stay horizontal? Then it hit me – when the angle of the wall matches the angle of one of the Pointer inserts, that pointer is toggled on. If the wall is at an angle for which there is no matching pointer, the closest pointer is toggled on and the entire tag is rotated to the correct angle. I started playing around with tags with many more pointer inserts and came up with a beast using 16 pointers. This works for wall angles of 22.5d increments. However another wall angle is still uses a tag that is not horizontal.

[Alfredo_Medina]

It is possible, but the question is, is it worthy? See the attached illustration.

Option 1 is what you want, but it requires some work in the family edirot, and the configuration of two elevation types. Are your users going to remember to select an elevation type depending on the orientation?

Option 2 is an alternative: using another style of annotation symbol that does not have a line inside the circle.

[davidwilliamedwards]

45d increments are easy - just use 8 pointers. Revit will only turn on the closest one.

[timwaldock5907]

Thanks David,

I finally managed to get it worked out.  I had a building that had all kinds of weird angles, so even the 16 point one didn't quite work.  So what I did was to keep an 8 point marker for the office standard library (suitable for 0, 45, 90 etc degrees), then made a project specific version, where I rotated the intermediate pointer components to the exact angles I required - then the main marker component stays horizontal.  The logic of all this is strange, but it can be made to work, and now my elevation markers comply with the Australian drafting standards.

One trick I did learn was that it is better to rotate/copy the existing pointers so that you inherit their properties.  If you just place new ones at 45 degrees you might lose some settings - like the label parameter for the type (when the parent marker changes type in the project, it might be set up to change pointer too).

Tim Waldock

PTW,

Sydney