Plan visibility of high level wall mounted objects

[IAN~JAMES]

Our users want to be able to display things like wall mounted phones, coat hooks etc that may be at heights such as 1500mm or 1700mm above FFL. I have tried creating Symbolic lines at Ref Level within the family thinking that this would display, but I believe that because the 3D geometry is out of range, the symbolic linework is never brought into play??

What is the best way to represent these high level objects....? Changing the view depth to do this doesn't feel like the correct solution...

I have temporarily changed the Symbolic lines to Model lines as a short term solution, but would like to find a more robust solution long term

Any help/advice appreciated

Ian

[parveen.revit]

another workaround could be to use Plan Region.

I know it's time consuming but it works.

[Alfredo_Medina]

Modify the families, drawing a projection of the object at the reference level, made with symbolic lines, hidden line style. By doing this, even if the elevation of the 3d object is higher than the cut plane of the project, you will see the projection.

[IAN~JAMES]

Fantastic... That sounds like exactly what were looking for... Thanks I'll give that a go in the morning 🙂
Cheers

[IAN~JAMES]

Sorry tried this and it still doesn't seem to be displaying anything, also it tells me when I place the family in the project that none of the elements place will be visible.

I have tried setting the Symbolic line at Ref Level to "Hidden Lines" as you suggested, I've also tried setting them to "Overhead Lines" but neither option seems to have worked.

Am I missing something...?

Regards

Ian

[Alfredo_Medina]

That error means something else, that does not have to do anything with the family itsef, but to the category of the family. Probably the category is off in that view.

About the families, what I said before should work, but keep in mind that if the objects are two small, like a phone on the wall, it might be difficult to display that with hidden lines. It will probably look as continuous lines anyway.

Yet another solution is to activate "Plan/RCP" for the visibility settings of the solids in the family, then, in the project, the objects will be visible, (with continuous lines), even if the object is above the cutting plane.

[loboarch]

---

Alfredo_Medina wrote:

Modify the families, drawing a projection of the object at the reference level, made with symbolic lines, hidden line style. By doing this, even if the elevation of the 3d object is higher than the cut plane of the project, you will see the projection.

---

Another trick you can do is to draw an invisible model line from the geometry down to the reference level.  By making this a model line the family will end up being "cut" by the cut plane of the view and the element will be visible in the plan. 

[Alfredo_Medina]

Yes, the invisible line trick is a good one.

Yet another tool we have available to affect the display of a family in plan view in a project is the view range settings in the floor plan view of the family itself, in the family editor. With that, combined with "show (or not show) in Plan/RCP", we can predetermine the height at which a model family is going to be cut.

[john.kinder]

Aha!  I did some playing around because this has been bugging me for ages and (for myself anyways) I got the following results...

It totally depends on what kind of "Family Category" it is.  I was trying to display a wall clock the same way you described and found that it's Family Category was set to "Specialty Equipment".  Once I changed it to"Generic Models" everything changed and now any annotation lines I add seem to dsplay with no problems at all.  Now I'll just need to play around with annotations lines and masking to get abetter feel of how those work.

I also found that once I changed the Family Category to Generic Models, the "Hidden Lines [Projection]" and "Generic Models [Projection]" lines apeared/became available in the Line Subcategory.  I think it even automatically changed what I had already drawn, from Hidden Lines to Hidden Lines [Projection].  Guess I need to know more about these Family Categories but here's a pic should you have trouble finding anything...

Breakdown:

1. Open "Family Categories and Parameters"

2. Select "Generic Models" under the Family Category list

    (selection depends on your intent. ie. Casework.  I just know Specialty Equipment doesn't work for me)

3. Click okay

4. Add any Annotation, Symbolic Lines/Masking/etc. as needed

5. Load into Project

If you're still experiencing issues check your Cutplane and Top range again or even investigate any objects that ARE showing up correctly for you (Casework gave me the idea becuase it was the only thing displaying properly above the cut plane, That's how I figured out this solution).  I hope this works for others.  Let me know if this is NOT a solution for you so I can dig further.