Why can't I get a Decal to Render

[IMCornish]

I have a 3D (Camera View) of an interior where I have a number of picture frames placed on the walls.  Each frame has a painting 'Decal' and all but 1 render correctly leaving a blank frame.  Does anyone have any idea why this might happen?

[constantin.stroescu]

can you send a screenshot? or the file?

I suppose every frame family has also an extruded planar shape that fills the inside area and on which you will place the Decal.

When placing the Decal , be sure to place it on the right plane (mentioned above) and , after placing, strech the border of the decal by clinking on its border and draging to scale it down or up so to let a blank border to be shown.

[IMCornish]

Happy to post the file but it is 28mb, but here is a screnshot of the 3D view:

The pictures in the background render correctly whilst the one in the foreground does not.  I have looked at the placement of the deacal on the frame, which is an 'out of the box' Revit family and can see a small differance, see diagrams below:

Diagram 1: Decal is on the surface of the frame and does not appear when rendered.

 Diagram 2: Decal appears slightly further back and appears when rendered, though the differance is so small I am at a loss to think why it should make a differance.

The frame family has a part called a backer (your extruded planar shape) which seems to me to be the place where the decal should be and which is further back into the frame but the placing of a decal seems to be very haphazard and sometimes affixes itself to the wall behind.

Can you explain further what you mean by 'placing it on the right plane', do you mean the 'correct' plane as opposed to the 'right' one?  As mentioned this seems to be very difficult.

[constantin.stroescu]

when placing Decals, usualy I do it in a 3d axonometric View ( a 3 d Section Box ) . I try their to identify  the surface on which to place the Decal . It's easy to place it on a background face and in this situation the Decal will be obturate by another face...Try zooming in the area of placement..

[IMCornish]

Constantin, I am still struggling.  Have created a 3D Ortho view and sectioned it to get to see the frame and wall surface but still no joy.  Have looked closer at the junction between the picture frame and the wall by scaling up a floor plan to 1:1 and it appears that the wall based 'picture frame' family is sunk into the wall!!  However the 'backer' part of the frame still appears to have its face above the wall face level whilst the deacl still appears to attach itself to the wall face.  I am reluctant to edit the 'otb' picture frame family but havr a look at this image:

What do you think?

[constantin.stroescu]

Are sure that the Option :Select Underlay Elements is off?

[IMCornish]

I have never used 'Select Underlay Elements' before so you have taught me something thank you.  Having said that though, I can't see that switching it on or off makes any differance to my problem and am now more inclined to think that it has something to do with the 'picture frame' family which is designed on a 152mm wide wall.  The walls in my project where the decals render correctly are only 150mm wide, whereas the wall where it does not work correctly is over 230mm.  I have come accross this problem before but sadly can't remember the context or solution.  Maybe you can?   

[constantin.stroescu]

can you send the pcture frame family ? is it a Wall Based  or a Face Based Family?

[IMCornish]

Herewith the Picture Frame family, metric version which comes with Revit 2014.  Wall based I believe.

Included at :C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RVT 2014\Libraries\UK\Generic Models

Thanks again

[constantin.stroescu · Accepted solution]

I've made some changes .It must work now.

Look at the attached file....A is the original file and B is the new one

[IMCornish]

Thank you very much Constantin, I 'm sure this is going to work but unfortunatelly I am unable to test it out because now I have a problem where Revit is telling me that my 'Render Apperance Images' are missing - or rather the dialog is headed 'RaaS - Render in Cloud'!  Have tried a local render and the decals show up fine.

Makes me wonder why the Cloud is missbehaving now?!

[IMCornish · Accepted solution]

I have discovered the reason for the problem;
Somehow the decal file names had been translated, I presume by Revit, and had had the capital letter at the beginning of their names changed to a lower case version! The Cloud then looking for a file name beginning with a lower case letter could not find them!
Would love to know how this happened?