Isolate element temporarily

[office]

Are there any limitations known to "View.IsolateElementsTemporary Method "

my code:

for i in elements:
	elemId = i.Id
	ids.append(elemId)
ids2 = List[ElementId](ids)

selection = view.IsolateElementsTemporary(ids2)

my elements are nested curtain panels.

when i run my code with walls, it works perfectly

when it comes to nested panels i end up in an empty view

any solutions?

[jeremytammik]

Dear Koppevi,

Can you temporarily isolate the curtain panels that you are interested in manually in the user interface?

In general, the Revit API will not enable you to do something programmatically that cannot be achieved manually through the Revit product UI.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[office]

jeremy, yes, manually everything is removable.

in a standard 3d view, the collection is even marked selected in view and when i manually hide them (using hide selected) they are hidden

thanks peter

ps. what i do is programmed in a python shell within dynamo. could that cause trouble?

[conoves · Accepted solution]

Hello Koppevi -

I was curious about your problem and found that selecting curtain panels directly and choosing "Isolate Elements" results in an empty view (as you found from the API). 

I found that choosing the panels, selecting "Isolate Category" and then "Isolate Elements" results in just the selected elements being visible, which is what you want.  You should be able to do something similar with the API.

I suspect this may be a bug in Isolate Elements functionality (the underlying wall category might need to remain "on" to allow the panels to be visible and Isolate Elements may not be doing that).

Thank you,

Scott Conover

[Anonymous]

Hello conoves,

Could you provide a small code-sample on how to accieve this? i am also trying to isolate a curtainwall (and all of it's contents) in a 3dview, but i am having trouble (empty view)..

TIA Wouter

[office]

3 years to fix a bug ......

[george1985]

Hi @conoves @office ,
I have just tested the python code from the first post - and I can confirm that the bug is still present in Revit 2025:
isolating a Curtain Panel, isolates everything in the active view.

Is it possible to get that workaround code, that Scott Conover mentioned? In any programming language?
I would be very grateful for that.

[TripleM-Dev.net]

Hi @george1985,

I think this happens because when isolating a Curtain panels (element or bycategory) will also hide walls and with it all it's dependent item like panels. (seems to also happen in UI, doesn't happen on a Nested family inside a curtainpanel, which I was testing reading these posts.

I do find the API not working exactly like in the UI (for families with nested families), could be because the UI function does some additional work like several other commands.

I was just looking if somebody already made a solution for when isolating a supercomponent to also keep their nested families visible (like the UI does)

I guess I need to inspect the elements first and add any nested component before calling isolate.

For Curtainwalls it seems to work a bit different If you add the parent wall (from curtain panels) the mullions also show, so they then need to be hidden..

I'll write a extension for the isolateelements function for families with nested elements.

For Curtainwall I may add a option to show all nested elements or hide all but selected afterwards

These are the most used elements for us, but there will be likely more types like this. (Sloped glazing of course, Beamsystem, stacked wall...etc)

Gr. Michel