Curtain Wall and Windows not see through

[Anonymous]

I've checked many of the posts here and nothing seems to work for me.  When I render my curtain wall glass and window glass is not transparent.  I would like it to be.  I have changed all the setting back to the default after trying other solutions posted nothing seems to work.  Any ideas?  Thanks

[Anonymous]

I'm really new to Revit. I have been working on creating curtain wall family. When I apply the material of glass there is a option that shows the transperency off the glass I think the default is 75% you might want to check out the materials and make sure the glass has the transperency set to 75%

[Anonymous]

here is what the menu look like

[Anonymous]

Yup. Checked that.  I even used a window and from a previous project that by default was transparent.  All the settings seem match up.  There is no obvious reason why the default windows and curtain walls should not be transparent.

Although this time I started with the commerical template drawing rather residential.  They are transparent in regular 3d view but rendered they are solid.

[rosskirby · Accepted solution]

You need to make sure that the material property for the panels in the windows/curtain walls is set to a glass material.  Judging by the image you posted, it looks like someone reset the Glass material to be the default wall material.  You'll have to go back into the material manager, click on the Glass material, then go to the Rendering tab.  There should be a drop down there that lets you select from several different types of glass.  Then go back to the first tab and check the box next to "Use Rendering Settings" so that your shaded and realistic views look right.

Even if you brought a window in from a previous project, if the glass material in your current project is set to be something like stucco, then the glass is going to look like stucco.

[Anonymous]

Thanks.  That worked.  It was set to Generic I changed it to glazing.

[rosskirby]

Glad I could help.

[Anonymous]

I just noticed that now the curtain wall shows solid in my elevations while in hidden mode.

[rosskirby · Accepted solution]

That's the way it's supposed to work.  2D views in Hidden Line mode aren't transparent, regardless of the material.  You've got 3 options:

1. Manually select the individual glass panels, then right-click and Override in View and make them transparent.

2. Set up a filter to automatically make glass panels transparent (which is a little more complicated to set up, but easier to implement once you have the filter created).

3. Create a new 3D view, right click on the View Cube and select Orient to View and choose the elevation you want, and the 3D view will be oriented to match the 2D elevation.  The main drawback to this is that it becomes very problemmatic to annotate and dimension in a 3D view.

I'd personally recommend the filter, but if you're in a rush, either of the other two options will work.

[Anonymous]

Thanks.  I am familiar with options 1 and 2.  I just didn't think of it because  I am still learning.

[Anonymous]

hello rosskirby,

i am also getting the problem of "Window not see through", but in your solution i am not able to followup the procedure, as i am new to revit and after trying so many times, i am not able to find the solution, can your explain the procedure in a bit easy way.

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@rosskirby wrote:

You need to make sure that the material property for the panels in the windows/curtain walls is set to a glass material.  Judging by the image you posted, it looks like someone reset the Glass material to be the default wall material.  You'll have to go back into the material manager, click on the Glass material, then go to the Rendering tab.  There should be a drop down there that lets you select from several different types of glass.  Then go back to the first tab and check the box next to "Use Rendering Settings" so that your shaded and realistic views look right.

Even if you brought a window in from a previous project, if the glass material in your current project is set to be something like stucco, then the glass is going to look like stucco.

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[rosskirby]

It's a little difficult to tell from the image you posted what's causing the problem.  It could be a couple of things.

First, it could be that the window family you're using doesn't have an opening in it, and is therefore not cutting the wall.  That could by why it looks like the main wall material shows through where there should be glass.  Here's a link to a quick tutorial on how to create a simple window family.  Scroll down to the part titled "Sketching The Opening" for the relevant portion.

Second, you could be having the same problem as the original poster in this thread, which is that the material applied to the geometry in the family that is meant to represent the glass doesn't have any transparency.  Here's a link to an article on how to adjust the transparency of materials.

Let me know if you need a more detailed response after you figure out which of the two above scenarios is causing the problem.