RCP vs. Floor Plan Visibility

[kgatzke]

You create seperate system families for floor plans and reflected ceiling plans, yet under Family Element Visibility Settings you lump them together under Plan/RCP so I can't make objects visible in ceiling plan and not a floor plan.  Then in ceiling based family templates you greyed out the option to make the family not visible when cut!

Why?

I'm tired of hiding generic models and light fixtures in my floor plans that I think are being cut because they are height referenced off the floor level.

[chrisplyler]

I'm confused. Have you raised a floor plan's cut plane to be high enough to interset light fixtures that are on/near the ceiling? Or are you light fixtures down low enough to be cut by the default cut plane height?

I usually reference ceiling mounted fixtures to the ceiling level, not to the floor level.

I also use a view template for Architectural floor plans that excludes light fixtures (along with a whole lot of (but not all of) other MEP categories).

[kgatzke]

It turns out to be generic models, and it wasn't the fixtures. It was some hardware associated with them that didn't have light sources and weren't categorized as light fixtures (tracks, suspension wires, etc.)
The other items were expansion joints that cut the ceiling. I've been told by other people at my firm that when a generic model is below the top of the view range, even one that is ceiling hosted, it will be visible in plan views unless the top of the view range is below the hosting ceiling.

[chrisplyler]

I'll assume that may be true. Revit does have some hard-coded behavior that is not consistant between all family categories. If you're used to most categories behaving in a certain way, and then come across one that doesn't behave in that "standard" way, it can be quite annoying.

A good example is stairs. They won't join to some other things as you might expect. They have a few of their own "View Range" type parameters and don't follow a view's View Range settings like most other things do.

There are too many other examples. In a few cases they make sense, but mostly they're just annoying. They cause frustration and wasted time for users having to ask questions on forums and figure out work-arounds to get things displaying as they wish.

Still... annoying Revit is better than no Revit.

[chrisplyler]

In fact, I wish all of those "non-standard" behaviors were done away with. The the Object Styles and Visibility Graphics settings ought to have columns for "Respect Cut Plane" and "Respect Bottom Plane" that are all checked by default.

Then if I WANT cabinets to display even above the cut plane, I can uncheck the appropriate "Respect" checkmark. If I WANT floors and stair to display up to six feet below the bottom, I can uncheck the appropriate "Respect" checkmark.

Huh, Autodesk? How about it? Maybe I want my light fixtures to display even if they're above the cut plane, huh? Or maybe I don't, huh? Maybe I want short walls to cut, huh. And maybe I don't, huh. Maybe having arbitrary, hard-coded behavior for some categories but not others is dumb, huh?

[Anonymous]

I share the frustration about all the hidden rules to categories. Here are a couple of links by Luke Johnson over at 'What Revit Wants' about cuttable vs non cuttable families.  

http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/cuttable-vs-non-cuttable-families.html

http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/cuttable-vs-non-cuttable-family.html

http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/the-mystery-of-family-categories.html

The work around I use most is sticking with generic model families and placing objects on a suitable named subcategory. So some of my casework is generic model families (because i want to be able to join them, another difference between the categories) and I assign the geometry to a 'Casework' subcategory. Whenever I mess with the casework category, i head over to generic model subcategories and do the same thing, less of a problem these days as all my view templates are setup to do the work.