(Revit 2018.3) 3D View Cannot Reset Hidden 3D View Properties

[Anonymous]

Good morning everyone,

The project I'm working on has a scope box in it that is many millions of times larger than the entire model itself. My problem could be solved by removing this scope box, but I don't want to tamper with someone else's work, and there is a greater issue at play here.

When I enter a 3D view (by selection) the scope boxes are visible by default and the view is zoomed to extents. This means that I am automatically zoomed to the extents of this enormous scope box and furthermore this scope box sets my hidden default dimensions for the view.

Now I can hide this scope box or turn off its visibility, but my 3D view will always have this enormous scale. This is tolerable if I just zoom in on the region I'm interested in, but here's the problem:

The default zoom factor (which I assume is a hidden parameter) is set to a floating point value of 1 at the scale of the extents. When I zoom in on my indescribably small project model, the zoom magnitude is so large or so small, that I can no longer zoom in any further.

What's worse, is that even when I was (somehow) able to zoom in further, the floating point number had lost so much precision that the rendering of the 3d Elements was tied to big gaps, so that as I moved the section box around, the rendering could only follow in steps and intervals, making it virtually useless (Mind you the actual selectable elements remained invisible and detached from their rendering within the section box).

So I'm left with an unusable 3D View, and since 3D Views do not have resettable 'scale', there is no way for me to produce a 3D View that can zoom in this far.

Perhaps there should be a feature added so that we can regenerate a 3D View - rather than being stuck as I am? Has anyone else encountered such an issue? Please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[L.Maas]

I would say go back to the source of the creator of that ridiculous large scope box and ask to take it away (or resize it properly).

You probably will not be the only one to have issues with the model.

I see this as a user error, that should be corrected. Mot trying to create all kinds of workarounds which should not be needed.

[Anonymous]

Louis,

That's certainly fair - this is an edge case, but wouldn't you consider it a fault of the 3D view design that it doesn't dynamically update its own extents? I'm sure I'm not the only one who has encountered a similar problem, and in an instance where a model requires great distances between elements, I can see this being a persistent issue that cannot simply be worked around (without extensive changes to workflow).

[barthbradley]

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@Anonymous wrote:

The project I'm working on has a scope box in it that is many millions of times larger than the entire model itself.

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Why is it many millions of times larger than the entire model itself?  

[Anonymous]

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@barthbradley wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

The project I'm working on has a scope box in it that is many millions of times larger than the entire model itself.

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Why is it many millions of times larger than the entire model itself?  

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This is, perhaps, more of an edge case than I've considered.

Either way, I've removed this scope box after confirming it was not being used, and I've been left with the floating point effects I mentioned earlier. Even after deleting and opening a new 3D-View, this issue persists. Maybe this is something that necessitates an audit to solve?

I'm choosing this hill to die on, when I say that handling a 3D-view's hidden scale/magnification properties this way is bad practice and prone to producing these kinds of errors, but you're right in that the cause for this error is kind of ludicrous to begin with.

[barthbradley]

This may be totally unrelated, but let me ask you: How far is the Model from the Internal Origin? 

[Anonymous]

I'm not certain where to find the internal origin, but the Project Base Point is just at the corner of our building.

[barthbradley]

Select the Project Base Point, unclip, right-click and press Move to Startup Location.  The PBP moves to the Internal Origin of the Project.  If Move to Startup Location is grayed out then the PBP is at the IO. You can undo the move after verifying.  

[Anonymous]

It looks like the PBP hasn't moved from its startup location at all, in other words, this floating point problem is probably independent of the internal origin.

After all, that would cause rendering issues outside of just the 3D View, I think.

[barthbradley]

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@Anonymous wrote:

It looks like the PBP hasn't moved from its startup location 

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Okay, so that was a rabbit hole. Scratch that off the list. 

So, let's sum up.  You have an unusable 3D view -- perhaps corrupted by the enormously large scope box.  Creating a new 3D view won't "fix", since you don't want to delete the Scope Box that may be at the root of the issue.   

Well, I'm stumped.  I don't think an Audit will help, but it can't hurt.  

I'm still curious why the Scope Box is many millions of times larger than the entire model itself.   There must be a reason -- or not.   I'm betting on the "not".  

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

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@barthbradley wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

It looks like the PBP hasn't moved from its startup location 

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Okay, so that was a rabbit hole. Scratch that off the list. 

So, let's sum up.  You have an unusable 3D view -- perhaps corrupted by the enormously large scope box.  Creating a new 3D view won't "fix", since you don't want to delete the Scope Box that may be at the root of the issue.   

Well, I'm stumped.  I don't think an Audit will help, but it can't hurt.  

I'm still curious why the Scope Box is many millions of times larger than the entire model itself.   There must be a reason -- or not.   I'm betting on the "not".  

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Well actually, I did delete the scope box as I mentioned earlier - and yet the scale issues still persisted. I'd just adjusted to using section views instead.

Even with the Scope Box gone, my 3D View was still 'corrupted' by this scaling issue - even if I deleted it and generated a new one, which was curious to me.

However, after a shutdown last night, the 3D View seems to be working fine again. I still maintain that this is a mistake in the design philosophy of the 3D View and not in the user's decision-making, but.... well I'll let it slide.