show and hide point clouds in revit

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

Is there any way to define a shortcut to show and hide point clouds in a view? Pointsense for Revit from FARO has a button in its plugin for this but without the plugin I always have to type vv, click tab 'point clouds', 'show point clouds in this view'

[Anonymous]

any ideas?

[KyleB_Autodesk]

Unfortunatelty no way that I know of.  I'd be interested to better understand the use case when this type of shortcut would be useful.  Can you help me out?

-Kyle

[Anonymous]

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for your answer. I often work with big pointclouds in the scan to bim sector. When I work in the Revit project files, the model becomes very slow when the point cloud is shown. So I only show the point cloud when it is necessary and sometimes I often hide and show the cloud.

I also sometimes work with linked Revit files with point clouds. If I do not have a point cloud in my original file and want to hide the point cloud I have to click one cloud in the linked file and click hide selected category. If I want to reshow the point cloud I have to set hidden objects visible and set the category point clouds again visible.

So all in all this is a very complicated way to hide and show point clouds.

[Anonymous]

Hi Kyle/Autodesk Team,

Do we have any options created for hide/unhide the Point Cloud in Revit?

Its really helpful, for instance when you are 3D view and you want to know how it looks like?

Whatever modeled is aligned to point cloud in every possible way or not?

It will be really helpful if you guys could give a thought to this.

Thanks

[KyleB_Autodesk]

Does the existing capability in the Visibility/Graphics dialog not address your workflow need?

-Kyle

[Anonymous]

It's just if I could be able to set a shortcut to that, then I can save few of those repetitive clicks.

[Anonymous]

I agree, although the visibility dialogue box is the workflow we have to use, it would be great to allow a shortcut to quickly turn point clouds on off.

Modify tools like align etc take a long time to load when point clouds are visible.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hello @Anonymous

When we were working with Point Cloud in the project we used to have a separate Revit file for point cloud then we link that revit file into a working Revit file. Then we set each Revit file with point cloud in each workset. After that we create a Filter in each workset to control the visibility on point cloud.

[amorap]

Hi JeldeB

If you are using worksets, you can create a new one named "PointClouds" or so, and then assign your pointclouds to this workset.

In the worksets windows you can switch on or off the visibility of this workset quickly with only a clik, and the access to the worksets window is very fast too using the icon at the bottom of your revit screen.

Regards from Spain.

[ToanDN]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hello @Anonymous

When we were working with Point Cloud in the project we used to have a separate Revit file for point cloud then we link that revit file into a working Revit file. Then we set each Revit file with point cloud in each workset. After that we create a Filter in each workset to control the visibility on point cloud.

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You know you can assign a workset to a point cloud directly without keeping it in a separate Revit file, right? 

[Anonymous]

Yup, What I did is that to increase the Revit performance.

[KyleB_Autodesk]

Just a note that Point Clouds have an extremely low impact on any major Revit operation, unless the graphics system is drawing them as part of a View.  There isn't any material difference between working in a View with Point Cloud visibility Off vs. working in that same View with Point Clouds on a Workset that's closed.

How you go about that is more of a discussion of implementation.  As there's been countless discussions on the effectiveness of View Templates vs. Worksets, I won't touch that 3rd rail here, but understand that Point Clouds themselves really don't have any impact unless the graphics system is trying to draw them.

-Kyle

[amorap]

Hi from Spain,Kyle,

My experience dealing with Pointclouds in revit is far different from yours. Nothing to say if you only pan, zoom or orbit in a view, but when I'm trying to draw or place whatever object in a view with a point cloud visible, Revit tries to snap to it. Then the mouse pointer starts to move slowly and system fan gets noisy.

The only way to avoid this is override the snap to pointclouds, but when I'm working in a renovation project this is not an option.

I have noticed this behavior in different systems regardless the size or weight of the pointcloud, and regardless the computers power (Ryzen 1800X 64GB + GTX 1080, Dual Xeon 32Gb + GTX 1050, i7 16Gb+GTX 1060, i7 16GB+GTX650...).

Regards.

[thomasarnoldsson5732]

Hi

I also thinks that working with pointclouds in Revit is hopeless.

I've 2 rcp-files and 12 rcs-files over a big site, about 600x400 meters. In Recap the rcp-files are smooth and runs great but when linking the files in Revit it lags as soon as I'm, trying to do anything.

The rcs-files are big, I know (it's 12 of them, each about 1 GB in size). 9 of them is in one rcp-file and the ather 3 are in another rcp-file.

I've put the rcp-files in 2 linked files in separate worksets in the mainmodel and I'm trying to use a small scope box when working but it's hard when working over a great area at the same time.

Any suggestions to get it working smoother?

[Anonymous]

I agree with the original poster here. I'm currently working with a very large and cluttered scan of a plant and I have the need to constantly toggle the cloud on and off as I am modeling existing parts while trying to see around things. Currently, it's 5 clicks to get the cloud turned on, and 5 more to turn it off. (View tab, Visibility/Graphics, Point Clouds, Check show/hide point clouds in view, OK). It would be AMAZING to have a single button added to the ribbon or a shortcut command to toggle on and off on the fly. I'd save tons of time with as frequently as I toggle them on and off.

[Anonymous]

Thanks aschnautz for your support on this.

[BalajiHTI]

Like we have in Navisworks Manage as a Single Click to turn point clouds on and off. How difficult is it to understand for Autodesk?

[deemanning]

I use Pointsense for Revit. They have a lot of nice tools, specifically a toggle point cloud button.

[BalajiHTI]

I agree FARO's Point sense is a great tool yet it is a subscription-based solution. I don't see the necessity to use it in all the workstations unless everyone is robustly working on a Scan to BIM project all the time, rapidly automatically detecting and creating walls, pipes, sloped roofs etc.