Showing bulkhead ceilings on floor plan

[283618]

Hi All,

I am preparing some apartments' floor plans and I have been asked to show the lowered ceiling in the floor plan. It should look as below. The lowered ceiling , which are just in the bathrooms in this example, appear in grey .

I have been told to create a floor plan and overlap a ceiling plan which is showing the lowered ceilings (Filters hiding everything besides the ceiling, which have a grey override).

However,  I am not reaching the result wanted so I am asking for your help. Unfortunately I can not share the revit file. 

If I place the ceiling plan above the floor plan in the sheet, this is how it looks like: the walls under the ceiling (which are part of a linked revit model) appear greyed out. 

If I place the floor plan above the ceiling plan the furniture is not greyed out.

I need to reach a result as the example above (1st image)  : a grey ceiling pattern which "covers" furniture, but not the walls below.

Could someone help me with this? 

[barthbradley]

oops. scratch that.  

Not sure what you are describing.  Sounds like you are overlaying views on a Sheet. Is that right?  

....I think you may be misunderstanding the instructions. Create a Ceiling (RCP) View and assign an underlay to the View.  

[ToanDN]

What parts of the model are from the link?  

[lucdoucet_msdl]

@283618 

From what I understand, you have the correct solution by having two views overlayed on a sheet as opposed to the alternative of activating the view underlay which won't display masking regions, opaque material fills or graphics filters that want to override the surface or cut fills. The view underlay's utility is predicated by being "transparent".

I see two competing problems in your screen captures:

1. The grey area seen here is due to the ceiling having been modelled to overlap the wall. When overlapping the reflected ceiling plan (RCP), the grey transparent ceiling will mask the 3d and 2d elements of the plan view below.
2. All the linework in the plan view will also be greyed out by the ceiling's transparency.
   
     
3. In the third image, any revit category that has masking regions will also hide the RCP, because 2d elements (masking regions) always hide 3d elements below it (the ceiling is a 3d object).
    

The dilemma here is that you can't have both the RCP as a transparent grey tone while retaining the black lines and masking regions of the equipment and furniture categories. To solve these three issues and obtain the first screen capture you would need to:

• Have all the revit families in your view show 2d geometry instead of the projected 3d geometry in plans;
• Set a RCP view with only the dropped ceilings that you have greyed out using a visibility graphics filter visible;
• Set an annotated plan view with a transparency of 100% set to all visible categories;
• In the sheet view, place the RCP first, then the plan view.

The result will be all black lines on top a grey background where the dropped ceilings are.

Hope this helps,

-luc

[barthbradley]

.

[lucdoucet_msdl]

@barthbradley 

What's your "point"? 😉

-luc

[283618]

Hey lucdoucet_msdl,

Thanks for the reply.

How do I do the first step without having to edit each family? Also I am worried this would create issues in other plans.

[lucdoucet_msdl]

@283618 

If you don't edit the families that have masking regions, you have to choose between having:

• a continuous grey dropped ceiling with grey lines underneath OR;
• have the grey dropped ceiling masked by the families and black lines.

 There may also be a solution where the RCP view has a plan view underlay placed on an annotated plan view which may work. I will test this later.

-luc

[barthbradley]

---

@lucdoucet_msdl wrote:

@barthbradley 

What's your "point"? 😉

-luc

---

HA!  Yep, that's my "point".  

Seriously though, I just deleted my question to you, but I couldn't delete the post. That's all it was.   

Cheers

[ToanDN]

Create a Room's Low Ceiling y/n parameter and tick the box for all Rooms with low ceilings.  Then create a Room Color Scheme the parameter above.

[lucdoucet_msdl]

 @283618 

A compromise to the grey out linework of the plan elements can be achieved by applying a solid black color with a high level of transparency to the ceilings in the RCP.

In the image above:

• The grey fill is a 100% solid black + 75% transparency. To make the ceiling lighter, increase the transparency;
• The ceiling projection lines are replaced by hidden lines as they are to be viewed in a plan view;
• The two filters will have the same but opposite rules to select the dropped ceilings in the first line and select all ceilings but the dropped ceilings to mask all others.

Here is the result:

• PLN = plan view with the wall, columns, etc with a solid black override;
• RCP = reflected ceiling plan view with everything but ceilings turned off and two filters for
• SHT = sheet view with the plan view placed first then the RCP view placed aligned on top.

In the top left part of the image, the linework is almost but not quite 100% process black. There lies the compromise if the printing process for the plans is not too precise, no one will notice but you.

Hope this answers your question.

-luc

P.S. This should also work for ceilings that are modelled above walls.

[barthbradley]

It might be easier to convince the powers that be, that a simple annotation on the Floor Plan would suffice.  

Just saying.