Visual depth in elevation

[Anonymous]

So here's my question:

How do you guys do to visually represent depth in an elevation?

The only answer I've found is to use linework, but that can't be the way to go in a program such as revit. That's the whole point of it, right? To not have to sit and do things manually and then have to change the lines every time something in the building changes. I know that Archicad can show line thickness depending on distance from elevation line. And god do i dislike Archicad, but that's exactly what I'm looking for.

Another answer I've found is to use shadows, but then you get the problem of only being able to print as raster = no sharp lines.

So, anyone? I can't be the only one with this problem?

Thanks!

Victoria

[Alfredo_Medina]

There is one trick that works, but only for presentation elevations, meaning not actual elevations with annotations, but a "front" 3d view from the Cube. As shown in this image, a family that is just a sheet of glass with 50 % transparency, is placed among the model, separating it in parts, as per the depth. The front part of the house displays as it is. The second part is behind one sheet of glass, and displays lighter than the first part. The third part is behind two sheets of glass, and displays lighter than the second part, etc...

[Anonymous]

Nice work Alfredo,

Youn can also achieve the same result using masses.  In the visibility graphics for the elevation you can set the Mass > Form projection lines to be white so they don't show.  Also use filters to control which masses are visible for the different elevations.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies!

However....I still think it's strange that a thing like that should be solved with work arounds as apposed to an actual solution. Or, if there isnt a solution I think there should be a reason for that, and therefor another way of thinking/working with it. And as long as showing shadows mean that you can only print in raster ( = unsharp drawings) I cant think of a decent way of doing it.

But please let me know if someone knows how they think over at the autodesk hq 🙂

[Alfredo_Medina]

Maybe "workaround" is just another name for "solution".

[Anonymous]

Hmm....maybe.....

But in my world a solution would be "set line weight according to distance from elevation/section point".

If crappy archicad can do it I think awesome Revit should be able to, too!

[Anonymous]

You can set up multiple elevations with limited view depths, then overlay the elevations on a single sheet. The first elevation can have all linework set to have thicker lines, the next to have medium lines, the third to have thinner lines etc. That way you can add annotations. Bit fiddly but the only way I've been able to achieve line weights in elevation. Agreed this is one aspect of revit which should have been fixed by now.

[Anonymous]

Here is a simple algorithm that Autodesk could implement if they wanted to.

1. The eye point and the object point of a view is known, even if only internally
2. Therefore, the distance from the eyepoint to the centroid of any object can be calculated
3. A sliding table of linewights can be created based on the distance from the eyepoint
4. Lineweights in the view are looked up in the table and displayed based on the distance from the eyepoint

BTW: The email address of this post is my IT manager. My email is michael@riccigreene.com

[Anonymous]

For all who've had the same issues as I've had:

I just now thought of a workaround (until the Revit ppl fix a way to do it properly);

In the elevation view, select all objects that you want to be displayed as further away > right click > override graphics in view > by element

and then set a thinner lineweight or halftone

Or am I missing something here? Seems like a fairly easy solution, far from perfect, but works.

A bit surprised that I havent found any similar suggestions in all the forums I've searched, so

wondering if maybe there's something that I havent thought of, making it a bad idea.

[Alfredo_Medina]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
...

Or am I missing something here? ..

---

Please look at the attachments in message # 2 and # 3 above. If we select the roof and make it halftone, the whole roof would become halftone, instead of having shades of gray as per the visual depth, as in those examples.

[Anonymous]

Ah yes, that makes sense of course. But then for roofs and possible other parts that spread and turn you could use the LW command and change line weight for those specific lines, right?

Might be as time consuming as the masses, but I just dont like the idea of having to add new elements, and hide/show different masses for different views to get the desired result.

[Alfredo_Medina · Accepted solution]

Well, yes, you could use the Linework tool, but that will take a lot more time than introducing some glass panels or masses. It's not ideal, but unless there is some specific tool for this, I think those methods are a good solution in the meantime.

[mkashifafzal]

I have tried the process of using Mass object to reduce the blackness of the lines further away from the elevations view point, and that mass element in view category is selected to be halftone. By choosing it to be halftone you can use this method to work on Elevations and Sections, while also annotated. (as opposite to what you suggested in the first post).
But yes, Autodesk has to come up with a simple solution for this.

[Anonymous]

what if my elevations was curtain glass and  linked from another file ????

[Anonymous]

What's wrong with using a View Template?

Is there a reason why that has not been suggested?

[Anonymous]

the firm i work with does what a06vsh has suggested. this works excellently and even with roofs, in a real project, not the sample shown above, there are multiple parts to the roof that can be individually manipulated. these are only manipulated per view after the object styles are tweaked to fit the project. having the object styles fine tuned is an absolute must -use first step for this process though. 

[chrisplyler]

Use the blur-by-distance tool and the shading-for-depth tool on the ribbon. A little bit does the job.

[Anonymous]

Further to a06vsh method, i find that if you open up a 3D view, and click the view cube to make the view "straight", you can then select all the objects you wish to override, while the objects are selected, return to your elevation view and override the graphics.

to get further depth, you can go back into the 3D view and select objects further back, return to your elevation view and override teh graphics again to these elements(halftone or a different grey scale)

This does not take long to do and you can get decent results. 

[Anonymous]

Disappointed that Autodesk hasn't addressed this nor even replied. Is this an Autodesk forum? Yes. Do Autodesk folks reside in the forum? Yes. Please don't ignore your users. We pay a pretty penny or several thousand. If this is something that we are forced to use work arounds, can you acknowledge this shortcoming? 
To those who have come up with workarounds, good work! Thank you for sharing.

[chrisplyler]

Ahem <clears throat> ... We here at Autodesk wish to acknowledge that this is a shortcoming and you have to use workarounds. Thank-you. No, no further questions at this time. Help yourself to the doughnuts.

Just kidding. I'm not Autodesk.

Oh come on, nobody's going to admit they went looking for the blur-by-distance tool?