Provide an Option to Preserve the Door Opening Instead of Automatically In-Filling When a Door is Demolished

[luis7SJJ3]

In many real-world refurbishment projects, when a door is removed from an existing wall, the resulting opening is often retained—or filled in a way that differs from the original wall construction. In Revit, however, demolishing an existing door automatically triggers an “infill” behavior that closes up the opening with the original wall type. This is both unrealistic and irreversible, forcing users to accept an unwanted wall patch.

In actual practice, once a door is removed, the opening may remain as-is, be filled with a different wall type, or be repurposed in other ways. Having Revit automatically restore the original wall type is counterproductive and does not reflect typical site operations. It also removes the ability to keep a true opening without cumbersome workarounds.

Proposed Solution

1. User-Controlled Infill Settings

   • Provide a setting (at either the project or element level) that allows users to choose whether an opening should remain or be automatically infilled when an existing door is demolished.
   • Let users specify which wall type (if any) is used to fill the opening.

2. Flexible Phase Behavior

   • When a door is demolished in the Existing phase, give the user the option to leave the opening intact or fill it with a new wall.
   • If the user wants to keep the opening or place a different wall, Revit should not force the infill to match the original wall type.

3. Better Alignment with Real-World Workflows

   • This change would more closely mirror actual construction processes, saving time and effort in creating workarounds or re-modeling openings.
   • It would also provide clearer phasing documentation and more accurate takeoffs for demolition and new work.

By introducing a user-defined or project-wide “Preserve Opening” setting, Revit’s demolition workflow would become more flexible and realistic, significantly improving modeling efficiency for renovation and refurbishment projects.

[Anonymous]

Surprised this is not on the idea list already.

We need the ability to have the infill be a yes or no parameter when demolishing a window or door.  When a door or window is placed in the same spot, the infill will remain.  The only way of getting around this currently is to create a wall in the same place as the door or window and demolish the wall so you are left with an opening.  Then you can place a new wall with the size of door or window needed.  If we had the ability to select yes or no for the infill, those extra steps would be eliminated.

[pieter1]

Ideally we would be able to select a infill wall type as well.

[Anonymous]

genius +1

[RDAOU]

What they should do is rework the walls....on a competitor software a similar concept to the following is applied...

1. demolish an insert (hosted family which usually includes the cut host element built in within the same family)
2. software prompts user

option 1: Should XX edit host profile to preserve opening created by insert

option 2: Should XX replace host cut with infill of the same type and properties <states current/existing host name>

User er checks box and clicks ok! Done (XX is the software lol ... Not stating so they won't say I'm marketing it lol)

im still gonna got it up for you although I'm am happy with how it currently works in REVIT 😛 (just cuz u tagged me in that prehistoric post...ps: in some sort of way, I hope Scotty doesn't miss u any of us down here...I'm pretty sure he is looking down and laughing at us all ... We and REVIT

[harlan_brumm]

Thanks for your submission and votes on this idea!  We are evaluating where this request falls into our roadmap and will provide an update when we have made a decision. 

The Factory

[Anonymous]

One of our architects would like the option to determine in what phase the hole gets filled.

[Anonymous]

Two additional problems with infills:

• The dashed lines do not show up in elevation
• The dashed lines are not apparent at the edges of the wall as shown below in red

[Beltman-SvG]

You can all ready avoid this problem by not using the Revit phasing but to use project parameters to demolish or replace objects.

If you "demolish" objects you can also use this in groups (object phasing isn't saved to groups).

This is workable but if it was standard Revit that would be better.

[Anonymous]

Let us choose if we want something infilled or not when demolishing window/door.  Automatically infilling causes a whole mess that is hard to correct.  Often times we don't want something to be infilled and removing that infill in Revit is currently not an option.  We have to do a ton of work arounds to get simple demo actions to look correct in both the demo plans and new floor plans.

[Anonymous]

Do a search before posting ideas....

I've had this idea for over 2 years...  

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/infill-yes-or-no-option/idi-p/6473443

[Anonymous]

Wouldn't it be easier if there were no automatic infills at all.  All they are good for is to host new windows/doors in (so when you are replacing an old window with a new). Because if you actually want to infill something, it's almost never with the same wall type as the host. For example an existing door in a brick wall will be filled in with gyp wall (or another type of brick).

If windows and doors (and other hosted elements) could be hosted in the openings on a wall that would solve the need for infills and also make the whole hosting process a little bit more lenient.

So I would suggest:

1) get rid of infills

2) make sure we can host stuff in openings as well

[Anonymous]

i agree infills are very confusing. i agree hosting families in existing openings would be much better

[Anonymous]

Hi from Hamburg!
If I want to demolish an existing door (/window/voids) in my new phase, I would like to have this option in Revit with two parameters or questions like this:

1. Existing door demolished but the existing opening stays. (Because in new phase we want to use this door's opening)

2. Existing door demolished and his opening will be filled with a wall from new phase. (Because in new phase we don't want anymore this opening)

I'm dreaming about it...

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

How do you demo an empty void/hole in a wall, without having to build a new "wall"/solid?

Its kinda like trying to fill a hole in the ground by digging the air out of it....

If you hide a void form from a view, should it then become solid?

[tamas.deri]

Forget about "void/hole" and concentrate on doors/windows.

[YarUnderoaker]

I like infill, especially feature of type changing, but main problem when you put new window/door at the same place and same size you get error massage that instance not cutting anything and it force to delete instance. This is very anoing error because it can be popup sadenly when you edit some property of already placed windows or hosted wall.

[GraphOnto]

Graphisoft's ArchiCAD has enabled showing/not showing and graphical overrides of automatic infill of demolished openings for years- perhaps more years than this suggestion has been sitting here "Under Review".

I'll keep searching for workarounds here, but the current Revit behavior when demolishing openings seems undeveloped since initial releases. I need development on this kind of feature before things like Generative Design.

This type of development is the bread and butter of what we subscription users need and pay for year after year.

[GraphOnto]

Ran out of time to edit previous comment, so here is updated sentiment:

Looks like you can hide the infill wall in view, manually (tab to select in your demo plan). And you can change the type of the infill wall if need be. 

It would be helpful to enable the infill wall to have phasing independent from the original wall. It shows as new in the phase it was demolished, but I've found I need a "New Work Phase - DEMO" and "New Work Phase - NEW" to be able to separate existing vs new rooms. So in lieu of infill wall phase independence, I'd like to be able to demo rooms, though enabling both would be best.

I had written a more critical comment here previously, then discovered how infill wall manipulation is enabled.

Now I'm wondering if Autodesk manages these improvement idea forums to address solutions that have been implemented. Would be helpful if this kind of thread could be resolved so folks like me looking for solutions don't get the idea that there are none.

[pieter1]

@GraphOnto  

I think most people voting for this idea realized that they can hide-in-view the infill, but that doesn't remove it from the model. It will still show up in any other view, in schedules, in exports (depending on the view), files it's linked into, etc. On top of that, it's still there, so it could still cause joining conflicts, hosting conflicts, issues with design options, ... 

For all those reasons, "hiding-in-view" isn't a good solution (unfortunately, no good solution exists today for getting rid of infills, hence this idea).

[GraphOnto]

@pieter1 

Agree there's no solution to this yet, just workarounds. Thanks for clarifying.

I'm a long time ArchiCAD user at a new job making the switch, and just getting into the phasing functionality, etc.

The automatic infill functions didn't work perfectly (maximally flexible/sensible) in ArchiCAD either, but I'm surprised that with the massively larger user base in Revit that this hasn't received more attention.