Monday, January 23, 2012

Breaking and Squishing a Section

Ever have a giant section? Ever want to squish it  and only show the top and bottom, but don't care what is in between?  Well it is possible with Revit.  Usually by just breaking a section, you see the top, and you see the bottom, and a big space of white in between, not too practical if you want to put it on a sheet.

A hidden little icon in the section view however will make this possible, you can adjust the section cut line without affecting where it's cut.  Say you want to view a section cut of a multi-story elevator shaft on the sheet.  You want to show the bottom of the shaft and the pit, and you want to show the top of the shaft with the overrun and equipment room. Everything in between is the exact same thing, so you don't need to show 14 floors of a door in the middle of the wall.

After cutting your section, find the horizontal view break indicator on the crop boundary of the view.  There will be 2 sets of these, each about a quarter of the way down from and top, and again a quarter of the way up from the bottom.


After cutting the section, you are presented with a large white space in the middle of the section.  If you are still seeing annotation objects (grids, level indicators) this is most likely because 'Annotation Crop' is not checked.


After splitting a section, a little double headed vertical arrow appears in the center of each of the views (both top and bottom).  Clicking and dragging this double headed arrow will allow you to slide the view up or down, but still maintain the same crop region on the view.





After dragging the view up close to the top half, all the annotation objects between also squish themselves automatically into the space available in between.  This can be good to show that in fact there is stuff happening between each of the views.

Add a couple break lines to the bottom and top of the top and bottom views respectively, and your section is ready to go!