Visibility Settings in Families

One of my favorite ways to explain visibility settings:  "You can model a chair, have it show up in plan as a chair, front elevation as a smiley face, and side elevation as a frowny face".

How do you accomplish this? With visibility settings for lines as well as solid objects.  A simple yet powerful tool that can let you control exactly how something looks in every view that it will show up in, as well as with every detail level.  Here is a recent example, a fin tube grill in the top of a solid surface under a curtain wall.


The fin tube grill was modeled as a face hosted element (which sits on a wall with an integrated sweep along the top to act like the solid surface).  When we print out our 1/8" scale floor plans, having all the lines show up  for all the grills is just too much, and typically shows up as just a jumbled mess.

Instead, by using visibility settings and loading this into an 1/8" plan at course scale, instead we see this:

Instead of all that complex linework of each individual grill and the surround, it is instead shown as simple linework of the surround and two interior lines.  This reads much cleaner on our floor plans than the jumbled mess before.

We also cut live details from our floor plans.  In the situation of these fin tube grills, their position is specific related to perpindicular walls next to them (7" off).  When we cut at detail, it is at a fine level of courseness and we see much more detail, something that is appropirate to see at 1 1/2"=1' as opposed to 1/8" = 1'.

With this higher courseness, we see more lines, specifically the surround as well as some of the fins between.  Now we don't see any of the modeled geometry, but instead linework.  When looking at it in a 3D view, we also see modeled elements, but specific to the view detail level (course, medium, fine).

Fin tube at fine detail level in 3D

How is this all controlled?  This is all the exact same family in each view.  No extra work was done except for changing the view detail level.  When drawing a family, or after modeling it.  Select a particular element and at the top on your Modify ribbon, you have a new button appear 'visibility setttings'.



Upon clicking on the button, the dialogue box appears and gives you all the control that you need over the element.  It may seem confusing at first, but is actually fairly straight forward.

Regardless, modeled elements (extrusions) will show up in all 3d views.  The top half of the box allows you to control what other views they will be able to be seen in.  The bottom line of the box talks about the detail level.  For example.  The element currently selected is only going to be seen when the view detail level is set to 'fine'.  If the view is in Course or Medium, you will not see it.  In the Fine detail level, it will also be able to been seen in 3D, Plan/RCP, Front/Back, and Left/Right elevations. 

Rmember, if the cut plane of the view doesn't pass through where this object is made, then you won't see it (for example, if this is placed 40" off the floor, it won't show up in the RCP because the view plane for the RCP starts at 6' off the floor and looks up.

Sometimes some of these boxes are greyed out if you draw say a detail line.  Why? Because detail lines only show up by default in views perpendicular to those in which it was drawn.  If you draw a detail line in plan, you won't see it in elevation, so that option isn' available in this dialogue box.

Go forth and make new families that show up exactly how you want!