Annoying Blue Dots?

See a bunch of annoying blue dots on your plans? RCP's? These are (most likely) side effects of the linked structural model. They may be from elements in your model if you have drawn structural columns yourself, but most likely the structural elements (including columns) are in your linked model. You will see them in all your floor plans and RCP's, and they do print. Don't sweat, they are easy to turn off.

Filter Structural Elements

Working on a 100% Revit project? Seeing elements from a linked file you don't want to see? Often the Structural Engineer will model some of the same elements that we will in our model, such as load bearing walls, columns, etc. This can pose a problem when we go to print, as we will have some funny situations happening where these two walls are technically overlapping and model elements don't behave correctly (such as rooms, or hosted elements) although each release of Revit is improving the relationship between the main and hostel models.


The printing issues could be fixed in one of several ways, you could turn off the walls category in the linked model, but then walls that don't overlap (such as the foundations) would also disappear. You could manually hide each wall in each view, but that wouldn't be an efficient use of your time.

Another way to accomplish this is with filters and shared parameters. Have the structural Engineer create a shared parameter (called whatever they want, but in the past I have used 'Non-Frost Wall'. Then create a filter for it in Revit. Typically I call this filter 'Foundation'. The settings for the filter can be seen in the image below.

In your filters parameter settings, the filter simply needs to be set to 'visible' and you are set. Just remember to apply this filter to every view (which can be done with view templates).

Show Foundations in Elevations

One of the biggest things that seem to come up when doing work on elevations in Revit vs. Autocad is the ability to show the foundations on the building elevations.
If you are showing the topography also in the model, naturally it covers up the foundations (which are probably drawn by your structural engineer) with the typical earth hatch. How do we then show the foundations?

Actually it is easier than you might think. When in elevation, temporarily change your view type to 'wireframe'. Then under the 'Annotate' tab select 'drafting line' then use the 'Pick Lines' tool and you will be able to select any of the edges of your foundations and foundation walls. Be sure to select the appropriate line type (which you can also change after the fact) and return the view to the proper type of shading (probably hidden) when done.