I answered a question on the Revit City forum recently that I thought might serve as a good follow-up to last week’s Revit MEP piping filters post. A person had created filters to differentiate duct insulation thicknesses by hatch pattern. He would have created a filter similar to the following image in the Revit MEP, Visibility/Graphics Overrides dialog to define his filters by insulation thickness.
- Who Knew? Setting Electrical Wire Appearances in Revit MEP 2010: http://tinyurl.com/ygg26os
- Display Control of Revit MEP Pipes in a Plumbing Plan: http://tinyurl.com/yazuvbl
- Using Filters to Control Revit MEP 2010 Pipe Display-Part 1 of 2: http://tinyurl.com/yejmh7g
- Using Filters to Control Revit MEP 2010 Pipe Display-Part 2 of 2: http://tinyurl.com/yehcjyx
If you were to increase the line weight of an individual duct to which insulation had been applied you would see something similar to the image below when the duct was selected with Thin/Thick Lines toggled on.
The increase in duct line weight affects only the duct edges which, would be hidden by the insulation on the outside of the duct with the Model Graphics Style set to Hidden Line as shown on the horizontal duct with the magenta hatching in the image below.
Option A - Use a filter to control the display of the outer edge of the duct insulation in individual views
To adjust the line weight of the edges of the insulation with a filter click in the Projection/Surface > Lines column in the Visibility/Graphics Overrides to the right of an insulation filter as shown in the image above to specify the line weight for the filter lines. The result is shown on the vertical pipe with the purple hatching. Notice the vertical duct’s edges have a thicker line weight than the horizontal duct that matches the line weight of the elbow fitting. The default line weight for duct edges and fittings is 5.
Option B – Use object styles to control the display of the outer edge of the duct insulation in all views
If your goal was to increase the line weight of the outer edges of duct insulation in all views where it appears with or without hatching, you might take a look at Manage > Settings > Object Styles > Ducts > Insulation. As shown below, the default line weight value for Duct Insulation is 3. This value works pretty well if a dashed line is used to indicate duct insulation edges. However, if you were to set this value to 5, your duct insulation edges would match the default line weights of Revit MEP’s duct fittings and non-insulated ducts throughout a project unless of course, if they were overridden by a filter.
Filter Tips
The parameters you are offered under the Filter Rules on the right-hand side of the Visibility/Graphics > Filters tab are limited to those parameters that are shared by all of the categories you select from the Categories list in the middle of the dialog… and it appears, object subcategories.
For example, if you attempt to create a filter with Categories set to Duct and Duct Fittings and then open the Filter by: pull down on the right side of the dialog you will not find insulation thickness on the list of parameters to choose from. However, if you uncheck Duct Fittings and go back to the Filter by pull down, you will find that insulation thickness is now an available selection choice. If you select an out-of-the box duct (or pipe) fitting and check out its Instance Parameters you will find no insulation thickness parameter.
However, you might assume that since ducts and pipes both have instance parameters for insulation thickness that you would be able to check on both ducts and pipes as filter categories and then choose insulation thickness from the Filter by list to create a single filter for both ducts and pipes by insulation thickness. But, it is not to be. Even though they have the same parameter name of insulation thickness they cannot be specified with a single filter because they are each subcategories of their respective categories (duct and pipe) as illustrated in the Object Styles dialog.
