By Dennis Collin
For new or even existing Revit users, a common question is why they cannot see a certain element in a view. There are many reasons for this, the first question I always ask is, in what view are you expecting to see it in? And what element are you trying to see? Followed by, ‘what are you trying to achieve?’ and then take it from there.
There are many reasons why you may not be able to see it, but by narrowing down the view type, the nature of the component and a few checks, users can usually bring those annoying elements back into focus!
There are about 30 reasons why elements don’t show in a view including:
General Display Settings
- The element or category is temporarily hidden.
- The element of category is hidden in the view.
- The element is being obscured by another element.
- The element’s category or sub-category is hidden in the view.
- The element is outside the view’s view range.
- The view’s far clip depth is not sufficient to show the element.
Worksets
- The element resides on a work set that is not loaded within the project.
- The element resides on a work set that is not visible in the view.
- The element resides on a work set that is not visible within a linked file.
- The element resides on a work set that is not loaded within a linked file.
Groups, Design Options and Linked Files
- The element resides in a group and has been excluded from the group.
- The element is part of a design option that is not visible in the view.
- The element is part of a linked file that is not visible in the view.
- The element has one or more of its edges overridden as invisible lines.
Families
- The element is a family component and none of its geometry is set to be visible in the view type.
- The element is a family component and none of its geometry is set to be visible at the views detail level
- The element is set to not be visible at the category’s detail level
- The element has been placed outside the view’s crop region
- The element is an annotation element and is not located entirely within the annotation crop region.
- The element is not visible due to the current’s view discipline.
- The view’s display is prohibiting the visibility of the element.
- The element is affected by a filter applied to the view.
Display Customisation
- The element has an element override set to the background colour.
- The element has a category override set to the background colour.
- The element style is set to the background colour.
- The element is constrained to a scope box that is not visible in the view.
- The extents of the element itself don’t permit it to be seen.
- The element is a mass, and ‘Show mass’ has been disabled.
- The element’s host view has been deleted (area boundaries).
- The view scale is prohibiting the element’s visibility.
Other Issues
- The element is a linked file with extreme coordinates, which Revit cannot handle.
- The user has incorrectly identified the link to which the element belongs.
- The element is a link that is not it’s correct position.
The problem can be any one individual reason or a combination thereof. If the element is a model component and can be seen in another view, a good strategy is to employ a View Template which will resolve many, but not all the issues listed above.
If the view template doesn’t bring an element back into focus, then check element override settings and possibly the reveal hidden element’s function.
Once enabled, hidden elements display as magenta, with visible elements a dull grey. Simply click on the offending element and choose Unhide Element, category or filter as appropriate.
Further clues to the root cause of the display issue can be found within the Visibility Graphics Override Dialogue. If there are no tabs for Revit Links, Design Options or Worksets in the dialogue, they can be eliminated from the enquiry.
If any exhaustive investigation still yields no results, it is possible that the element may have been deleted or some file corruption may have occurred. Does an older backup file display the element satisfactorily? If so, it may be worth reverting to an earlier version. Alternatively, it may be worth contacting technical support, to see if they can help, to enable us to help you efficiently it would be helpful to have a history of the file, and what was done prior to the display issue taking place, including the use of any 3rd party Dynamo Scripts, Python or API (external routine) used to process the file.