Revit 2015 - Transparency in Elevation or Section Views

by Justin Doughty

The default behaviour of Revit can sometimes catch us out. I was recently asked by a user, how could they get their elevation to show a window as transparent? Their 3D view did this, however the elevation did not, even with the same detail level and visual style.

A simple example of this behaviour is a glass curtain wall, in a 3D View this is transparent, however in any section or elevation the materials do not show as transparent. There are 2 simple ways to change this:

First is to orientate a 3D view to the elevation view, 3D views are already setup to show the materials transparency:

This gives you what looks like an elevation, with all of its transparency.

The second option is for an actual elevation or section view. In the view, select either the entire curtain wall (if all glazed) OR the individual panels, right click and override the graphics in view, by element. Here we can set the transparency: