Revit 2014 - Infill Elements for Existing Phases

by Justin Doughty

Keeping “Existing” elements displaying correctly in a Revit project can sometimes become troublesome. A good example is an existing building, when placing a new roof light in a new phase, this will show a square in the original existing phase at the location of the roof light. If producing before and after visual examples, this may become an issue.

The square in the views is a roof infill, that cannot be changed. This is explained in the below Help article:

Infill Elements for Phasing 
http://help.autodesk.com/view/RVT/2014/ENU/?guid=GUID-317406A0-ACF8-404B-B9BD-739010A41AB3

So to resolve this issue, a workaround is to create 3 phases:

Existing – only the original building

Phase 1 – this can be anything, we need this phase as a “blocker” for the infill elements.

New – only new elements

In the example of the roof light, duplicate the existing roof in the same location and place the second roof on “Phase 1”

Then in the “New” Phase place the roof light. The roof light infill will then only be visible in “Phase 1”. An example below with the second roof overly exaggerated in size:

This is a very useful tip to help keep your “Existing Phase” elements actually looking “as existing”.