Revit 2017 - Elevation and Section Depth Cueing

By Dennis Collin

This is a long time coming to Revit, but with the advent of the new release of Revit we finally have a proper ability to set a distance fade in Section and Elevation Views in Revit. This will replicate the effect of things in the distance looking fainter in the distance than elements in the foreground. IE. The effect of a simulated mist, haze or fog. Which gives section or elevation views a real feel of depth.

Section, showing Cueing Effect

At the time of writing Distance Cueing doesn't seem to be available for Camera views and the help menus seem to confirm this by only talking about Section and Elevation types of views.

Typical Pre Revit 2017 Section View

Another thing to consider when setting up Distance Cueing Views is to consider the View Discipline! At the time of writing this fading of elements in view settings is only available for Architectural and Coordination disciplines.

To set up distance cueing for a view ensure that clipping is enabled with or without a line. Also that the discipline is Architectural or Coordination. Set the clipping line to the maximum extents of viewed objects (which is what we have done for years before)

Then activate the section/elevation view. Click on the Visual Styles Icon at the bottom of the screen and activate the Depth Cue settings. (if they are greyed out, you are in an incorrect discipline view or a camera)

The settings highlighted above are pretty simple;

Firstly Show Depth, enables or disables the cueing feature

1. The above image is illustrative not available in the view!

The Fade Start and End location sets the width of margin of the transitional zone of visibility IE. Where you can see things clearly and when things get completely obscured. Expressed as a percentage between section/elevation line position and the clipping boundary. Illustrated with the more and less Reference Planes in the image.

The Fade limit ,also expressed as a percentage sets how quickly things get obscured, Light means a more gradual fade, dark is more immediate. I.e. The Fog is denser and behaves more like the clipping feature in earlier releases of Revit.

Overall I am impressed with this new feature in Revit and reminds me of the Environmental Ranges settings you can set in Max for rendering purposes. My only request is that they make the range adjustments graphically editable in the view like the clipping depth which should then please most users. And maybe have a similar setting to Camera or at the very least non perspective 3D views? Maybe we this will be available in the R2 release!?

There are many more new features of note in the 2017 incarnation of Revit, and I will be covering more of these items in a future blog.