From the course: Revit 2026: Essential Training for Architects

View range - Revit Tutorial

From the course: Revit 2026: Essential Training for Architects

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View range

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- [Instructor] In this video, we want to begin looking at what controls the extents of a Floor Plan, and we're going to focus on a concept called View Range. And this video we're going to focus on the Cut Plane of the View Range. And in the next video, we'll look at some additional settings that are part of the View Range dialogue. Now, when we talk about the Cut Plane, we're talking about what determines what you're seeing in a Floor Plan. So, if you imagine slicing through your building at a certain height, anything from that slice down is typically what you're going to see in the Floor Plan. So, you can kind of see over here that we're slicing through the building, and everywhere where we're slicing gets that kind of bold line to indicate that it's being cut through. But elements that appear off in the distance below that point are usually rendered a little bit lighter. So, you can see this window sill here is displayed a little bit lighter than the other surrounding geometry, and that indicates that it's a little bit off in the distance beyond the Cut Plane. And that's what you typically see in a typical Floor Plan. So, let's jump back over here to Revit and do a really simple example. I'm up here on the Second Floor, and here in this Conference Room, we're cutting through a few windows over here. And above those windows in this model, we have another set of windows that are a different size. And so maybe I would like to see those higher windows, instead of these lower ones, here in this Floor Plan. Well, the Floor Plan is initially showing us the default View Range, the default Cut Height, but that's what we're going to adjust now. So, the way that you adjust the View Range is to look at the Properties of your Floor Plan. So, over here it says, Floor Plan, Architectural Plan, Level Two. That's good, I'm going to scroll down, and I'm looking for the View Range button. So, go ahead and click that button, that will display the View Range Dialogue. Now, this Dialogue does have a little Show button down here where you could expand it open, and there's a diagram there that explains, with a little key, some of the parts of this Dialogue and how they apply to different vertical locations within your model. So, we're going to be considering item number two here in this video. Now, to modify this, it's as simple as making a change to this value right here. Now, I'm going to cancel this for a moment, and I want to open up a View in this file that I've prepared to help us understand what we're trying to do. So, under Elevations, there's this Understanding View Range View, and I'm going to open that up, and you'll see the larger windows here, are the ones that we're seeing currently in the Conference Room. Those are being cut at the Standard Cut Plane of Four Feet Imperial 1,200 in metric, but the Clerestory windows up here are a little bit smaller. Those are the ones that I want to see. And those are at 12 feet or 3,600 millimeters. So, that's where I want to adjust the View Range to. So let me go ahead and close this window. Let's go back to the View Range. Now incidentally, the View Range has a keyboard shortcut. So, you can either scroll down and find the button again or you can type VR. So, here in the View Range, all we need to do is put in 12 feet here, right, or 3,600 millimeters. Trouble is when you try and click OK, it will complain that the Top Cut Plane is below the Cut Plane. So, the other rule that you need to understand here, about the View Range is these numbers can't get out of order. So, this has to be your tallest and this has to be your lowest. Now, they can be the same, so I can make the top the same as the Cut Plane, that's allowed, I just can't let the Top Plane drift below the Cut Plane. So, let's click OK here, and we've achieved the goal. We're now seeing the Clerestory windows, but I wouldn't necessarily call the rest of it a success. There are several problems with what we've done there. We are now up at a height where we're starting to slice through the roof. We're slicing above the doorways here and here. So, we're no longer seeing the doors. We're up in the ceiling and we're looking down on the lighting fixtures. We're not seeing anything really in the Conference Room anymore. So, by moving the Cut Plane up to that height, it does show the Clerestory windows, but everything else is now a problem. So, what I'm going to do is undo that, and let's look for an alternative. So, you certainly can adjust the Cut Plane of the entire Floor Plan, but alternatively, you can go to the View tab and under Plan Views, there's a tool here called Plan Region. And the way a Plan Region works is you sketch an area in your Floor Plan that will have a different View Range than the rest of the surrounding Floor Plan. You can use any shape you want here, I'm going to just use a rectangle, and I'm going to sketch out a little rectangular shape around just the windows that are in question here. I'll click Finish. And nothing appears to happen just yet, but the Plan Region is still selected. And now, if you look at its properties on the Properties Palette, it's just got the one button, Edit View Range. So, now I can click that, I can set both this and the top to 12, I can click OK, and now it is displaying the Clerestory windows in that location, and yet the rest of the plan is unaffected. So, that's a really simple example of adjusting the Cut Plane of the View Range. I hope that gives you a better understanding of how that functions. Now, there's plenty more to the View Range Dialogue, so we will begin exploring some of its other more nuanced settings in the next video.

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