Working with Displace - Revit Tutorial

Displace feature in Revit allows us to create a custom view that pulls apart the model, and shows it graphically how everything fits together. It's very much like one of those exploded 3D views you often see in assembly instructions for a bicycle, or for some other product that you have to put together yourself. Displace offers a way to give a very unique presentation to some part or all of your Revit projects. So in this movie, I'd like to just give you a general overview of what the displace feature is all about. So I'm in a file here called Displace, and I'm in a 3D view called Start. And the first thing you want to know about the displace feature is, it only works in 3D views. Now if you look at my project browser over here, you can see I actually have quite a few 3D views already in this file. So I'm going to show you a couple of those right now. This one's called Start, and nothing here is displaced. But we could use this feature to get to something that is quite extreme. So here you could see that this is sort of like the end result of taking several objects throughout this model and displacing them. And then if you couple that with these lines right here, you could see that we can put these path lines to kind of show how everything fits back together. Now even though I'm looking at this from the same vantage point that I just started in, it's important to realize that this is a 3D view. So you can actually spin this thing around. So unlike one of those exploded diagrams that you might see again for a bicycle instructions, this is interactive. You can manipulate this, and you are actually able to touch the individual objects. Now when I highlight this, it says it's a displacement set. We'll be talking about displacement sets and paths, and all the mechanics in later movies. But if you want to actually reach in and get to the object itself, you just press your tab key, and then when I do that you'll see that it's now showing me that, that's the basic roof underneath. So doesn't look that much different. But it's important to understand that all of this displacement is actually happening in the context of something we call a displacement set. Now since we said that this has to be done in a 3D view, we might want to just quickly review some of the ways that we can create. And manipulate 3D views to kind of get us started. We also want to keep in mind that everything that we do in this Displace feature, is view specific. So it's going to behave just like text, annotation, dimensions or any other view specific element. The easiest way I can illustrate that to you is to right-click this view, and duplicate it. So, if you know the difference between Duplicate and Duplicate with Detailing, then keep in mind that the same two are going to apply here to a Displace view. So if I chose Duplicate with Detailing. I'm going to get an exact copy of this view, including all of the displacements, all of the displacement paths, everything will look exactly the same. But if I go back to that original view, right-click, and choose simply Duplicate, you see how it's back to my starting view. All the displacements gets turned off, all of the paths go away. So keep in mind that everything you do, in displacement, is view specific. And if you want to duplicate it you have to make sure you choose duplicate with detailing. So I'm just going to take these two views here that I just copied, those duplicate ones that I'm just going to get rid of those. That takes me back to my displace view. Now, it is possible with a little bit of cleverness, to set up a 3D view that kind of looks like an elevation or plan, if you in fact want to use this feature in those vantage points. So you can here that I have a displaced elevation, and a displace plan. Those are actually 3D views, so I've just used the view cube over here to orient them Orthographically. So here's the one that I've called a Displaced Elevation. And of course, when you open it, it doesn't look anything like an elevation. It looks like another 3D view. But if I just simply take this view cube here and click on the left face, it will orient that view orthographically. And I can zoom in. And for all intents and purposes, this is basically an elevation. So essentially that's the trick, is, you just take a 3D view, and make a copy of it. And then you orient it to either an elevation, or plan view if that's in fact what you want to do. And then when I displace this object I displaced it up and to the right, as opposed to displacing it in 3D. So let me just really quickly review how to create 3D views. And that can be done in one of a couple ways. So I'm going to start in the floor plan view. The displace feature will work in either orthographic, or perspective. So you can make either kind of view. And to create an orthographic view, it's just simply a matter of using the Default 3D View icon. Now the way this works of course, is if there's already a 3D view, it will just open it up. And that's the view called Bracket 3D. It has the little curly brackets around it. If that view doesn't exist, it will create one. That's simple way how you would create an orthographic view. You can always right-click this and duplicate it, and then change the orientation. If you want a perspective view. Start in the plan view, and instead of clicking right on this button, you hold the drop down, you grab the Camera. You pick your start point where you want to stand, you drag towards where you want to look. So imagine that your viewer is standing here with the camera and they're standing and looking this way. And then it will create a perspective looking in that general direction. So we can start with either kind of view, orthographic or perspective. You cannot change one to the other. So you have to start with one or the other. And even if you were to orient this to say a left view, like I did a moment ago, it is still in perspective. You just oriented to the left view but if I orbit this slightly, you can see that it's still in perspective. Okay. So, you either start with an orthographic, or a perspective. But you can't change between the two. And then you can go on to displace from there.