Revit Tip – Customising Revit Section Lines – Part 1

By Dennis Collin

A common question I get from Revit users is, can I modify the appearance of section lines and symbols? This is often required as lines and symbols can obscure elements that need to be presented on drawings, particularly in busy areas.

Typically, a section line is displayed as a solid black line, but a gap can be introduced by selecting the line, clicking on the blue break symbol and enable the gap. The gap can be reinstated by repeating the task and toggle the break off.

Another question is, can the section line’s tail be supressed or have a second arrow label showing the view reference? This is also possible via an on-screen toggle, Revit will cycle through an arrowhead, tail and blank to suit the user’s preference.

In addition, section line appearances can be customised via the Object Styles interface. These kind of style customisations are the kinds of settings that are typically defined in your organisations Revit template.

Adjusting the section line appearance will affect its appearance in all views.

To control what is shown in the section view, clipping depths can be applied to set a limit of what the view can ‘see’. Any elements outside the clip will not be displayed.

It is also possible to stagger the section cut line to omit certain elements from views without having to apply view filters of manual hide element functions. Simply click on the section line and choose ‘split’, adjust the line to suit requirements. To remove the split just drag the offset section back to the original section line position.

A common question is, can the arrow symbols look different or have a custom appearance? This will involve editing the system family within Revit, assigning different view annotation families, and ideally storing in a project template. This process will be covered in a future post.