ACA - Multiple Cut Planes in One Sheet

You may have a situation where you would like to show the same plan area more than one time on the same sheet, with the same Display Configuration, but with two different cut planes. For example, you might have a door with sidelights and transom, and you might want to show a plan view cut at the usual cut plane height, through the door, along with a plan view cut through the transom.

This can be done, but you need to remember that the cut plane height is set in the Display Configuration. Recent releases of ACA have had a control on the Drawing Window Status bar that lets you change the value of the cut plane without having to edit the current Display Configuration through the Display Manager.

Someone unfamiliar with the way the cut plane is set in the Display Configuration might think that you could set up two viewports of the same plan area

and make model space active in one and simply change the cut plane for that viewport. Because both viewports use the same Display Configuration (High Detail in the example shown), using the Cut Plane Control to change the cut plane height in one viewport

changes the cut plane in both viewports.

Changing the cut plane back to 3'-6" will, of course, change it back in both viewports. In order to have different global cut planes for the two plans, you will need to have two separate Display Configurations. This is easily done in the Display Manager:

1. With model space in one of the plan viewports active, on the Manage ribbon tab, on the Style & Display panel, choose the Display Manager tool.
   
2. In the left pane, select the Configurations node under the current drawing.
3. In the right pane, right click on the current Display Configuration, which will appear in bold type, and choose Copy from the context menu.
   
4. In the right pane, right click in the white area below the list of Configurations and choose Paste from the context menu.
   
5. In the left pane, expand the Configurations node and select the copied Display Configuration - in the expample, High Detail (2).
6. In the right pane, on the General tab, rename the Display Configuration with a more meaningful name, if desired.
   
7. On the Cut Plane tab, set the desired Cut Height for the cut plane of the new Display Configuration.
   
8. Click OK in the Display Manager to accept the changes and return to the drawing.
9. Set the new Display Configuration current in the plan viewport where you want the new cut plane applied.
   

Because the two viewports now use different Display Configurations, the global cut planes can be different.

Multi-Sheet Plans and Revisions in Revit

Many projects have floor plans that end up being too large to fit on one Sheet. Revit makes splitting a single Level onto two or more Sheets fairly easy by setting up a Dependent View for each sector of the overall floor plan. Revit even includes a Matchline tool to make it easy to designate the extents that each Dependent View documents. Each Dependent View is then placed on its own Sheet.

When choosing where to break up your plan, and how far beyond the matchline each Dependent View should depict (model and annotation), keep in mind that Revit will automagically add a revision to the Sheet if a View on that Sheet contains the full extents of a revision cloud in that View. If you only place revision clouds on the Sheet itself, you have no worries. But for plan revisions, I prefer to place the revision clouds in the View, so there is no need to worry that the View will move on the Sheet without the revision cloud also moving.

If you show large areas of the model beyond the matchline or if the annotation crop extends well beyond the matchline, you are increasing the odds that a small cloud drawn on the View of one Sheet, but near the shared matchline, will also fall completely within the adjacent View's annotation area. If you are issuing both Sheets, that is not a big deal. But if you are only issuing the Sheet that actually has the revision, you would not want the revision to show up on the adjacent Sheet. Keeping things as tight to the matchline as possible will minimize the chance that this will occur.

Sometimes the way the project is laid out makes it difficult to establish a clean matchline to which you can closely crop the Dependent Views. Other times, a revision is relatively small and right next to the matchline. Here are a couple of ways to avoid having the revision show up on the adjacent Sheet.

1. If you have additional revisions in the same View, you can combine the cloud of the revision near the matchline with one that is farther away, and beyond the annotation area of the adjacent Sheet's View.A revision cloud does not have to consist of a single, closed loop of revision arcs. It can be open, and can also have multiple, unconnected runs of arcs. If any part of the graphics of a revision cloud is beyond the annotation area of a View, it will not show in that View, and will not result in a revision line on the Sheet on which that View is placed.
2. If you do not have additional revisions, you can edit the revision cloud to include a very small arc that does not fall in the annotation area of the adjacent View, in a discreet location in the View with the revision. If the graphics this generates disturbs you just as much as having a revision line on a Sheet that was not issued, and you turn off the display of revision clouds from previous revisions when making the next revision, you can wait until after you have printed the drawings to be issued, and then go back and add the small segment just before marking the revision as issued and turning off the display of the revision clouds for that revision.