BIM Tips: A Guide to the Revit View Control Bar and Its Interface Buttons

Article source: Binfu BIM Consulting

The View Control Bar is positioned just above the status bar at the bottom of the Revit window, offering quick access to tools that influence the drawing area. Its interface includes the following controls:

Clicking the buttons on the View Control Bar, from left to right, performs these functions:

• Set the view scale to options such as 1:100, 1:200, or other scales to facilitate easier viewing.
• Adjust the level of detail for the view to suit architectural drawing requirements by selecting from three options: Coarse, Medium, or Fine.
• Choose the model’s graphic style from five modes: wireframe, hidden lines, shading, consistent color, and realism. Additionally, a new tab called Graphics Display Options allows further customization. These settings apply to all view types.
• Toggle the sunlight path on or off, enabling detailed sunlight settings.
• Enable or disable shadows in the view to showcase the model’s lighting effects and enhance visual realism.
• Open or close the rendering dialog box (available only when the drawing area displays a 3D view).
• Activate or deactivate the clipping area.

• Show/Hide Crop Area: The crop area defines the visible range of items in the view. This feature consists of two tools: toggling the crop area on/off and showing/hiding the crop boundary. You can display the crop area and then enable cropping by dragging the crop boundary. Elements outside this boundary will be hidden from view.
• Lock/Unlock 3D View: Available only in 3D views, this command locks the 3D view, preventing rotation but allowing translation and scaling. This is useful when adding 3D dimension annotations or text, as it creates a new locked 3D view ideal for detailed 3D drawings.
• Temporary Hide/Isolate: Clicking this dropdown reveals several commands:
  • Isolate Category: Displays only elements of the same category as the selected element, hiding all others.
  • Hide Category: Hides all elements of the selected element’s category.
  • Isolate Elements: Shows only the selected elements, hiding everything else.
  • Hide Elements: Hides the selected elements from the current view.
  • Reset Temporary Hide/Isolate: Restores the visibility of all elements.
• Show Hidden Elements: Reveals all previously hidden elements, highlighting them in color while graying out visible elements.
• Temporary View Properties: Enables the temporary application of template properties and allows restoring the original view properties.
• Show/Hide Analysis Model Temporarily: Displays only the analysis model category, hiding the physical models in the project view. This temporary mode highlights structural analysis lines and does not save with the project. Disabling this option exits the temporary analysis view.
• Highlight Displacement Set: (Function description not detailed in the original content.)

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