Revit 2011 Create 3D Views

There are two kinds of 3D views in Revit: orthographic and perspective. 3D views are orthographic, and Camera and Walkthrough views are in perspective. You can’t change one to another after the fact, so select carefully.

Orthographic views will always show parallel edges along Cartesian X-, Y-, and Z-axes. Orthographic views are best if you need to show model information to scale. A lot of people don’t realize that it’s possible to dimension and detail in Revit from a 3D orthographic view. After isolating the part of the model that you want to dimension, the trick is to set the appropriate work plane.

before dimensioning.
As long as you’re careful about setting the work plane as you work, you can add dimensions and text to your views, as shown in

Create perspective views by placing the start and end points of a camera (typically from a plan view). It should be noted that the first point you select in plan is where the view will be taken from, but the second point is also the rotation origin for the view.

This is important because if you select a second point that is far beyond your view, when you open the view and attempt to modify it, it will rotate around a target that doesn’t seem to make sense. That’s because the target location of the view is off in the distance. A perspective view will not be to scale, but it can be made relatively larger or smaller by selecting the view’s boundary and then selecting the size crop from the Modify | Camera tab.

Once you do this, you’ll have the option to change the view size and field of view (proportionally or nonproportionally). You can also simply drag the nodes of the bounding box.

Camera extents are defined by the Far Clip Offset option, accessed in the View Properties’ View Extents settings.

If the Far Clip Offset is too shallow, the view will look something that.

Geometry that you’d expect to see will be “clipped” in the view.

Simply increase the Far Clip Offset value to show more of the model. You may also do this graphically by returning to a plan view, right-clicking the view, and selecting Show Camera.

Once the camera is shown in your plan view, you may select the node at the far end of your clipping plane and manually drag the node to extend the Far Clip Offset of your view.

Finally, 3D views (even walkthroughs) contain section boxes, which become active when selecting the Section Box option.

This will allow you to control how much of the project is shown and is helpful for creating cutaway visualizations in real time or in renderings.