Visibility issues related to invisible elements are often in Revit. It is important to know all possible causes before you try to unhide it.
Various reasons can cause an element to be invisible, and it’s important when you find a reason to undo all previous steps and repeat the last one. There are steps you can follow in order to find a hidden element in Revit:
- Visibility/Graphics Overrides (VG) dialog. The most obvious, VG dialog is the first that you will check. Turn on all model and annotation categories (and sub-categories) in your VG dialog. Check visibility for Revit links as well. Set them to be displayed “By host view” instead of “Custom” or “By linked view”.
- View filters. Disable any filter you have in VG. Untick “Enable Filter” for all filters. In Revit 2020 and older you need to remove filters which is a bit complicated because of if you add them again you need to set their visibility/graphics again. So the best way is to make a screenshot prior to removing your filters.
- Brand-new view. If you want to locate the element create a new 3D/plan view (do not copy an existing view). It will be created with no graphic overrides, or anything custom applied in terms of visibility. Try to see your element from here.
- View Range. Set the view discipline to “Coordination”, and change the view range to unlimited for top and bottom range, as well as view depth. You can set some very high value for cut plane, and view to wireframe mode. Uncheck the crop view.
- Worksets and Revit links. If your model is workshared, check if all worksets are open and visible. Check if all of your Revit links are loaded, and that all worksets from links are opened. Note that they are not the same worksets as in your active host model.
- Design options. If you work with design options, check if the hidden element is in one of the non-primary options.
- Visual Style. Change the visual style to Shaded to see if element graphics overrides, or linework overrides, cause the element to be invisible.
- Detail levels. Go through the three levels of details (coarse, medium and fine) to see if a family is invisible in coarse detail level. You can open a family and check the visibility settings for any of the family elements.
- Phase and phase filter. Check phase and phase filter. Change Phase Filter to “None”. Change phases one-by-one and check the view each time to see if your element is visible now.
- Section line. If you can’t see a section line maybe its scale is coarser than the one specified in the “Hide at scales coarser than” instance parameter.
- Hidden by element. Although it is bad way to control visibility, people hide elements in a view very often. Click “Reveal Hidden Elements” in View Control bar to review hidden elements and unhide by element. If you have many elements hidden this way, especially in a complex model, it can take you a lot of time and effort to manage its visibility. You can use Dynamo script to automatically unhide anything that is hidden by element in the active view.
- Elevation/section view. If your element is hidden in elevation or section view, try to set Far Clipping to “No clip”, Visual Style to “Wireframe” mode, and uncheck the Crop View option.
