Turn off grids and levels from linked Revit projects

We link a structural revit project into most of our revit projects. We typically develop the grid and after finalizing it, let our engineers maintain it.

We cannot show their grids in our views because, Revit does not allow the linked grid heads/extension to be tweaked. So, we typically copy/monitor the grids. However, when we tweak the grid heads, we see the linked grid head beneath:

One could go into the visibility graphics, and switch off the grids from the linked file on a view by view basis, but exploiting the workset option is more elegant.

Go to File menu > Manage links… and select the structural model and select ‘Reload From…”

and select the same linked structural file. Before pressing ‘open’, select the small arrow next to the ‘open’ button:

and select specify. Then press ‘open’. Revit shows the ‘Linking Worksets…” dialog box.

Select the ‘Shared Levels and grids’ workset and press ‘close’ and then Ok and again Ok. Now the ‘Shared Levels and grids’ workset from the linked file is closed and is NOT visible in any Revit view. Even though the linked grids are not visible, Revit still ‘monitors it!!!

If for some reason you want to see the structural grids, you can repeat the steps above to make them visible.

Structural columns dont show up in detail views

This is a corollary to one of my previous posts: http://revitize.blogspot.com/2009/09/structural-framing-and-plan-display.html

Here is a structural column in the 2nd level plan view. There are two callouts – magenta is of Floor Plan type and the blue is of Detail View type.

The column goes from the 2nd level to 3rd level.

The respective callout views we get are:

and

But if the column is changed to span from 1st level to 3rd level like:

The column does NOT show up in the detail view type:

To make the column visible, you need to edit the family and uncheck the “show family pre-cut in plan views” option in the family category and parameters. More explanation on this here.

It is painful to edit structural families, because when we get the updated structural project from the engr., the family edit needs to be done again. Unless the structural engr does it in their project.

I would really like Autodesk to make this option as the default.