Live Elevations & Sections in Layout

[Joe Carrick]

I know Scott has been complaining about this FOREVER but I thought I'd just bring it up again. Why should we have to close the Elevation or Section View in order to get the corresponding Layout to be updated?

[Canuck]

....Because programmers have a sense of humour? There isn't any other logical reason. If anything, a "refresh" button should be added for instant updates without closing the window.

[Joe Carrick]

How about just automatically updating - no button or anything else.

[sutcac]

Not sure this is a great reason, but you can go into a live view and add annotations and not have to update the 3D view and the annotations still come through to layout. So, you can save some lag time there, especially in complex models where the updating can take as much as 30 seconds. Doesn't sound like much but when you are going in and out of several sections at one pass, the annoyance factor can be pretty high. If I am just doing annotations, it is much faster.

And, you don't have to redo Edit Layout stuff.

[joey3032]

What I have found, in short, is that the view is "exploded" in order to give us the freedom to use the layout edit tool. If you notice, when you send a camera view to layout, you are not sending a "camera view" you are sending a 2D facsimile of the 3D view. Hope that makes some sense.

[Doug Park]

We don't do it automatically currently because the computational cost is high so wouldn't want to impose that on you every time something is modified. While we could potentially speed up the calculation of lines for layout and make it fast, even then it makes sense to give you the option of choosing when to update the view.

Doing it when it is closed is somewhat sensible because that is a clear signal that you are likely done doing modifications. Having an update now button is also reasonable, but asking on close would still make sense if modifications to the view had been made since the last update.

[Joe Carrick]

As much as possible I do all editing and notation directly in the view before sending to layout.

I have some items in the Layout that are strictly CAD created in the Layout itself. Since these items are not effected by layout box updates, I don't worry about them.

I am curious why updates of Sections and Elevations would be more of a problem than are the Plan Views - which are automatically updated whenever a change is made in the Plan.

[dshall]

I believe REVIT has auto updates for sections and elevations, if I had to guess, Softplan does as well, but don't know for sure. I wish we could hit a button and all sections and elevations would update without having to open and close a view. I was really hoping X6 would do this.

[moak]

I wish we could hit a button and all sections and elevations would update without having to open and close a view. I was really hoping X6 would do this.

Me too.
It gets pretty tedious when you have a bunch of interior elevations to do as well.

[sutcac]

I am curious why updates of Sections and Elevations would be more of a problem than are the Plan Views - which are automatically updated whenever a change is made in the Plan.

I suspect Joey has the answer---

If you notice, when you send a camera view to layout, you are not sending a "camera view" you are sending a 2D facsimile of the 3D view. Hope that makes some sense.

It seems to me the plan view is less an actual view of the model than other views are. The plan is more symbolic, hence 2D blocks for objects that don't necessarily look like the model in a top-down view. This updates much faster.

[dshall]

This happened to me again today, forgot to update rear elevation, new doors were not reflected, sent review set to client, he called me on it, egg on my face again, at least give us a button to press to update all elevations in one fell swoop.

[sutcac]

Yeah, that happens to me too. I would be all for that button.

[Doug Park]

A button to update everything is certainly something that could be done.

However, I would still strongly suggest a review of every detail before sending it out because there are simply way to many things that could go wrong that only a visual inspection would uncover.