When it comes to Revit, theories on workflow and implementation change on what seems to be a weekly and sometimes daily basis depending how deep into the rabbit hole you are. One such implementation strategy that I’ve long held to is teach the people how to detail first. This covers all flavors of sin in Revit including the use of Lineworks Tool, Cut Profile and Masking Regions… let’s start with that one: Masking Regions.

I swear I will never, EVER, tach someone to use Masking Region tool ever again! I’m just so tired of spending hours modeling a portion of a building, only to have an elevation or detail of that model “fixed” at the last minute with a Masking Region instead of just coordinating and saying “hey we need it this way now.” I have officially worked on too many projects where this happens and we end up with a different model than detail.

Who cares about the model right? Wake up people! AIA contract wording is changing! The model is a viable deliverable method these days. If you want to generate those RFIs, go right ahead and keep doing it this way. If you want your details to read differently than the Model of the Building that contains all the Information, then I suggest you consider a program called MS Paint; it has line tools and and text. On the other hand, if you think that the view you are using to document the model should actually reflect what the model has to say about your project, and you’re still using Masking Regions (or heavens forbid an Opaque White Filled Region) to modify your views, I would highly suggest you seriously look at the Revit User’s Manual in regards to detail tools and sit down and really figure out how to get the model to look that way (some TotDs will be coming up on this, hopefully sooner than later!)

Till then,