I have seen the situation where the Electrical designer was working on a remodel project and did not want their Existing electrical devices to be shown in the New Construction phase views. The existing electrical devices and equipment were only to be shown on views that displayed only existing information. However, they needed to show both the Existing and New Construction walls and other Architectural elements in the New Construction views. Revit doesn’t want to do this without changing the default settings.
By default, the linked Architectural elements will show the same phase as the host Electrical file’s view.
- If the Electrical file’s view has its Phase parameter set to New Construction, and the Phase Filter parameter set to Show Previous + New, you will see the existing elements for both files as well as the new elements for both files.
- If the Electrical file’s view has its Phase parameter set to New Construction, and the Phase Filter parameter set to Show New, you will only see the new elements for both files. Existing elements will not be seen for either file.
The Electrical designer achieved their desire of a combination of the 2 settings by controlling the Revit Link settings.
The Process
With the Architectural linked in, create a view in the host Electrical file to show the new Electrical elements.
- Set up the view’s Phasing parameters
- Set the Phase parameter to New Construction.
- Set the Phase Filter parameter to Show New.
- Change the linked file’s view settings
- Type VV or VG to open the Visibility/Graphics Overrides dialog box.
- Go to the Revit Links tab.
- To the right of the Architectural linked file, pick on the “By Host View” button under Display Settings.
- In the RVT Link Display Settings dialog box, go to the Basics tab and select the Custom option.
- Go to the Phase filter: option below.
- By default, it will say <By host view> (Show New)
- Change the Phase filter to Show Previous + New.
- Pick the OK button.
The view will now display only the New Construction Electrical elements, but show the Existing and New Construction elements in the linked Architectural file.
This same process can be used for any discipline with various linked files.
Applying Technology to Architecture 