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418 | ChaptER 11 Visualization

You’ll likely struggle with two important points about rendering in Revit, and unfortunately
there’s little that you can do about it, because the two are in tension with each other:

◆ ◆ Although engineers often analyze in order to design, architects often visualize in order to
design. But if your intent is to put all of this visual iteration into Revit just to render it, you’ll
probably get frustrated over all the chaff you’re putting into a database that you want to
keep light and flexible (particularly during early design). The reality is that Revit is most
useful during early design to communicate analytic rather than visually representative
information.
◆ ◆ You’ll never be able to render out of Revit more than you put into it. The level of detail
required to create deeply emotive and detailed visualizations is usually far greater than
the level of detail necessary to produce accurate construction documentation. In fact, creat-
ing, changing, and resolving that level of detail may bring your project documentation to a
grinding halt!
Even though Revit has the ability to help you create great renderings, the level of detail
required at the beginning of a project (when analytical relationships are still being resolved) is
too much detail for schematic design. Even when the project is well resolved and established,
the level of detail required for a highly finished and photo-realistic visualization is far beyond
what’s required to complete your project documentation. So what is the point of this chapter?
Our focus is to get you somewhere in the middle. You need to understand how Revit
works, but you also need to understand that although something may be technically feasible,
it may not be practical from a workflow standpoint. Overall, our goal is to help you focus on
communication, not just visualization for its own sake. So if you’re happy with visualizing your
project at its current level of development (not too far ahead and not overly detailed), you’re
going to have a lot of success rendering with Revit software.

analytic vs. photo-realistic Visualization
Throughout this chapter we will refer to basic modes of visualization as analytic as compared to the
more advanced modes we will refer to as photo-realistic. While photo-realistic visualization is self-
explanatory, analytic visualization is the most common form of communicating with 3D views in
Revit. although you will not achieve the true realism of a photo-realistic rendering, analytic views
are active views of the model within which you can create or analyze the design. You can even create
a camera view with analytic graphic settings to use as a cover sheet for your document set—and
you’ll never need to remember to regenerate a rendering to update the cover image!

Before we begin to address the two types of visualization techniques in greater detail, let’s
review the basic controls that are available to help you configure views for further visualization.

Understanding View Controls
In this section, we’ll describe the various visual styles that are available in the view control bar
with regard to analytic visualization. Figure 11.1 shows the view control bar of an orthographic
view and that of a perspective view.

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