3 Levels of Masking

You need to hide some model and annotation elements in Revit but you notice the masking region doesn’t hide annotation…what should you do?  One good approach is to look at this scenario on 3 levels; depending on where you would like to add the masking region and what you need to hide.  Special thanks to Helen Gorina for our initial implementation discussion on some of these and alternate approaches…

Level 1 – View, Model Elements Only

Adding a standard masking region in a view will hide model elements, but will not hide annotation elements in the view.

Level 2 – View, Model & Annotation Elements

If you would like to mask model and annotation elements in the view, instead create a new generic annotation family.  Add a masking region inside the family.  Add any desired dimensional instance parameters [such as a width and length instance parameter] so you can easily adjust each family size in the project.

Load & insert this family in the project under Annotate > Symbol.  **Keep in mind this is a generic annotation family so it will scale based on the view scale.**  So it works best for views placed on a sheet where the scale has already been determined.

If you want to take it further you can prevent the view scaling and still mask in the same manner through the following steps instead:

1.  Create a detail component family.

2.  Create the generic annotation family containing the masking region.  Under Family Parameters, check Shared.  Add any dimensional parameters as needed.  Load into the detail component family.  Highlight the instance and associate the same parameters you created in the nested family.

3.  Load the detail component family containing the shared nested generic annotation family into the project.

4.  Place as needed; this will both hide model \ annotation elements and maintain the original size with any changes to view scale.  See the example video below [no sound]:

Video Example

Level 3 – Sheet; Model & Annotation Elements

While you can add the generic annotation family containing the masking directly in a sheet, it will not mask the model \ annotation elements in a viewport.

What does work is creating a new drafting view.  In this drafting view add the same generic annotation \ detail component family from #2 above.  Drag the drafting view onto the sheet [overlapping the other view you need to mask].  Edit the drafting view viewport type > duplicate the type & set Show Title > No. 

Then you can move the drafting view where needed to overlap the viewport beneath it.  Also you can activate the drafting view and easily move the masking where needed or copy additional instances of the masking families.