How to create a Scope Box in the Family Environment

Isn’t it strange that Scope Box is a property of datums (like Reference Planes and Levels), AND its also a Property of Views (Floor Plans, Elevations, Sections etc) in the FAMILY environment, yet there is no tool to create a Scope Box available? (we are talking Revit 2012 here)

If you add a keyboard shortcut to Scope Box – it doesn’t work in the Family Editor…

If you add Scope Box to the Quick Launch toolbar – guess what? The Scope Box tool suddenly ‘appears’ in the Family Editor – but it is always greyed out. Remove it from Quick Launch, and it disappears just as suddenly… check it out:
Open embedded content: www.youtube.com

How are we going to get around this one? Simple – use this method to transfer a Scope Box from the Project Environment to a family RFA. From there, we can copy the Scope Box from family to family as needed!

Here is another gift from What Revit Wants – a Generic Model family with a Scope Box in it that you can copy to other families:
Download family

It’s pretty funny that you can’t even Create Similar once you have a Scope Box in the family!

EDIT: Added video showing creation process:

Open embedded content: www.youtube.com

Discussion

8 archived comments. New comments are not enabled.

Steve 2012-04-03 00:19:33

How will you use a scope box in a family now that you have one? None of the things that it does have any role in the family editor.

Luke Johnson 2012-04-03 00:35:20

I had a family with Reference Planes that were really long, but I wanted to be able to quickly and easily crop the Front Elevation view in the Family. Sometimes the view Crop controls can be a pain when the aspect ratio of the view is exaggerated... so I'm basically using the Scope Box as a quick Crop tool.

I guess its not typical usage for a Scope Box, but I think saying 'none of the things that it does have any role' is going a bit far maybe?

Steve 2012-04-03 01:32:06

I guess I'm guilty of accepting the status quo. In my situation, I can't recall the last time I've cropped a view in a family.

I suppose if I was working on a really big one I might. I did recently for part of an airport but cropping the view wouldn't have helped.

There have been times that it would be nice to adjust a group of reference planes all at once so I'm not suggesting that having a scope box wouldn't be a benefit. I've often wished that reference planes behaved more like grids do relative to each other when adjusting one.

Did you check to see if the scope box shows up in the project environment?

Luke Johnson 2012-04-03 02:12:57

I didn't, but (checking...), nope it doesn't show.

Erik 2012-04-03 21:48:18

Hack-tastic!

Deise Amazonas 2015-03-23 22:22:30

revit architecture 2013 runs in windows 7 64 bits?

Anonymous 2015-10-15 19:25:52

Love it!

Earl Schrader 2022-11-24 16:33:42

I use scope boxes for cutting through objects to ensure they work and edit at times... Very beneficial in Projects and I have wished it was in families many times over.. I hope this works.