Video: Sketchy Lines

Use sketchy lines to give your work a hand-sketched appearance.

This video demonstrates the following:

  1. Understand how sketchy lines change the appearance of line work in a model.
  2. Apply sketchy lines to a view.
  3. Adjust the appearance settings for sketchy lines.
Note: This video was recorded using Revit 2015. When performing the procedures using Revit LT, you may notice minor differences in functionality and user interface.

Transcript

When you are presenting a project, you can use visual styles to present your work in a variety of ways, from a simple hidden line view to a fully rendered walkthrough animation. Use the Sketchy Lines display option to give the line work in a view a hand-sketched appearance. The sketchy lines display is a view specific setting. Begin by opening the view where you want to apply a hand sketched appearance. Then, on the View Control bar, click Visual Style and Graphic Display Options. Under Sketchy Lines, select Enable Sketchy Lines.

When you turn on sketchy lines, both the Jitter value and the Extension value are set to 0. Use the sliders to adjust the values from 0 to 10 to get the appearance you want. The Jitter value controls the degree of wave applied to the lines in the view and how many times the line is traced over. The Extension value controls how far the model lines' endpoints extend beyond the intersections. Click Apply to see the results of your changes without having to close the dialog.

When you apply sketchy lines in a view, all lines will have a hand-sketched appearance except datums which include grid lines, level lines, and view marks. Similarly, annotations such as text and dimensions are not affected when you apply sketchy lines. Notice that the trees in the view are less affected than the model lines by the jitter we applied. When line segments are short or curved as in the case of the lines that form the trees, the jitter effect will be minimal.

You can further modify the sketchy lines appearance in a view by choosing to smooth edges with Anti-Aliasing. When you select this checkbox, only the current view will use anti-aliased edges. If you want to apply anti-aliasing to all views in the project, open the Options dialog from the Application Menu. Then, on the Graphics tab, click Use for all views. Use this setting judiciously, as it can negatively affect overall project performance.

You can also include sketchy lines settings in view templates to apply sketchy lines to multiple views automatically. Managing display options in view templates can help you maintain consistency across multiple views in a presentation.