Grids Don't Phase Me

We are dealing with a project that has an existing building, demo, and new construction requirements. There is a need to control the visibility of existing grids, grids that will be removed during the demo phase, and new grids.

There are a major limitations to grids that everyone should be aware of. You cannot control the grids by phase; therefore you cannot demo a grid or use phase filters to show/not show specific grids.

In a post by Steve Stafford from 2008 in the Augi Forums it was suggested that you can use worksets, design options, or Scope Boxes to control the visibility of grids. Thanks for highlighting this 5 years ago Steve! And this is still true today.

If your project is not workset enabled you are down to two options, scope boxes and design options.

I looked to explore this in greater detail. I found another limitation, that is related to a new “feature” in 2013. Grids that are created as multi segmented cannot be assigned to scope boxes (#FAIL). So if you have any grids that are multi segmented you will not be able to use scope boxes and your only options would be design options or worksets.

So, how do you use scope boxes to control grids?

1.       Draw your grids
2.       Draw your scope boxes
3.       Name your scope boxes
4.       Assign your grids to the scope boxes
5.       Set the visibility of your scope boxes per view (Overwrite to Invisible the ones you do not want to see)
In this example we start with an existing wall, a few columns and grids all on the existing phase.

(and in this example you will see that Grid 2 and B are multi segmented and will not work)

We then created a scope box.

   

 

 

The Scope Box is called “DEMO”

 

The next step is assign a scope box to each grid.

Grids 1 and A will not be assigned a Scope Box. It will show as None.

We do this so the those grids will always show up. We are not touching them.

Grid 2 and B cannot be assigned since these are Multi-segmented Grids - ask Autodesk why?

Grid 3 and C to be assigned to the DEMO scope box we created earlier.

  

Now we can demo a few columns (I set the visibility overwrite to RED so you easily see what is being demolished) I also changed the Phase Filter to show the Previous Phase (Existing) and Demo.

Now the new grids need to be added. I added NEW 2, NEW 3, NEW B, and NEW C. Created a new scope box called NEW. I then assigned these new grids to this new scope box. I also added a few columns to the new grid intersections. I quick feature to do this is select the All Grids feature first, then select the grids - the columns will drop at the intersections of the grids.

Notice that you do not see two scope boxes in my views.  That is because these scope boxes have specific views set to show or hide based on the Views Visible Settings.
When you have a scope box highlighted you can control the views via the Views Visible “Edit…” button.
In this case I selected the NEW scope box and used the settings below – I do not want the NEW scope box or the grids related to it to show in the EXISTING or DEMO views.

The DEMO scope box is set to show everywhere except the NEW view

In conclusion, using scope boxes to control your grids is a great method, but until Autodesk change the ability to control multi segmented grids you might need another option like design options or worksets.
If you would like to download this model to explore further, use this link.
Good luck out there and don't let grids phase you. :)