Creating Exploded Views: Revit
A useful and overlooked tool in side of Revit is the Displace Elements tool, which allows you to create an “exploded” 3D view for showing parts and assemblies. The process is quite simple and offers a great way to enhance your documentation.
Because displacing elements is view specific, it is best to duplicate an existing 3D view or create a new 3D view specific for this purpose. To displace elements, start by selecting the element(s) that you want to displace. Selecting more than one object will group them together and displace the elements at the same distance. Once you’ve selected the elements, in the Modify contextual tab>View panel, select Displace Elements.
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Three grips will appear to displace the elements in the X, Y or Z direction. Elements can be displaced by selecting one of the grips and dragging the in desired direction. Alternatively, the displacement distance can be set to a specific distance in the Properties palette:
To display projection lines from the original location to the displacement, with the object selected, in the Modify|Displacement Set>Displacement Set panel, click Path and then select the corner of the displaced element where you want to locate the path.
To display a door, window or other hosted element separately from a wall, press < Tab> until the element is highlighted and follow the steps for displacing. Groups cannot be displaced as a whole, so to displace elements that are grouped, press <Tab> to cycle through and select the individual elements to then displace. If you no longer want an element to be displaced, select it, and in the Modify|Displacement Set>Displacement Set panel click Reset.
To display the displacement sets in a view, in the View Control Bar, click (Highlight Displacement Sets). The sets will display in color to make it easier to know what has been displaced in the view.