“I know I modelled the layers, so where are they?” Almost everyone asks this in their first month with Revit. You build up a wall type, set the stud, the sheathing, the drywall, and the plan still draws each wall as two lines with nothing in between. The layers are there. The view is on Coarse, and Coarse hides them.
Detail Level is in the view control bar
Look at the bottom-left of any view, next to the scale. There’s a small icon with three options: Coarse, Medium and Fine. Set it to Fine and the wall layers appear in plan immediately. No regeneration, no visibility settings, nothing to override. It’s a per-view property, which is why a wall can look right in one plan and wrong in another.
Same thing in section
Open a section and it’s the same story. On Coarse, walls, floors and roofs are drawn as simple outlines. Switch the section to Fine and every layer of every wall, floor and roof in the building shows up. If you’ve ever been confused why your building section looked like a diagram, this is usually why.
Why Coarse and Medium exist
This isn’t Revit being difficult. A lot of views don’t need that detail. A 1/16″ overall plan, a site plan, a quick study view: those read better with clean outlines and they draw faster. So Revit lets you decide per view. Leave it on Coarse or Medium where you want a simpler drawing, and go to Fine where the assembly matters.
Detail Level is one of the settings I deliberately leave unchecked in my view templates, so it can still be changed view by view. And it affects more than walls: steel beams and columns behave the same way, which I cover in the next quick tip.
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🔗 RESOURCES
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📐 Notion Business OS for Architects (free + paid templates): https://cpd.gumroad.com/l/civaw
📐 Free Notion Issue Tracker for Architects: https://cpd.gumroad.com/l/cjlls
🌐 More Revit tutorials: https://corbinteaches.com
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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Where are my wall layers?
0:24 Detail Level in the view control bar
0:37 Same result in section
0:47 Why Coarse and Medium exist
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CONNECT
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