Producing a perspective in Revit requires no new modelling. The model already exists from the walls, floors and roofs you drew. What remains is placing a camera, choosing how the view is drawn, and setting the sun for the place the building actually stands.
This article covers all four on the 2027 release, including one setting that a great many Revit projects in Vietnam get wrong while the software reports no error at all. To learn modelling and documentation end to end, see the Revit Architecture course.
Revit 3D views: axonometric to check, perspective to present
Everything starts on the View tab, Create panel, 3D View button. Its menu holds three items.
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Default 3D View | Opens the default axonometric view named {3D}. This is the working view |
| Camera | Places a camera in plan and creates a perspective view |
| Walkthrough | Creates a path and exports an animation |
The {3D} view is axonometric. Lines parallel in reality stay parallel on screen, there is no vanishing point, and dimensions can be measured straight off the view. That suits checking the model rather than presenting it.
You do not need a new camera to get a perspective. The Properties palette of a 3D view has a Projection Mode box: switch it from Orthographic to Perspective and the change is immediate.
On a large project a 3D view is for inspection rather than admiration. Open it and gaps or misalignments show up at once.
| No. | Component | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Elevation with balconies | In three dimensions it is obvious whether the balcony rhythm is even and whether any handrail run is missing. On a 2D elevation it is far harder to see |
| 2 | Glazing beside the curved corner | Where the curved wall meets the glazing is the most error-prone part of all. Orbit around it a few times and gaps between panels reveal themselves |
An inspection view is best left shaded with shadows off: it draws quickly, and no shadow hides a defect. To remove clutter, right-click an element, choose Hide in View then Category, and the whole category disappears from this view alone. A more systematic approach to visibility is covered in hiding and showing elements in Revit.
To cut into the building and see the structure inside, use a section box, described in detail in creating sections in Revit.
A Revit camera view: two ribbon boxes and how to aim it
For an image that matches what the eye sees, place a camera. Four steps:
- Open the plan view of the storey you will stand on.
- Go to View, then 3D View, then Camera.
- Click once for the viewer position.
- Click again for the point being looked at.
After the second click Revit creates a view named 3D View 1 and opens it.
Offset is eye height above the level, prefilled at 1750.0 mm, the eye height of a standing person. From is the level it is measured against.
This is where the 2027 release differs from older ones. Older releases put these two boxes on the Options Bar together with a Perspective tick box. The 2027 release moves them into a contextual ribbon panel and drops that tick box entirely: the camera tool always produces a perspective view.
The most precise way to aim a perspective in Revit is with two numbers in the Properties palette.
| No. | Component | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Projection Mode | Reads Perspective, unlike the Orthographic of the {3D} view |
| 2 | Eye and Target Elevation | Both read 1750.0, meaning the line of sight is horizontal |
With Eye equal to Target the sight line is level, and vertical building lines stay vertical in the image. Raise Eye above Target and the view looks downward, at which point verticals begin to converge.
| Kind of view | How to set the two elevations |
|---|---|
| Pedestrian | Eye 1500 to 1750, Target equal to Eye. This is the most truthful angle |
| From the building opposite | Eye 6000 to 12000, Target around 3000. Roof and yard both visible |
| Bird's eye | Eye tens of metres, Target at yard level. Used to introduce a whole site |
A more visual method is to open plan and perspective side by side and drag the camera symbol in plan. Right-click the view name in the Project Browser, choose Show Camera, and the camera appears with its cone of vision. Autodesk describes orienting a camera to another view on the page Specify the Camera Position in a 3D View.
To keep an angle you have settled on, click the lock icon on the View Control Bar and choose Save Orientation and Lock View. A locked view keeps its direction however much you orbit. The Locked Orientation box in Properties only reports the state and ticks itself once the view is locked.
A perspective view has no scale. Where a plan shows 1:100 on the View Control Bar, a perspective shows the word Perspective. It can be placed on a sheet, but carries no scale and nothing on it can be dimensioned.
Revit display styles: six of them, and the one that is gone
Revit draws the same view in six different ways. The selector sits on the View Control Bar at the bottom of the screen.
| Style | How it draws |
|---|---|
| Wireframe | Lines only, seen through every surface. Fastest, useful on heavy models |
| Hidden Line | Lines only, but correctly occluded. This is the style for printed drawings |
| Shaded | Material colours with light shading. The most common working style |
| Consistent Colors | Flat colour that does not vary with surface orientation. Good for diagrams |
| Textures | Shows material images without full lighting |
| Realistic | Shows material images and computes lighting. The heaviest of the six |
The 2027 release no longer has Ray Trace, which older releases offered, and adds Textures instead. Older tutorials still mention Ray Trace; searching for it on 2027 will find nothing.
All three images above share one camera angle. Hidden Line gives clean lines on white. Shaded fills by material colour with light and shade. Realistic adds the textures, so roof tiles and timber read clearly.
Graphic Display Options: shadows, ambient light and background
The first item on the display style menu opens a dialog gathering everything about how a view is drawn. Seven collapsible groups.
| No. | Component | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Model Display | Style is the display style; Show Edges draws outlines or not; Transparency makes the model see-through; Silhouettes thickens the outer profile |
| 2 | Shadows | Cast Shadows turns on sun shadows; Show Ambient Shadows adds soft shading in recesses |
| 3 | Lighting | Scheme picks the lighting type; three sliders, Sun, Ambient Light and Shadows, set their strengths |
The Lighting sliders are prefilled at Sun 30, Ambient Light 0 and Shadows 50. Raising Ambient Light lifts the faces turned away from the sun and softens the image. It is the first thing to reach for when a view looks too contrasty.
The remaining groups matter less but are worth knowing. Sketchy Lines gives a hand-drawn wobble suited to early design images. Depth Cueing fades elements with distance. The Realistic group tunes the Realistic style alone.
The Background group offers four choices: None for white, Sky for a graduated sky with a ground colour box, Gradient for three user-set colours, and Image for a photographic backdrop to composite against.
This background affects only the view on screen and in print. A rendered image has its own background set in the rendering dialog, covered in rendering in Revit. Setting one does not change the other.
Revit project location: the Boston default makes every shadow wrong
Shadows are only correct once Revit knows where on Earth the building stands. The sun dialog opens from the sun button on the View Control Bar, item Sun Settings.
| No. | Component | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Presets | Besides <In-session, Still> there are four presets: Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox and Fall Equinox — the two solstices and two equinoxes |
| 2 | Location, Date, Time | Place, date and time. These three decide the whole sun direction |
Solar Study offers four modes: Still for one instant, Single Day for one day, Multi-Day for several, and Lighting for an artificial sun whose azimuth and altitude you type in.
Lighting is the default mode, and it has nothing to do with date or location. It is fine for a flattering image, but cannot be used to study real shadows.
The default location of every new Revit project is Boston, latitude 42 degrees north. Leave it and every shadow in the set belongs to a North American city, with no warning from the software. This is the most common error in Revit projects in Vietnam.
Click the browse button beside the Location box to open Location and Site.
| No. | Component | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Project Address | Type a city name and click Search. The mapping service accepts the name with or without Vietnamese diacritics |
| 2 | Latitude and longitude | Read straight off the map. Hanoi gives latitude 21.02833366 and longitude 105.85404205 |
| 3 | Weather Stations | The nearest stations with their distances. The closest to Hanoi is 506685, 4.95 km away |
Two settings are easily missed. Define Location by defaults to Internet Mapping Service, which needs a connection; without one, switch to Default City List. Use Daylight Savings time must be off, because Vietnam does not shift its clocks, and leaving it on puts every shadow an hour out.
The Site tab carries Angle from Project North to True North, where the difference between drawing north and true north is declared. The practical approach is to keep the plan square to the building for ease of drafting, then declare the angle here, rather than rotating the whole model to true north.
Revit shadows at a Vietnamese latitude differ from foreign references
Set the location to Hanoi, then apply the two solstice presets in turn, and the results diverge sharply.
At midday on the summer solstice the shadow sits almost entirely beneath the building. Hanoi is at latitude 21 degrees north while the sun that day stands at 23.4 degrees north, so it is nearly overhead, at an altitude of about 88 degrees. At midday on the winter solstice that angle falls to roughly 46 degrees, so the shadow lengthens markedly and swaps to the north.
This is what foreign references cannot teach a practitioner working in Vietnam. At northern temperate latitudes the midday shadow falls north all year. In the tropics the midday shadow changes side with the season, and in summer there is almost none.
The consequence lies in the design, not in the image. Sunshades, overhangs and setbacks have to be sized against the real shadow of the place being built on, not against an example from a foreign textbook. When laying out a site, spacing between blocks deserves the same check, as covered in Toposolid in Revit.
Revit sun path: reading sunrise and checking the location
Switching Sun Path On draws a compass ring and the arc the sun travels on the day currently set, directly in the view.
| No. | Component | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Time label | The hour currently set, here 12:00 PM. Select the sun disc and drag it along the daily path to change the hour; the shadows follow immediately |
| 2 | Compass ring | The outer ring around the building, marked N, E, S and W. To change the date, drag the sun disc perpendicular to the daily path along the figure-8 analemma, or select the disc and press the Up or Down arrow key |
| 3 | Date label | Revit prints the date being studied directly on the view. The 6:31 AM sunrise label sits right on top of it |
Revit also prints sunrise and sunset times on the view. Both are computed from the coordinates you declared, which makes them the quickest check that the location is right: a sunrise noticeably out from reality means the location is wrong.
The sun path also teaches well. Switch it on, drag the sun disc back and forth, and the relationship between orientation, season and shadow becomes obvious. Autodesk documents the full range of solar study modes on Define Sun Settings for a View.
Try it: two saved views and the sun set for the real site
A thirty-minute exercise. It runs through the whole sequence for a perspective in Revit, on a model that already has a building in it.
- Open Default 3D View. Hide the Toposolid and Planting categories to see the building clearly.
- Switch Projection Mode to Perspective and look at the result. Note how it differs from Orthographic, then switch back.
- Return to the ground floor plan. Place a camera looking at the front of the building from the street. Note the two boxes on the ribbon Camera panel.
- Rename the new view
PC-01 STREET. Set Eye and Target Elevation both to 1600. - Place a second camera looking down from above, named
PC-02 OVERALL, with Eye 15000 and Target 3000. - Open Sun Settings, choose Still, click the browse button and find the city the building is being built in. Note the latitude and longitude.
- Clear the Use Daylight Savings time box.
- Apply Summer Solstice then Winter Solstice, capture both and compare the shadows.
- Switch Sun Path On. Note the sunrise and sunset times for the day currently set.
- Turn on Cast Shadows in Graphic Display Options, set Background to Sky, and save the project.
Steps 6 and 9 check each other: the sunrise read in step 9 has to match reality for the city declared in step 6.
Frequently asked questions
Shadows do not look like reality — where is the fix?
Almost certainly the project location is still Boston. Open Sun Settings, click the browse button beside Location, and set the city the building is being built in.
Shadows are switched on but nothing appears. Why?
Three possibilities. Cast Shadows is off in Graphic Display Options; Solar Study is in Lighting mode with too high an altitude; or it is midday in summer at a Vietnamese latitude, and that is the true shadow.
Why can a perspective view not be given a scale?
Because a perspective has a vanishing point, so the same object measures differently near and far within one image. For a 3D view that carries a scale, use an axonometric view.
Where has the Ray Trace style gone?
The 2027 release removed it. Use Realistic on screen, and the Render command when a high quality image is needed.
Related articles
- Rendering in Revit — the next step: materials, render quality and exposure
- Creating sections in Revit — section boxes and perspective sections
- Hiding and showing elements in Revit — visibility control for presentation views
- Toposolid in Revit — the ground and site plan the shadows fall on