Revit Tip: My Family Won’t Cut in Section Views

You may have loaded a family into your Revit model, let’s say a piece of furniture, and you go to cut your section just like usual. But when you look at that section, you notice that you are looking at that furniture family in elevation, even though you are cutting right through it! Revit does a great job of cutting through walls and floors and casework and ducts and more, but some categories you can never seem to see a cut view of.

It turns out, this is completely by design. Revit has divided its categories into “cuttable” and “non-cuttable”. The cuttable categories are:

• Casework
• Ceilings
• Columns
• Curtain Wall Panels
• Doors
• Floors
• Generic Models
• Roofs
• Site
• Structural Columns
• Structural Foundations
• Structural Framing
• Topography
• Walls
• Windows

And the non-cuttable categories are:

• Balusters
• Detail Items
• Electrical Equipment
• Electrical Fixtures
• Entourage
• Furniture
• Furniture Systems
• Lighting Fixtures
• Mechanical Equipment
• Parking
• Planting
• Plumbing Fixtures
• Specialty Equipment

When you review the list, the distinction kind of makes sense: the cuttable families are elements that you would need to show the constructability of in construction documents. How does a contractor or sub actually build this? On the other hand, the non-cuttable families are elements that you would probably buy “off the shelf” and not need to tell anyone how to put together. It might be a faucet from a home improvement store, or a plant from a local nursery, or even an end table from a Swedish based flat-pack furniture store with an affinity for umlauts over vowels in their product name. Someone has to put that stuff together, but not the company that is putting your building together. And Revit doesn’t want to waste the contractor’s time showing them the insides of items that they don’t need to see the insides for.

For more detailed information, check out the links below, including more information on some parameters associated with the cuttable families. Interested in training for Revit? Click here.

Cuttable families

Non-cuttable families