How to resolve Revit warnings

Application Version: Applied All Revit

Issue:
The primary cause of Revit crashes is often non-maintained warnings.

Causes:
Many Revit users ignore the pop-up that appears in the lower right corner of the Revit screen. Additionally, users may not know how to address warnings even if they open the warning dialog box.

Solution:
In this cheat sheet, I will cover different cases of Revit warnings and explain how to resolve them. There are basic foundational principles that any Revit user needs to know in the Revit warnings system. Revit warnings have very distinct patterns.

The following lists common keywords in warnings that hint at what is not working in Revit:

1. “Joined but do not intersect”
   
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   • This dialog indicates that joined elements are no longer joined. To resolve this issue, you can either unjoin the elements involved in the warnings or join them back.
   • Using "Select Elements by ID," you can navigate to the element location easily.
   • The walls were having connection issues. Unjoining the walls and manually cleaning up resolves the warning.
2. “Could not create Wall Sweep. Two Wall sweeps are overlapping.”
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   • This dialog indicates that there are wall sweeps that are overlapping each other. The first step to resolve this warning is locating the element using the element ID.
   • Once you have located them, look for where the problem is happening.
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   • To resolve the warnings, simply delete the base and create one continuous sweep from the adjacent wall.
3. “Slightly off axis”
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   • As you work on the Revit model, you will encounter many of these warnings, especially when you are picking lines from a DWG background. Usually, this is not a critical warning that you can ignore. However, if you have too many of them, it will start to cause performance issues.
   • The root cause of this issue is that Revit can’t interpret smaller than 1/16” by design. If rotation is smaller than 1/16”, Revit will warn the user with “slightly off-axis”. The best way to fix this issue is to adjust the rotation to no less than 1/16”. If you think this adjustment can impact the project significantly, then you can ignore this warning.
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4. “Some Panels in this curtain system are slightly malformed.”
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   • This is usually an ignorable warning; however, there is a potential risk of running into model corruption if you have too many of these types of warnings in your model.
   • Cleaning up the curtain wall panel will clear the warning.
5. “Highlighted walls overlap. One of them may be ignored when Revit finds room boundaries.”
   • This is the most common issue in Revit modeling. The warning indicates that two walls are overlapping in the same place.
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   • The issue is simple to resolve. Identify the overlapping area. Use the unjoin option to disable the auto-joining of the wall at the joint condition.
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   • Bring the wall to the edge of the adjacent wall to flush the wall together.
   • Then join the wall. It will clear the wall.
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6. “Stair top end exceeds or cannot reach the to elevation of the stair.”
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   • This is the most common stair issue in Revit. This warning simply indicates that the stair riser calculation does not meet the requirements.
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   • The stair riser calculation does not meet the preset standards. Max 7” riser to reach a 2 feet high platform.
   • To meet the preset standards, it needs 4 risers.
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   • Adding one more riser resolves the warning.
7. “Highlighted walls are attached to. But miss, the highlighted target.”
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   • This warning is triggered when the attached object loses its target element.
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   • To resolve this warning, simply detach the wall from the floor.
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8. “There are identical instances in the same place. This will result in double counting in schedules.”
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   • This warning is triggered when identical objects are placed in the same location more than twice.
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   • To resolve the warning, simply remove overlapping elements.
9. “Thickness of this Roof may be slightly inaccurate due to extreme Shape Editing. Dimensions to this element in sections and details may not accurately indicate the Thickness shown in Type Properties.”
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   • You may not be able to resolve this warning immediately. Depending on the shape of the affected element, you would need to decide whether you want to spend time resolving the issue or carry it through the project duration.
   • The object's shape includes concave complex geometry. The user used simple approaches to slope the slab using modified sub-elements. It would be possible to resolve the warning if the user models the slab with different modeling techniques involving more complex approaches and an increase in production time loss.
   • You can still have a few warnings in the model, and some warnings are not critical to the project model.

About the Author

Sr Technical Support Specialist<br><br> Skilled in AutoCAD, Mixed-use, Renovation, Revit, and Sustainable Design. Strong arts and design professional with a BA in Urban design focused in Architecture from University of Washington.

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