Cam View Covering

Cam View Covering

Places a viewer's eye on the chairs, sofas or desks you select, creates a matching Revit perspective view for each seat, and draws what each viewer can see on the floor plan. Existing camera families can be registered too, then laid out on sheets and published as a printable report.

When to use it

• Checking what a theatre audience, a lecture hall, a waiting room or a living room actually sees: every seat gets its own eye and its own view.
• Aiming a whole row at one subject, such as a stage, a screen or a window, and seeing which seats look up, down or across to reach it.
• Documenting security or presentation cameras that are already placed in the model: register them, draw their coverage on plan, then publish the views and coverage as a report.

How to run it

Open a Revit project (not the Family Editor), then start Cam View Covering from BimCode's plugin list inside Revit. The window stays open while you work in Revit, so you can select elements at any time and click Refresh.

The screens

1. Cameras & views. Select chairs, sofas or desks in Revit, choose the seat type (or leave it on Auto) and click Create views from selected seats. The plugin places one eye marker per seat, looking straight ahead the way the furniture faces, and creates a linked perspective view for each. The camera register below lists every camera the plugin knows, its view and its coverage. For a calibrated eye height, several positions on a sofa, or a viewer aimed at a stage or window, use the numbered steps on the right: capture the seats, capture the target, preview the eye positions, then place the viewers. Existing camera families are registered from the same panel without moving them.
2. Plan coverage. Open a floor plan, tick the cameras and click Draw coverage. Each camera gets a filled region showing its field of view, stopped by walls, doors, floors, columns and other categories you choose. Advanced settings let you draw several zones per camera, use a different field of view for a camera type, or read values from family parameters.
3. Contact sheets. Pick a title block and a rows-by-columns grid, click Check layout to see how many views fit, then Create sheets. Views are scaled to fit their cells and overflow continues on the next sheet.
4. Reports. Choose the cameras, a title and PDF or web page, then click Create report. Every view image is exported from its live Revit view; the report lists eye position, target, field of view, view depth and coverage for each camera and includes the same data as a JSON file.
5. Help. A short tutorial, worked theatre and living-room examples, and a button that opens the printable guide.

Good to know

• Every change can be undone with Revit's Undo. Placing viewers on the same seats again moves the existing markers instead of adding duplicates.
• The seated-viewer defaults are design starting points, not measurements of a particular person: a chair eye sits 450 + 750 mm above its support, a sofa eye 420 + 750 mm, a desk eye 450 mm behind the desk edge. Adjust them in the capture step when you need a specific posture.
• The 120° field of view and the 90 m view depth are drawing assumptions for a seated viewer, not a statement about human eyesight. The lens presets (2.8, 4 and 6 mm) are starting ranges; use manufacturer data for a real camera design.
• Coverage is drawn by sampling rays from the eye at a chosen height. It is a plan diagram of what is in front of the viewer, not a sightline certification, a theatre C-value calculation or a full visible-floor study. Glazing blocks the view only if its category is included.
• Targets must be in the open model; elements inside a linked model can block the view but cannot be picked as a target.
• The plugin keeps its own records in the project and only ever clears the regions it drew itself.

Limits

• Automatic eye markers need the Generic Model family template that ships with Revit; otherwise choose a loaded point-based family as the marker.
• Sheets place perspective views only, and never move a view that is already on a sheet.
• PDF reports use the Microsoft Edge installed on the machine; when it is not available the report is still written as a printable web page.