Transparent Annotations

As a default on every Revit project transparent annotations should be used. The reason is highlighted below, if dimensions, tags, keynotes, or text are accidentally placed on top of one another than they will block out anything below and errors can occur.

• The top line of dimensions (Actual Dimensions) is shown with full strings of dimensions indicating the actual dimensions of the layout (too many dimensions for a real life project, but good for this example).
• The middle line of dimensions (Transparent Dimensions) is shown with transparent dimensions strings accidentally placed on top of one another, but the error can be identified easily with the garbled dimension in the middle.
• The bottom line of dimensions (Opaque Dimensions) is shown with opaque dimension strings accidentally placed on top of one another, the error is much harder to pick up without scrutinising the dimensions and could have major ramifications on site.

Using Opaque annotations on you project certainly has its place, especially when you have fill patterns on surfaces, having patterns overlapping your annotation can be hard to read. It is just better practice to have it set to transparent as default and change it to an opaque type where required.