Revit Templateer

Anti-Purge Legends

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 18:36:00 +0000

a recent post on Jason Kunkel's blog (link) about users purging the entire model made me think about sharing a piece of our template setup to prevent this.

Families can only be purged if there's not a single instance of that family anywhere in the model. So the solution is pretty simple... create a legend view and place an instance of every text type, line type, tag, region, detail item , or even family. We have a few of these "anti-purge" legends (drafting elements, detail items, families), which also serve the purpose to check the families.

As long as there's at least one instance somewhere, nobody can purge it.

Upside Down Elevation

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 19:01:00 +0000

For presentation purposes, I like to show exterior elevations aligned with the floor plan. It makes it easy to understand the drawings.

Once placed on the sheet, it's easy enough to align the South elevation with the floor plan, because it has the same orientation. The East and West elevation can be rotated on the sheet by changing the Rotation on Sheet in the options bar. There is, however, no option to rotate a view 180° for the North elevation.

A workaround is to create a call-out in the North elevation. Then activate that view, and rotate the crop region by 180°. The call-out view is then placed on the sheet, and aligned with the floor plan. It's that simple!

Life Safety Exit Separation

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 23:58:00 +0000

Today, I spent some time developing a family for our Life Safety drawings, showing exit separation, based on the diagonal of the area served. This family refers to the Florida Building Code (2010), so if you download it for your own use, be sure to update the code references/calculations as needed.

Code References:

1015.2.1 Two exits or exit access doorways.

Where two exits or exit access doorways are required from any portion of the exit access, the exit doors or exit access doorways shall be placed a distance apart equal to not less than one-half of the length of the maximum overall diagonal dimension of the building or area to be served measured in a straight line between exit doors or exit access doorways. Interlocking or scissor stairs shall be counted as one exit stairway.

Exceptions:

2. Where a building is equipped throughout with an automatic sprinkler system in accordance with Section 903.3.1.1 or 903.3.1.2, the separation distance of the exit doors or exit access doorways shall not be less than one-third of the length of the maximum overall diagonal dimension of the area served.

In the past, we would use a linear dimension, with added text to show the distances, but this involved some manual steps and calculations.

Now, the family is a line based detail item with a nested generic annotation, containing two types and an instance parameter to indicate a sprinklered or un-sprinklered building. The code reference and minimum exit separation distance are automatically adjusted/calculated based on the length of the family and sprinkler parameter.

The family can be downloaded from here (2015).

Scheduling the same parameter twice

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 22:17:00 +0000

I recently received an equipment schedule for a commercial kitchen in one of our projects, which appeared to have been created in CAD. Since it’s a pretty wide schedule, the item number column on the left had been duplicated halfway the schedule and to the right, making it easier to read across a row.

I had never seen this before and it sparked my curiosity, since a Revit schedule only allows us to show a parameter once. The trick here is to use calculated values. Hitting the button with the three dots on the right of the Formula field will show you any available parameters to be used in a formula.

I tried this for an array of parameters in a door schedule, and it appears to work for most parameters, but certainly not all. In the example below, it didn't work for the Function parameter, but did work for Finish, Operation and other text parameters.

Slab Depressions

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 21:12:00 +0000

Some time ago, I helped out on a project that had a lot of slab depressions that seemed to keep on changing all the time. The problem was in their setup; the sketch of the main slab had to be edited to create a void, after which a new slab with a negative offset was modeled inside that void. Lastly, a slab edge had to be added matching the depth of the slab depression, after which all elements had to be joined so the section would read cleanly. Certainly a few steps too many, and that's when I get unhappy.

It didn't take long to create a rectangular and an L-shaped stretchable generic model that creates a slab depression and performs all the above mentioned steps at once.

The geometry was based on this structural detail, and adapts to the thickness of the host slab.

For starters, I created types for 1”, 2”, 3” and 4”.

If a section is cut through them, joining the slab and the depression family will clean up the linework.

The files can be downloaded here (2013).

space planning tool

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 17:47:00 +0000

Another one from the bag of tricks is a simple stretchable detail item to represent rooms during space planning. Much like a sheet of trace paper to lay over your floor plan, this detail item affects none of the model elements allowing for very quick exploration of a few schematic options without the use of design options. Since this is a detail item, it's only visible in the view the work is done.

Two families have been created; one rectangular, the other L-shaped. A few types have been set up to show different wall thicknesses. A simple tag shows labels for the room name (optional), width & length (finish to finish), and resulting area.

Edit: I nested the tag as a generic annotation inside the space planning tool. The tag now shows up as soon as you place the space planning tool family. A link to the new families can be found below.

By using reference planes and reference lines, the families will snap to each other, making it easy to align them. A center line for the wall thickness was added for reference.

All the families can be downloaded from here (2013).

Edit: families with the nested tag (refer to comment above) can be downloaded from here (2015).

How to dimension a funky curved wall

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 22:12:00 +0000

This post isn't really template related, but I wanted to share it anyways. Some time ago I had to dimension several complex curvy corridors and it became quite an ugly cluster of dimensions with center points often landing far outside the building. In an effort to simplify this for the framer in the field, and to keep our drawings neat, I came up with the following setup:

The dimensions shown are actually line-based detail items with a tagged length parameter. The tick mark and arrow at the end of the dimension are nested generic annotations, so they will scale properly. The unit precision for the tag is set to the nearest 1/2".

I decided on a 4’ spacing and since a grid wasn't nearby, I created an arbitrary reference line (dashed line) to dimension from; the reference line was then dimensioned back to the closest grid. The fastest way to do this is to create a single instance with a tag and copy it over every 4’. Then you can use the extend multiple to align all dimensions to the face of stud.

On site, anyone can lay this out and connect the dots, but as always, I would like some feedback on this approach, especially from someone with more framing experience than myself.

The families can be downloaded from here (2013).

Edit: I recreated the family in 2013 and added a few new types as shown. I also added a double horizontal control to allow for flipping the direction when using the Arrow - Line type:

Scope Boxes

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:50:00 +0000

Our template already has a lot of views created, which makes it easy at the beginning of a project, but a lot of work to adjust the crop boxes of all these views… if it weren't for scope boxes. A scope box can control the size of several views at once and makes sure they all match each other in size. Changing the size of a scope box will change the size of all views accordingly. It's a huge time-saver!

It’s not always easy to get people to use scope boxes. Often, they are one of the first things to get deleted from a project because “I didn’t want to see those red boxes.” As a result, we have now turned off scope boxes in all our view templates. They could even be added to their own workset that’s invisible in all views. Consultants will appreciate this as well since our scope boxes would otherwise show up in their model & views as well.

Some of the scope boxes currently set up are Overall for 1/16" views, and areas A, B, C & D for 1/8" views. The choice to use 4 areas was based on our typical project size, but if fewer are needed, they can easily be deleted. To make adjustments, a 'Scope Boxes' view has been set up where you can move & stretch or delete them as needed. For clarity, all model elements are set to halftone.

Some of the view types that have scope boxes assigned in the template:
- overall and area floor plans (demo and new)
- overall and area reflected ceiling plans (demo and new)
- overall life safety plans
- overall and area equipment plans
- overall and area floor finish plans

Views have been named accordingly:

To assign a scope box to a new view, change the view’s properties under ‘Extents’:

To create a new scope box, either copy an existing scope box or create a new one:

Grid Cleanliness

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 21:49:00 +0000

Grids are pretty important in ensuring model cleanliness; we all rely on their accuracy when we work on our models, yet they’re just so easy to nudge, and we may not realize they’re no longer accurate. Even worse, a modeler may not care as much about model precision and figure that 90.27 degrees or 20’-0 127/256” is good enough. Once the grids are off, it could take days before this is discovered, and even longer to repair the damage across all disciplines. It’s a real snowball effect.

That’s why I feel it’s important to set up a grid view early in the project, or even better, make it part of your template. This grid view isolates all grids in the model and quickly points out any errors. The grid view monitors spacing & rotation, worksets and locking of grids; of course, it can only be effective if monitored repeatedly by the BIM manager.

For clarity, I’ve set the view scale to 1/32” and am using the following graphics settings:

- Model Categories:

hide all, except for a single construction line type

- Annotation Categories:

hide all, except for dimensions, grids and text notes

- Analytical Model Categories:

uncheck ‘Show analytical model categories in this view’

- Imported Categories:

uncheck ‘Show imported categories in this view’

- Filters:

create a ‘Grids - on wrong workset’ view filter and set the projection lines to be dashed red

- Worksets:

Set all worksets to ‘Show’

- Revit Links:

Leave all linked models turned on and set them to halftone

Now that we have a clean view, we can dimension all grids and quickly spot any inaccuracies; this can only be effective if our precision settings are set correctly. See my post on unit settings and dimensions here.

Next, because we set up a view filter earlier, we can easily identify those grids that are on the wrong workset.

Lastly, I add all grids to a dedicated design option called ‘LOCK - Grids’. This requires that making adjustments to grids is done as a conscious act, and not by mistake. You may get some resistance to this step, but it’s worth the extra step.

"Template" pre-loaded with worksets

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 21:18:00 +0000

I’m not sure if this has been blogged about before, or who even suggested this at our firm, but our template isn’t a real template; it’s a workshared project with worksets.

Note that every link has a dedicated workset. This allows us to be selective about which links we want to load when we first open up our active project.

Some of the benefits are:

- multiple people can work on the template, at the same time

- workset naming standards is established, everybody is familiar with these

- shorter initial set up time

but more importantly:

- view templates can be set to include what worksets should be visible or hidden. In my opinion, this one is huge; it’s otherwise impossible to complete the setup of your views & view templates prior to starting the project.

Be cautious though, if somebody starts a new project without detaching their copy, they could do a lot of damage. This is why our template files are located on a drive that just a few people have writing permission to. When we start a new project, there are two different approaches: open a detached copy of the template model, or opening the template model and doing a Save As with the ‘Make this a Central Model after Save’ option checked. The starting view has a reminder for the person setting up the project.

Thoughts?

Project Set-Up Sheet, Follow up

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:13:00 +0000

In response to a comment I recently received on my Project Set-up Sheet post from over a year ago, I'll elaborate a bit on the promise I made back then.

"Most of these parameters are embedded in the titleblock as would be expected, whereas others are placed on the cover sheet, where we use a non-conventional but flexible technique to show them. This will be a post for later though."

Our titleblock has a lot of information, that depending on the project scope and size, can vary quite a bit. For one sheet-wonders, we try to cram as much as possible on the cover sheet, where as for mid-size to large projects, we prefer to see a nice cover for the fruits of our labor, most likely with project title, description and a rendering.

In the past, we would place a text piece for each on the cover, which worked fine, but it required we input the same information twice, and keep it up to date if changes occurred. We could have created a cover titleblock family, but I find this odd for just a single sheet, and it doesn't allow for quick changes, unless we edit the family.

Instead, we decided to use our standard titleblock on the cover and create additional small titleblocks that contain only the information (parameters) we want to see. Those titleblocks are then also placed on the sheet. This allows us to move or delete these chunks of information independently from each other, while maintaining that intelligent information connection with the project. In essence, the cover sheet has 3 or 4 titleblocks, each with their own set of information.

The set up is simple:
1. create a new titleblock family
2. bring the sheet boundaries to a minimum, for example 1/2" by 1/2"; this prevents overlapping boundaries
3. create labels for the shared parameters

4. apply visibility parameters as needed
5. load the family and place it on your cover sheet

Here are some examples:

QC Sheet

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:13:00 +0000

I absolutely love schedules. I often create working schedules to check for errors or completeness of our model. Rather than opening every schedule, I had this idea to create a QC sheet where all these schedules can quickly be viewed from one single place. From there, I can edit the schedule and make the necessary corrections. The sheet is assigned to its own category, and set to not appear in sheet lists.

Over the length of the project, I have created over 30 schedules that check properties of sheets, views, keynotes, generic annotations, walls, sheet notes, rooms, doors, travel distances and even structural usage of CMU walls. This turns out to be really handy for daily maintenance, but especially in those last minutes before printing.

My approach with these schedules is to filter out those elements which are in compliance and thereby exposing those that are not. This makes it pretty easy to check, since the end goal is an empty schedule. For example, my current project only allows the use of fire rated gypsum board; however, imported typical details may be using regular gypsum board. A simple Keynote Legend can list any instances where regular gypsum board is keynoted. From there, by selecting Highlight in Model, I can find and correct any culprits.

Here are some other examples:

Unreferenced keynotes (a value is assigned, but no matching description can be found in the keynote txt file)
Blank keynotes (a keynote is placed, but no value is assigned, leaving just a question mark)
000000 keynotes (when placing a keynote, the user doesn’t always know what to assign. When ‘Ok’ is hit instead of ‘Cancel’ the first value is assigned)
Rooms (any room that’s not properly enclosed, or isn’t placed)
Sheet notes containing an incomplete reference (as a company standard, we use underscores to indicate unknown characters. For example “Refer to sheet AE-1.___”
Sheets missing important parameters
Egress paths exceeding maximum travel distance (we use railings as so many bloggers have posted about)
Generic annotations with blank parameters (one noteblock schedule per parameter)
Working Views placed on a sheet (we use a custom parameter to distinguish between printing views and working views)
Printing Views not placed on a sheet

In addition, I also set up general information schedules:

Door types used (this is a good way to make sure our legends show each type used)
Door frame types used
Door fire rating (to confirm the fire rating still matches the family type name)
Window types used
Wall types used

I’d be interested in hearing your uses of check-schedules.

Ghosted Background Linework

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 12:44:00 +0000

I was asked if elevations had the ability to automatically grey out elements that are farther away from the front plane. Unfortunately, there isn't a simple way to accomplish this just yet. The Linework tool allows us to manually overwrite linestyles, but this is an impossibly slow process when dealing with linked models (easily up to 10 seconds per line). With the amount of elevations we're working with, this is just not a feasible approach.

As a solution, I created a parametric rectangular detail item with a solid white region which is stretchable directly in the view and has the ability to show or hide a border.

Edit: this can also be done using a filled region, but this won't have the ability to quickly turn the border on or off. However, filled regions are more flexible for custom shapes.

When loaded into the project, the Type Mark is set as 'Transparent Mask' which allows us to easily set up a view filter.

Once we add this filter to our interior elevation view templates, we can adjust the transparency to 50 percent.

Place the mask in your view, align & lock as needed and we're done! With Revit 2013's improvement on view templates, this was an easy implementation and will definitely be added to our project template.

Sample with border shown and hidden:

Legends are Optional

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:16:00 +0000

Legends are great for a few reasons, but they're not so great when it comes to tagging elements in the true BIM sense. They can hold families, text, detail lines and dimensions, but when we want to add a real tag to our legend, we're stuck with dummy text.

To resolve this, some firms would create elevations of a host wall with doors and windows on a separate workset. This works fairly well; the workset can be turned of so no elements will show in any views, except for schedules where custom filters are needed to hide the legend families. Another approach is to use phases, but we have to be really careful how this is set up. Changes in Phase Filters could possibly reveal the legend families in our schedules. Neither options are fool-proof.

A safer way to create a true Legend is to use Design Options. For this to work, we'll need a dedicated Option Set with two Options, of which the primary option will remain blank. Any legend families and hosts will be added to the secondary option, and placed somewhere in the distance.

With the creation of a Design Option, the Visibility/Graphic Override dialog box now has a new tab which allows us to set which Options should be visible. By default, this is set to Automatic, which means any option that is currently set to be the Primary Option.

Since legend families and hosts are added to the secondary option, none of them will show up in a schedule. If desired, for purposes other than legends, design options can be included in schedules in the schedules' properties.

Now we can create a floor plan (working view) and elevations (legends) set to show the secondary option, and look... we can tag our families!

Project Set-Up Sheet

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:25:00 +0000

A recent addition to our template has been the creation of a project set-up sheet. In short, this sheet is set as the project starting view and contains only a titleblock with all possible project related parameters, such as project name and number. This creates an overview in which we quickly fill out all significant information at the start of a project, which can be reviewed for completeness before printing.

Sometimes, Revit by default has provided us with instance parameters which we decided to replace with our own instance parameter assigned to the Project Information category. Drawn By and Check By are good examples of this, where changing this parameter had to be applied to all sheets individually. Since we've now assigned these to the project, as an instance parameter, one changes applies to all sheets.

The following is a list of all parameters currently included:

- project name (line 1)
- project name (line 2)
- project description (for example: new construction, interior remodel ...)

- location
- client name
- parcel id #
- property description (legal description)

- project #
- drawn by (not the default instance parameter provided by Revit)
- checked by (not the default instance parameter provided by Revit)
- issue date
- sign & seal date
- sign & seal area (for example: "not for construction" or "for review only")

- template - created on (tells us which template a project was started with)
- template - last saved by (only two people are allowed to edit the template)

- revision schedule

Most of these parameters are embedded in the titleblock as would be expected, whereas others are placed on the cover sheet, where we use a non-conventional but flexible technique to show them. This will be a post for later though.

For the revision schedule to show all submissions, we have to either draw a revision cloud for each submission, or edit the 'Revisions on Sheet' property, which is my preferred option.

One last thing, in the sheet's properties, we assigned the sheet its own unique Sheet Discipline and unchecked the 'Appears in Sheet List' check box, which pretty much makes this an invisible sheet (in schedules).

If you have any other thoughts about this setup, or if you can think of other parameters to add, I'd love to hear them.

Tags!

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:35:00 +0000

Templates are most successful when the simplest of tasks have been taken care of from the start and guesswork by the user has been reduced. Nothing is simpler than loading and setting up of all tags, and you won't get annoyed when you're in a time crunch and Revit asks you to load a tag.

If you're wondering what tags have been assigned, the Loaded Tags task dialog (shortcut: LT) will list all tags assigned to be used for each element category. A simple drop-down list lets you select the default tag family to use. As you develop your template, remember to keep this list up to date.

Annotate > Tag pull-down > Loaded Tags

To be consistent, we've named all of our tags based on the following principle:

- our company's initials, so foreign tags are easily distinguished
- the word 'Tag' so all tags stay grouped together in the family browser
- the family type being tagged, for example: door
- suffix: to separate two tags for the same family type used for different purposes. For example: doors tagging basic information vs life safety information

For example:

XYZ Tag_Area

XYZ Tag_Ceiling

XYZ Tag_Door

XYZ Tag_Door (ALS)

XYZ Tag_Floor

XYZ Tag_Furniture

XYZ Tag_Grid

XYZ Tag_Keynote

XYZ Tag_Plumbing Fixture

XYZ Tag_Revision

XYZ Tag_Room

XYZ Tag_Room (ALS)

XYZ Tag_Wall (Fire Rating)

XYZ Tag_Wall (Type)

Once loaded into the project, you'll want to add a leader arrowhead for each type of that tag.

Select the tag > Edit Type > choose Leader Arrowhead:

If you don't find an arrowhead you like, you can edit an existing type or create your own; Manage > Additional Settings > Arrowheads. Our standard arrowhead is the Filled 15 Degree Arrow, but we also use Heavy End and Filled Dot.

Template Mentality

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 17:32:00 +0000

Recently, I visited another firm's office for the monthly Revit User Group meeting, where our host started a new project based on their template. Of course, I paid close attention to their setup in the hope to pick up a thing or two, and one of the things that struck me as odd was that they only had a single plan view set up. This lead to a conversation on template setup and mentality during the break, and it turned out we have complete opposite template mentalities.

Their thought was that for every new project, it's pretty easy to create new views, whereas our mentality has always been to set-up just about everything so no guess work is needed and no time is wasted setting up view after view, changing view names & title on sheet, adjusting phases, applying view templates, checking settings... and wondering how it was done last time. Out of the box, our project template has every type of plan view, for each phase and level with a consistent setup that every body is familiar with. All that's left is to get started on the model.

Some people may say it's just too many views, or not all are needed. That may be true, but it's actually a lot faster & easier to delete those unneeded views than it is to create those you do need, which is a philosophy carried throughout our whole template.

Contact Information

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:23:00 +0000

I truly dislike to do the same task twice if I can avoid it, which is a great mentality when you're setting up a template. Something that was bothering me was filling out the contact information for our consultants on the cover sheet for every new project. Initially, we used plain text in a legend, which works but it was tedious, and not my favorite way. I decided to go about this the BIM way.

I created a generic annotation family with several contact information parameters. The area on the right is for company logo's.

For each contact, a new type was created. Don't forget to add a type for your client/owner. To sort them, I prefixed the company name with their discipline:

To get the logo's to automatically switch, I created a separate generic annotation family for each logo and assigned a visibility parameter for each in the contact family. Within the contact family types, all it took was to check the matching visibility parameter.

I placed several instances on our cover sheet, and set up our most frequently used consultants as the default contacts. Using a different consultant is as simple as selecting a different family type.

If it wasn't for the logo's which have to be placed manually, this could all be set up using family type catalogs and a contact database. This would make the family smaller, but we like the logo's so for now we'll keep them.

This technique works especially well if you use the same consultants/client on a regular basis. We've been using this family for over a year now. No time is wasted & new contacts are added easily = better template.

Sheet Notes Follow Up

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:35:00 +0000

Quick follow-up on the sheet notes.

Since each set of sheet notes is a schedule, we could potentially end up with a lot of schedules and so I prefer to name them all 'Notes - category name'. This nicely sorts and groups all of our schedules in the Project Browser, but it doesn't read so nicely once we print our sheet.

For instance, 'NOTES - DEMOLITION' would read a lot nicer if it said 'GENERAL DEMOLITION NOTES'.

Luckily, Steve Stafford at Revit OpEd posted a nice workaround to create a custom header while maintaining a smart naming convention in the Project Browser. The result is identical.

6 - Sheet Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 02:43:00 +0000

I guess it's been a while since my last post, and I was beginning to feel quite guilty for starting something and not following through. Just don't hold your breath for daily posts.

For the longest time, our template used legends for general sheet notes. This worked fairly well since legends can be placed on multiple sheets and a single update affects all instances. However, our new approach is one that has greater advantages, especially for larger projects.

We created a generic annotation with three instance parameters: Grouping, Number & Text. Together with some linework, this creates a 'physical' placeholder for sheet notes within the model. Some notes are longer than others, so we've allowed plenty of room within the annotation family to accommodate long bits of text.

Once loaded into the project, a drafting view will hold all notes.

Each column represents a Grouping. For each, I've created 30 notes, most of which are blank.

Using a NoteBlock, we can now schedule every instance of this family. We'll sort by Grouping & Number. This schedule is the easiest & fastest way to make edits to notes.

We'll now duplicate that same schedule and use filters to narrow it down to a specific category & to hide blank notes. The '99' filter is used to hide a note from the sheet, while keeping it in the project. This way, for whatever reason, it can be added back easily. Any noted filled out in our main schedule will append automatically.

After some tweaks to the schedule's formatting, the end result looks about the same as our legends from before, but the advantage we now have is that these notes are parametric and therefore schedule-able. And since they are schedule-able, they are also searchable. Large projects can contain hundreds of notes, and having the ability to filter them in a separate working schedule based on a specific word or series of words is invaluable. It certainly has proved its worth already.

Edit: I created a follow up post here.

5 - Notes to self

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:15:00 +0000

Something quick today... our template has evolved into a well-oiled machine, but there's a lot to it, and sometimes we need to add some instructions or reminders to make sure we don't forget anything. We do this with a dedicated region and text style in a color and font that really stand out. A quick little note or a colored region often helps out; for instance a code reference or a choice to be made between multiple options.

The below image is part of our code analysis and has a bunch of notes, code references and regions where a value is to be updated. Shown here, you'll find plumbing calculations for male/female vs unisex facilities, and their code requirements.

In this case, we also started making snippets from the Florida Building Code for easy reference. Once used, they can be removed from the view, but keep in mind, this isn't recommended for all situations. (below: FBC Table 403.1: minimum number of required plumbing fixtures)

The Project Scope section by default has a series of possible scope items. At this point, it's pretty easy to quickly delete those items that don't apply, and add those that are perhaps more unique to the project. This has been part of our template mentality from the start, as it is (often) easier to delete what's not needed, then to set up that which is needed (when you might be short on time).

4 - Text Styles

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:22:00 +0000

One of the simplest things to set up are text styles, and it's a good idea to get this done before you start copying details from one project to another, so there won't be any duplicate text styles.

We noticed people like to change styles to fit their current needs, not realizing that change gets carried through the whole project. To eliminate the need to create new styles, we decided to create all different styles we could need, for each font size. If there would be a need after all, the naming system that's in place ought to be followed.

We set up our styles' names based on a few characteristics:

- all styles start with our company's initials, so 'foreign' text styles stand out;
- font size: this is prefixed by the XP scaling value (048 = 1/4" since 48 * 1/4" = 12"); this sorts all styles correctly based on their size;
- leader type: arrow or dot;
- background: opaque (O) or transparent (T);
- border: if used, we add "border" to the end of the style's name;

for example: XYZ 096 - 1/8" (arrow) - T - Border

Note: even though Bold, Italic and Underline can be made part of a style, they can also be applied on an instance basis, and were therefore not considered in creating styles.

For each style created, we placed one instance in a designated 'Drafting Elements' legend, to be sure they cannot be purged from the project.

If you do end up finding duplicate text styles, these can be purged out, but only if they are no longer in use. One of our tricks to find them (eventually) is to change the style font size to 3" and its color to a nice hot pink. This way, it's sure to draw people's attention and demands to be replaced with the correct type. I'll also prefix the style's name with "purge" so it's clear it can be purged for good from the project.

3 - Project Units & Dimension Styles

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:50:00 +0000

Just as in the AutoCAD days, we want to be as precise as possible with our drafting / modeling. Being off by a fraction will often lead to a whole lot of trouble & frustrations later on, which is why I will always set my units to be as precise as possible. This is especially true for lengths and angles. Some people will disagree with me on this and claim that 1/8" precision is near perfect in the construction world, but we have to make the distinction between construction and 3D modeling.

Here are some samples of how improper units and dimension styles can mess up your project without you even knowing. For demonstration purposes only, I've changed the dimension styles to show the rounded off dimensions in red, the precise dimensions in green.

Rounding off would hide these imperfections where a fraction as small as these can severely mess with your drawings and your sanity. Using the proper precision, incorrect dimensions are easily identified and can be corrected on the go.

Go to Manage > Project Units or hit 'UN' as a shortcut.

Length:

Angle:

Note: insist that consultants using Revit also adopt these settings.

Using dimension styles, it is still possible to overwrite Project Units, so we'll have to adjust those as well so they use the previously set Project Units.

In our template, we have 10 dimension styles loaded, 5 opaque and 5 transparent. Only 2 of these are rounded off, and they are only to be used if there's absolutely no way around (for instance, placing dimensions on a consultant's drawing). Laziness is not an acceptable excuse. To identify these overwritten dimensions, we show them in red, so everyone is aware that this dimension is not to be used as a reference. Ideally, we don't use these dimension styles at all.

Have a look through all the options and set up your styles to match your standards.

2 - Starting & Assigning your Template

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:16:00 +0000

There are several ways to start a template, but I prefer only one of them. Building a template is an ever-evolving process, and starting out fresh is a must to make sure we won't build upon older issues, so the best way is to start from an empty file. This way, we're absolutely sure that any changes we make are the changes we want to make.

You now have a blank file with the very minimum loaded. From here on out, we should insist on only adding clean content to the template. In essence, we should aim to create a fresh start for every new project. Just keep in mind: Junk In, Junk Out!

Once you've started a template, you'll want to assign it as your default template and start using it either for a real project or as a means to test your latest additions.

Of course, we still have a long way to go.

First Post

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:13:00 +0000

First post! Here it is:

I'm a FL Registered Architect, and have been developing Revit Templates for several years now. I'm very passionate about improving every bit of it and I hope to use this blog to share my experiences in developing a bigger & better Revit template where each small improvement can make the next project a lot more fun. And that's what it's all about anyways... right?

There are already a few great posts out there that focus specifically on Revit templating, and I'll be sure to reference them in due time, but there's always room for a little more. With that said, I hope to help out anyone who's just made the leap into Revit & who wants to develop their company standards. Personally, I don't like to do the same job twice & I don't like to see things done the dumb way, so this blog would be all about speeding up processes and in turn your next project.