2013 Views: Templates and Types

My top-rated new addition to Revit 2013 is the ability to create different view types, assign a view template and be able to make them dependent on it.

The great thing is that you get better control of your office standards and their usage. And who doesn’t like having drawing sets comply with well-established standards without having to waste time policing them? I know I do!

Recently I discovered a little issue. When design options are created in a project, these are checked (controlled) by all the view templates, so the users are not able to go to the Design Options tab in Visibility/Graphics and make changes to their views as necessary. And without design options actually existing in the template, you cannot uncheck them from the View Template settings as they are not available. Of course users can go and make changes to the View Templates themselves, but that’s something I’d rather not broadcast too much.

Turns out the fix is simple: add an option set and the Design Options become available in the View Templates dialog. Uncheck them so they’re not controlled by the View Templates and delete the option set when done. Now if users add design options to their project, this setting is remembered and there won’t be any issues with setting their visibility on a view by view basis.

2013 Views: Templates and Types

Multi-Disciplinary View Coordination

Back in 2008 I posted a response to an AUGI thread which contains tips that are still relevant to this day and might be unknown to some users. So I thought of echoing it out here.

The main question was about what the best process is to ensure that view extents (ex: plans) are coordinated between different sheets and different disciplines. The discussion then centered on Scope Boxes:

“When you create a scope box, it's just like drawing a rectangle in plan. You can specify a height too (that's why it's a scope box and not rectangle!). Make sure you give it a good descriptive name (Ex: Area 'A'). You can then go to a plan view's properties and under Extents, assign the Scope Box that defines the area you want to see. The crop region will automatically coincide with the scope box. In fact to change the crop region, you now have to modify the scope box by moving the drag handles and the crop region will follow.
So for a large project, the workflow would be as follows:

1. In an overall plan view, place scope boxes to "chop" your plan in meaningful pieces so it fits on your drawing sheets. Name them accordingly and place any matchlines and view references here;
2. Create dependent views (let's say you have 5 plan areas....create 5 dependent views and we'll assign them to the 5 scope boxes created in step (1));
3. Go to each dependent view, name it something meaningful (ex: Area 'A') and assign the appropriate scope box to it. You can turn off scope box visibility to remove clutter as you typically overlap scope boxes so you can show some context (you have to do this to properly use matchlines);
4. If you want to make changes to the crop region, always go to the parent view, turn on scope boxes or use the Reveal Hidden Elements button (if scope boxes were hidden, they'll become visible in magenta)....you can now modify them and when you're done, click on the Reveal Hidden Elements button once again and they'll go away or hide the category. Your crop regions would have automatically followed the changes in your scope boxes;
5. The above is done typically by Architectural. Now consultants just link in as usual, they set a plan view that shows the scope boxes, match lines and view references (perhaps set to "By Linked View" to facilitate this) and copy all these elements into their project file. You do that by tabbing until the object in the link is highligted, then copy and paste in the same location*. Now you just need to carry on from step (2) once you have the same scope boxes residing in your project.”

* As Steve Stafford noted in the thread, scope boxes tend to paste exactly in the same spot automatically, regardless of the paste option picked.

Multi-Disciplinary View Coordination

Creating 3dViews FAST!

One of the things I find myself doing frequently and feeling frustrated about, is setting up 3D views cropped to specific areas, such as around stairs, main reception areas, hallways, etc. I’ve always wished that Revit had a faster way to achieve this. A little less than a year ago as I was daydreaming (happens often), an idea struck me. So I wrote it down and emailed an API proposal to several programmers to see whether this was possible and how much it would cost.

To my disappointment I only received one reply the following morning, but I fell off my chair as I realized that the email response contained an actual proof of concept tool! It worked like a charm but we were close to release date for Revit 2011 and the tool was written for 2010. April went by and I got too busy to follow up with trying to have it updated for 2011. Then I lost my job and priorities changed.

So I recently managed to get in touch again with my European colleague at b.i.m.m, Jochen Reichert, who graciously sent me an updated tool for free and is letting me share it with everyone. How nice is that??

Oh, I guess I need to tell you what the tool does eh? Very simple…you make a selection of objects in any view, launch the tool (I set my shortcut to “bb”) and are given the option to create a new 3D view or update an existing one (which can be your active view) based on the bounding box of your selected objects plus an optional margin. Once it finishes, you simply open/switch to the modified 3D view. No more dragging those pesky little section box arrows! Nice, simple and elegant.

So thanks to my tiny contribution in spec’ing the tool and to Jochen’s great courtesy in whipping it up fast & furious for free, you can go to this page to download and learn how to install & use it.

DISCLAIMER: I obviously cannot guarantee that your requests will be incorporated since I’m not the coder, but if you have any ideas to enhance it, feel free to share them. It works almost exactly like I want it to, so I really don’t feel like much needs to be added. Hope you find it useful and obviously, use at your own risk!

So as a token of appreciation, head over to b.i.m.m to see what services and tools they offer. Their site is mainly in German right now but they are frantically adding English content to appeal to a wider audience. They sure impressed me with their turnaround time and follow-through. On behalf of the readers, thanks Jochen!

Creating 3dViews FAST!

Frequent thoughts: Referenced views

Here's a typical scenario: You detail various project conditions in drafting views and then create reference annotation in other live project views which point to those drafting views (section/elevation/detail callout). In database jargon, this is a One-to-Many condition. Why is there no way to list which views reference a particular drafting view and why is this important to know?

Let’s say I need to make a change to one of these drafting views because of a particular project condition. Before doing this, I need to know if it's going to affect other areas of the project that reference that view (in which case I would need to create a unique detail and not modify the existing one). This same problem exists with live views. When in a One-to-One condition (live section/elevation/callout that is only referenced once), we’re good but when used in a One-to-Many condition, we run into the same issue described above. Say I have a typical interior elevation of the model: where the same condition occurs, rather than creating a whole new identical live elevation and place it on a sheet, I just reference the typical one a number of times. However, there's no way to find out where this view has been referenced, so if I need to make a change, I cannot verify that the reference locations would still apply.

Another scenario (applies to Structural): a number of typical foundation details are developed as drafting views and the drafter/engineer places reference sections around the building perimeter. But if one particular location triggers a required change to the detail, how will you find out where this view has been referenced so you can check that you’re not referencing an incorrect detail? Only a tedious and time consuming manual check can solve this problem. It's quite frustrating because Revit probably has this information in the rvt file itself, but we don't have access to it through a schedule nor through Model Review. API perhaps? If that was the case, it would still not be accessible to the majority of users.

EDIT: Read the first comment…there is a fast way to find where the view is referenced!

Frequent thoughts: Referenced views