Revit Detailing

[stuntmonkee]

Hey, we are finally makin the push to complete 100% of drawings in revit. . .so this is just a quick "how do you do handle it" question.

As far as a detail border, and keeping things square on the sheet your dropping the details on. . .

How are you guys doing it. It seems like a simple questions, but I cant find what i think to be "the right way". Everything seems kinda workaround-ish or non Reviteering.

Thanks
Stunts

[bowlingbrad]

Oooh,
I'm waiting for a good response to this as well! We are in the same boat as you!

[stuntmonkee]

the best idea I can come up with is to create standard detail borders as annotation, and drop those on a sheet, then drop the view on top of that. I thought about creating them as part of the border family with an on/of feature per numbered detail spot, but that doesn't leave the flexibility to have a 2 high detail, or 2 wide. . .it would only allow you to have a single sized detail border.

I also thought about creating a family with parameters to scale up or down based off the scale of the view. . .and you might be able to link a parameter to look at the scale and make its size change, but it would work the opposite of other annotation. . .instead of scaling up text the border would get smaller. . .it would be like defying revit's gravity. . .but might work. . .if you cant get it to look at the view scale, then you would have to worry about these things called "Scale Factors". . .but i put those in the closet with the pen plotter.

Thats all I got for ideas.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Hi Stunts,

Are you wanting to create
1. a separate detail sheet (small format for printing a detail book) or
2. a large drawing with a series of detail windows?
For #1 just create a separate border family and drop detail views to your hearts content. Naming conventions are of particular importance to keep things organized
For #2 (my preference) you can include a series of grids, light lines or a dashed line type, in your title sheet family that can help you with layout. If you don't want to see these later you can easily swap out your layout border sheet with your final plot border.
Unfortunately there is no magic bullet solution or one that is always right for everyone. You'll find that details and details views (as long as they are at the same scale) will 'snap' to align with each other at grids, levels and other common datums. Labels and other titles are a bit of a nuisance to get worked out initially but are OK once you have all your viewports sized.
Just experiment to get things the way you like them. Use view templates to quickly alter display properties for various detail types.

[knurrebusk]

I try to draw the model in a flexible way, so that if the clients change their mind last minute! I can adjust to different floor-thickness/wall/roof height etc.

Details are managed separately by the contractor´s, since the development in the structural field is very fast these day´s.

[stuntmonkee]

Hi Stunts,

Are you wanting to create
1. a separate detail sheet (small format for printing a detail book) or
2. a large drawing with a series of detail windows?
For #1 just create a separate border family and drop detail views to your hearts content. Naming conventions are of particular importance to keep things organized
For #2 (my preference) you can include a series of grids, light lines or a dashed line type, in your title sheet family that can help you with layout. If you don't want to see these later you can easily swap out your layout border sheet with your final plot border.
Unfortunately there is no magic bullet solution or one that is always right for everyone. You'll find that details and details views (as long as they are at the same scale) will 'snap' to align with each other at grids, levels and other common datums. Labels and other titles are a bit of a nuisance to get worked out initially but are OK once you have all your viewports sized.
Just experiment to get things the way you like them. Use view templates to quickly alter display properties for various detail types.

Yeah, not quite what I'm lookin for, but I see your method.

Once I get something laid out I will post it up and see what you guys think.

[tyler.kawahara356150]

I think the original question was directed at the fact that when placing a detail view on a sheet, there is no 'grip' or 'snap' points that would allow it to be placed in a specific location, nor does there seem to be a way to, once placed on the sheet, use the align command to get the detail view aligned with the sheet border. I think that subsequent detail views do have the ability to help one align the view, but only relative to other detail views.

Sure, anyone can 'eyeball' it, but it's much quicker and looks much more professional if the detail sheets have identically laid out blocks of details. There is no reason not to have included this capability in a program used for the creation of construction documents. From reading the answers to the question here it seems clear that the correct response to the thread creator is this:

There is no 'good' way to layout detail views on a sheet. You are stuck with the 'eyeball' method when trying to align detail views to a sheet/titleblock.

[sbrown]

Here is a view title I made for this reason. Its still not very easy but once they are placed on the sheets they start to align with each other. The best way is to know the size of your detail "box". Have the first one placed in you sheet(template) at the "origin" Then as you add new details place them directly ontop of the first on, then highlight and move in the x or y direction the width or height of the "box" after the first couple they will snap to each other.

You'll see the invisible line, I use that to line up the text notes. Basically just create multiple viewport types using this type of family. It would be really nice if you could snap to objects in anotation families but this is the best I could do.

[jeff.95551]

Sheet layout is a challenge. We decided to give up on the whole notion of creating a printed grid on detail sheets, because of the flexibility and snapping problem. Our procedure, which is a little messy to start with, is to just drag all the details/views willy-nilly onto the sheet, quickly organize them, change scales where necessary, print/redline for the holistic view, and fine tune. They just snap to each other - there isn't any consistency from sheet to sheet without the grid, but the rest of the world doesn't seem to notice. I would like to have some management at the sheet level. I usually try to leave some white space on the detail sheets anyway. As an ex-contractor, the leftover white space on the sheets was the best place to put notes, phone numbers, quick sketches, etc.

Good Luck

[kshawks]

we have non printable grid lines layout in all of our sheets. They seem to help for the general layout an appearance. We then use the view title snap feature to align from there. It not perfect, but it works fine for us.

[patricks]

We have been doing 100% sets in Revit since before I started with this firm in 2004. We just draw lines on sheets to separate different views. We use an overall grid system where a 24x36 sheet gets divided into 5 columns and 4 rows, and a 30x42 sheet gets 6 columns and 5 rows. Each grid space is numbered starting with 1A at the bottom right up to 4E or 5F (depending on sheet size) at the top left. So if the view spans across multiple spaces, the view is numbered with wherever the bottom left corner of the view falls.

But the grid lines are always just detailed lines in the sheet view, so that they can be moved and adjusted when necessary. Following the grid spacing is not a concrete rule (that leads to wasted sheet space, and we hate wasted sheet space around here).

What I have done is added invisible lines to the title block families so that they appear if you hover over the title block, or I can pick them when I'm drawing the drafting grid lines that do end up printing. But then if I have to I'll adjust those grid lines.

But by having the grid lines on the sheet, everything looks lined up even if the views themselves are not actually aligned perfectly. Here's a sample of a door detail sheet from a recent project. In this example is a 30x42 sheet with 6 columns and 5 rows, and you can see how the top 2 rows are occupied by the door schedule, so there is no line going through there. Also you can see the type elevations on the 3rd row are a little longer than 2 grid spaces, so the grid lines are just adjusted to accommodate them. It's a fairly set system, but not rigidly set in stone such that we can't move things around to get the maximum amount of information on each sheet.

[bowlingbrad]

I really wish we could do something similar to dynamic blocks in autocad. They really work well. Here is a video of what I think the Revit View Title SHOULD do.

Unzip to view the avi file.

[twiceroadsfool]

I really wish we could do something similar to dynamic blocks in autocad. They really work well. Here is a video of what I think the Revit View Title SHOULD do.

Unzip to view the avi file.

Line Based Detail Component? Err, whoops. Man, we need a line based Symbol! :)

[patricks]

eh, I see no use for what that video shows, at least not for the way we do things.

For us, the best thing would just be to have a separate file full of drafting details that get used on many projects. Then we copy them into projects as needs, place them on sheets, and draw grid lines on the sheets to get them all arranged neatly. Then the title of each view is moved into place within the grid lines.

[joshua]

We work similar to what has been suggested. The difference is that we use reference lines instead of invisible lines to layout a uniform grid. From there we use place the details at an appropriate scale and draw drafting lines as appropriate to enclose them. We use the snapping titles pretty freely and eyeball the location.

[bowlingbrad]

eh, I see no use for what that video shows, at least not for the way we do things..

FYI... I'll just give you our philosophy on why we use detail modules....

We use it for projects to align all of the details with one another (detail numbers and titles). This also helps when we scavenge details from several projects into a new project. They all fit together like puzzle pieces. This helps us create a neat, clean sheet of details in a matter of hours, not days.

[patricks]

yeah we do that, too, but from the video posted, it looks like there's not much flexibility as far as the size of the box goes (it always has to be a certain multiple of the original size). That would lead to alot of wasted paper space if you have a detail that is just barely larger than a certain box size.

That's why we start out with a sheet that is divided into even increments, but if some adjustment is necessary to fill the whole sheet than we'll do that (see my attachment above).

[cbalestreri]

I came up with a similar soultion to sbrown. I used invisible lines in my annotation family to align notes to, but when I import the family to my drafting view I can not snap to it. I can hover over it and see it highlight, but I can not snap to it. I goofed with the visibity setting but I figure out what I did wrong. Any thoughts? I should add I created the detail block as a generic annotation object I drop on the drafting view.