ALIGNING DRAWINGS IN SHEETS

[marctect]

I brought in details of door heads, jambs and sills into a sheet... I cannot align the drawings with the others because it won't allow me to pick a reference point or line from any drawing. I can align or snap the titles in place along with the other titles, that's easy. But I don't believe in the "eyeball" method of aligning. To think with with this new technology (Revit) you should be able to simply align levels or objects perfectly just like AutoCad.
Another related application would be, say for 2 or more enlarged partial elevations in a sheet, of course you want the 1st levels to be on the same line at the bottom of the drawing, right? Well, you can't! Maybe there is a way to do this that I don't know. Can anyone help me with this?

[Overconstrained]

Grids and levels will snap/align to each other on sheets if you drag the views around. Details will also do this if they incorporate a grid or level line as part of the view.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Views of the same scale will align horizontally and vertically if there is a common reference e.g. a level datum, a grid line or just the same location in plan or section/elevation. Try it out by placing two plan views (at the same scale remember) side by side or one above the other on a sheet view. You'll notice a dashed green alignment line as the views find their common reference.

As for aligning drafting views and the like that's not as simple. Revit still does not allow automatic alignment of views on different sheet views. Unfortunately, for the time being, eyeballing is the only way.

[Scott D Davis]

I brought in details of door heads, jambs and sills into a sheet... I cannot align the drawings with the others because it won't allow me to pick a reference point or line from any drawing. I can align or snap the titles in place along with the other titles, that's easy. But I don't believe in the "eyeball" method of aligning. To think with with this new technology (Revit) you should be able to simply align levels or objects perfectly just like AutoCad.
Another related application would be, say for 2 or more enlarged partial elevations in a sheet, of course you want the 1st levels to be on the same line at the bottom of the drawing, right? Well, you can't! Maybe there is a way to do this that I don't know. Can anyone help me with this?
Elevation views will "snap" together when in alignment at the right level. Other stuff needs to be aligned using the new Pan feature in RAC 2008 so that the view titles can remain aligned...activate view, then right click and choose Pan. This is still an "eyeball" move, but you can get so close no one will ever question the alignment.

[TroyGates]

Place a reference plane in a common place and then use it as a guide to eyeball the placement on the sheet. Its not exact, but when it prints you shouldn't be able to see the difference.

Its not a great way, but when you take into account all of the great things that Revit can do, the few minor things are insignificant. For example, I save hours of coordination when I place views on sheets. The few minutes spent lining them up is definitely outweighed in the time saved.

Of course this is just my opinion....

[ron.sanpedro]

I brought in details of door heads, jambs and sills into a sheet... I cannot align the drawings with the others because it won't allow me to pick a reference point or line from any drawing. I can align or snap the titles in place along with the other titles, that's easy. But I don't believe in the "eyeball" method of aligning. To think with with this new technology (Revit) you should be able to simply align levels or objects perfectly just like AutoCad.
Another related application would be, say for 2 or more enlarged partial elevations in a sheet, of course you want the 1st levels to be on the same line at the bottom of the drawing, right? Well, you can't! Maybe there is a way to do this that I don't know. Can anyone help me with this?

Alignment of Annotation objects to anything but like Annotations is non existent. You also can't snap to anything in an annotation. Coming from a very rigorous and modernist tradition, I find this completely unnerving, and I am always looking for ways to make drawings with some rigor in them, since the model certainly has it. But Revit really does require sloppy sheets, and there really is (as of yet) no easy way around it. But yes, I will still take fussing to get a rational sheet over Acad any day. I just wish there was a little more rigor in the annotation and views. I would like to easily align the right side wall of an elevation to the right side wall in plan, and also have the grid bubbles align with the levels, Elevation bubbles align with section bubbles, etc. I want my sheets to be as taut as the building.

Gordon

[marctect]

Thank you guys for all your input and tips! I get it now! I also appreciate your very quick responses.

[Brockway]

Revit still does not allow automatic alignment of views on different sheet views. Unfortunately, for the time being, eyeballing is the only way.
This is something that drives me absolutely bonkers. I realize that it's really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but I'd like, for instance, to be able to consistently place Key Plans and Plan Regions on the same place from sheet to sheet.
I, generally, place some reference line on my border and in the view to aid in the "eyeballing" processes.

[justin.black]

Loren,
We have been using Keyplans and Project plans for a while and what we have found to work is to add them to the title block family. Then we have added parameters to the keyplan so that we can turn it on or off and also choose to shade west or east sides of the keyplan. We also use this for the North arrows. HTH

[Dimitri Harvalias]

for instance, to be able to consistently place Key Plans and Plan Regions on the same place from sheet to sheet.
I, generally, place some reference line on my border and in the view to aid in the "eyeballing" processes.
I don't include my keyplan in my titleblock because it will often have a yes/no parameter to control visibility of different shaded regions. You can use the paste aligned/select views by name method to place items like this with consistency. Place your keyplan (north arrow, legend, note block etc.) on one sheet and copy to the clipboard. Select paste aligned from the pull down menu and, as long as a sheet view is the active window, only sheet views will show up in the selection list. It's a bit of a time saver but not the way it should be.

[botros353342]

I was wondering if this is still the case? Can you add reference lines to the drawings that can be aligned to in the sheet view?

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Welcome to the forums.
We now have the 'guide grid' to help with view alignment from sheet to sheet. Check out the wiki help
http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Revit/enu/2013/Help/00001-Revit_He0/1468-Document1468/1926-Prepare_1926/1928-Sheets1928/1936-Aligning1936

[MikeJarosz]

Do you know about the "nudge" arrow keys? After selecting an object to move, the arrow keys can be used to make slight moves up, down, left and right. The amount of movement depends on the zoom factor. The closer in you get, the finer the nudge. A really close zoom can almost control movement pixel-by-pixel.

[Revitaoist]

Reference planes and grid guides: When moving a drafting view detail, select it by a reference plane and move it to a grid guide....look, the snaps work!! If you want text aligned on sheets, put the reference plane at the text justification, if you want face of stud aligned, put it there, etc. Hot tip: put reference plane crosshairs on your plan somewhere and make a grid guide to align all your plans, it looks professional when all the plans align on your PDF when scrolling through the sheets.

[DaveP]

Now, if they would only let us use non-square Grid Guides....
(What! you might your module might be different in the X-dimension than Y? I've never HEARD of that!)

[MikeJarosz]

Now, if they would only let us use non-square Grid Guides....
(What! you might your module might be different in the X-dimension than Y? I've never HEARD of that!)

I have.

The in-house CAD system that SOM wrote for themselves had many features that never made it to the mainstream, user definable grids being one of them. You defined a string of dimensions like (10'-0",14'-6",17'-3 5/8") etc. This could be done for x, y and z independently. A circular grid like a spiderweb was also available. Intersection of the custom defined gridlines were snapped by the G key on the keyboard. It came in very handy defining an irregular column grid of a building. There was a snap at every potential column location. One could add subgrids by using more dimensions in the definition string.

I bring this up because there are soooooo many CAD concepts in the computer graphics world that Autodesk has ignored. I used to keep a list of some of the great ideas that Autodesk failed to implement, but what's the use?

[DaveP]

I'd blame it on "one of those ancient decisions", but Grid Guides were new what, 2 versions ago? 3?
I'm not supposed to say anything, but I brought that up in the beta the first year the feature was added.

[MikeJarosz]

I'd blame it on "one of those ancient decisions", but Grid Guides were new what, 2 versions ago? 3?
I'm not supposed to say anything, but I brought that up in the beta the first year the feature was added.

When we were doing the WTC we had Revit field coaches helping us. We pointed out to them how Revit had nothing to help lay out sheets. I was dividing sheets up with lines and deleting them after the sheet was composed. I'm sure other early adopters were telling them the same story: we need sheet layout tools!

You are right that it took a few versions before they came up with the grid. It was something, but it was, and still is, a feeble tool.

[irneb]

Yep, even just if they could allow you to draw reference lines on sheets that might make life easier. I mean: Why should such things be disallowed in anything except families?

I tend to draw some reference lines in my TB family. But that's also not as usable as I'd like. Especially since it goes and tries to move all the internals of the TB if that line is shifted using an instance parameter.