Revit Sheet Layouts

[ppaige]

So I want to do precise layouts in the sheets using a grid. That is to say, I don't want to float them out in the middle of a sheet.

In a sheet I have my grid lines and my drawing view. I want the crop region of the drawing view to align with the grid lines. But to change the crop region I have to activate the view, and then I can only "fudge" the crop region over the grid on the sheet (ie, I can't just use the align tool - a solution that would make me very happy).

Does anyone have any suggestions for precise sheet layouts like this? Thanks.

[Steve_Stafford]

Hi,

Welcome to AUGI and your first post!!

This is something that irks lots of people at first, me too. As time goes by some "loosen up" about it others just stay irked. :smile: Bottom line is you can't do it precisely unless there is something in each view that is important like a level or column grid line and they share the same scale. Otherwise they are viewed as arbitrary in their relationship with each other.

View's that have a common column grid or level and scale will line up with each other side to side or top to bottom. This makes it easy to align consectutive column details for example.

The crop region is a pretty arbitrary device too so trying to align something that is arbitrary to a grid on sheet is going to send you to the bar early, besides the crop region isn't normally printed.

Viewports will align with each other as mentioned above or by virtue of their view title. Once you place one in a corner all subsequent viewports will align with each other.

I suspect that eventually we will get better control over these things but as Revit has developed they've been trying to knock off much bigger picture items and this sort of subtlety has been waiting in the wings.

Hope you can survive the adjustment! :beer: have another beverage of your choice :beer:

[Calvn_Swing]

Steve, this isn't exactly on topic, but I've got an issue with one part of your reply. While I too agree that there are much "bigger" issues than having the ability to snap view titles to sheet guides for precise placement of views on sheets, I don't know that this is a valid reason to put it off. While I would love to be able to do more complex ceilings without having to resort to either an in-place family or a "roof" ceiling, I am frustrated by this problem once or twice a project. While much smaller, I'm frustrated by the inability to align views on sheets daily, hourly, and when I'm really crunching minutely (yes, that could be a bad pun).

Point being, ArchiCAD had issues because for a long time the "little things" were put off in lieu of bigger functional modeling issues. I'd argue that ArchiCAD would have had a lot more market penetration if they'd done the opposite. Sometimes the little things are way more important than they're given credit for! So, how about refocusing RA2010 to be a many little things fixed update. (It's a little to late to change 2009). I could probably give you a list of a 100 things that, if fixed, would improve our efficiency significantly more than having a better ceiling tool with more options... Most of them are interface issues, like this one!

[twiceroadsfool]

Kelly-

You actually just hit MY biggest peave at all: ceilings. I want every ceiling option i get for roofs, lol. By face, by extrusion, by whatever. And curtain system ceilings! You can probbaly do that already, but i digress.

Getting on topic, im quite curious for those that want the views to snap and align to the "sheet view/" (I WONT clal it paperspace, WONT call it paperspace, LOL!): How exactly would it snap to the grid? Do we simply want the abilit to snap to objects IN the model while were lining it up? Or do we want the crop region to snap? If the matter, doesnt that mean we have to be able to snap the crop region to particular modeled elements to hold the view constant? What happens when someone goes in to the view (not through the sheet) and kills the crop region, or stretches it?

Im asking for a couple of reasons: i was so enamored with Revit when i started using it, and im pretty fly by night, so this issue never really nagged at me. Now that im thinking about it, im kind of curious how we would like to see it implemented. I could see it starting very simply, but getting wildly out of control...

[Steve_Stafford]

...Steve, this isn't exactly on topic, but I've got an issue with one part of your reply. While I too agree that there are much "bigger" issues than...

Wanna arm wrestle? :smile:

That's fair. Remember these are my opinions about the development not facts. If you ask somebody on the inside, and they answered, you might be shocked to find out somebody said it wasn't important to do it all (purely rumor mongering) as opposed to simply prioritizing it lower. On the other hand people might be fighting to get it put in every release and finding it shuffled beneath other bigger problems like faster performance, roof tools getting added to RA at the last minute and many other things.

Right now it doesn't provide any real support for this request beyond what I've described. Even so, it also doesn't prevent me or many others from getting work done either. The contractor can't tell whether I managed to align those two views on sheets precisely either. So I'm one of those who has relaxed about it (following "Frankie Goes to Hollywood's" advice).

It is the same sort of issue as aligning text to a line, if all the text lines up with each other does it really matter if it aligns with a "line". It would be nice to select a group of text and use the align command on it though. Of course the, "I've got to export it to cad and they'll notice it in the cad file gets me." :sad:.

On the one hand I think this whole industry is uptight about so many "wrong" things but I appreciate the ideals. In my life I've been involved in concert lighting, rigging, theater, manufacturing, convention business, construction and architecure so I've seen all kinds of bizarre stuff. That might give you some perspective on my attitude.

In the end I agree with you so don't beat me down because I don't find it as important as you. Revit needs to be refined on many fronts and I won't complain about being able to align viewports better when we can. It just doesn't bother me anymore. The lack of a loft tool bothers me more :smile:

Personally, I think the bigger issue with Archicad was unfortunate technology timing and supporting the Mac primarily at first.

Last, I try to provide a little background to a new user to take the sting out of, "no you can't, not yet." I guess maybe I should just stick to the facts...

[Firmso]

I think this would be easily resolved if there was a special user-defined sheet-view tool that lets you define the crop region boundary based on how this "lines" are placed on the sheets.
Wait a minute. this brings something else to mind. What about being able to create awkward shaped crop regions? hmmm.

[jsnyder.68308]

With all due respect, I would hope that if it was easy to resolve, they would have fixed it already. It could be fixed if we could snap to objects inside the viewports. But that might lead down the road to actually being able to draw things in the sheet views which is currently not possible, and probably not desirable. What would be very cool is if we could set up parameters and layout grids inside of sheet views to automatically identify views based on their position in the grid a la the National CAD Standard. One thing at a time, I suppose...They do have bigger fish to fry in my opinion.

[Calvn_Swing]

Steve -

I'd love to arm wrestle! (you'll win though, but it is usually fun still) How about after the Beer Bash at AU? We can have an impromptu "Arm Wrestling for Development Priority" contest!

Seriously though, I was in no way intending to bash at all. Just trying to add to the point (and the background) for a new user as well. In fact, on a fundamental level, I agree with everything you said. So, there really isn't any disagreement. On an objective level, I'd much rather have a loft tool, or better ceiling tools, or my own pet request for a much more robust family editor with control over things that you just can't touch right now.

But, on a subjective level, I just wish they could fix/get right some of the day-to-day grind stuff that slows me down and ticks me off on a more regular basis. As much as I'd love to render in Revit effectively (if anyone even types the word "accurender" in a response I swear I'll scream: "I know it's there but its USELESS!" - fingers crossed for something better in 2009...) or make my ceiling objects as real ceilings, or have that loft tool, I can do all of those things one way or another. I don't care what I try, I flat out can't get views on sheets in a manner that appears organized without some real fudging and frustration.

In general, the whole process of getting the model documented on sheets (placing the views, selecting viewports, snapping things together, numbering views on sheets, tracking revisions over time, etc...) could get a lot better in Revit.

To me this whole "snapping views to things on sheets" is an oversimplification of the issue really. The issue is with the whole process, of which snapping things is merely part of the problem.

And then back to the objective, I can get almost anything I want (lofts, vaulted ceilings, etc...) modeled in another application and brought back into Revit with almost no time lost. If I added up all the time I spent on a project eyeballing view alignment on sheets it would be pretty significant. So, perhaps it isn't such a subjective thing after all...

Aaron -

All I want is for any reference plane in a view title to snap to any reference plane in another view title, and for any reference plane in a title block to snap to any reference plane in a view title. I know the former is an easy fix since they've already got it set up for the two that come with the view title. I can't seem to get any new planes to snap together though. I just don't see how the other is a problem either. Ultimately they're both 2D annotation families in the same sheet view. Why can't they already snap. How many hours of coding would it take? Seriously! I'm not even asking for the ability to snap between 2D and 3D elements. That would be nice, but it isn't that big of a deal to me for all the reasons Steve mentioned.

As for ArchiCAD, I think we could all come up with 10 unique reasons why it didn't make it like Revit seems to have made it. I think the UI is just as important as any other reason, but not more important. Either way, it didn't make it and I'm on Revit now and I want to be able to work efficiently and effectively. When I run into things that hamper that (be it ceiling modeling options or snapping view titles to title blocks, I want Autodesk to fix it and fix it fast because I want Revit to fulfil the promise it makes:

To automate the tasks we don't want to be doing and let us focus on the ones we do want to be doing (design).

If Autodesk used this phrase to evaluate the importance of support requests and feature additions I think there would be a bit of a re-shuffle in the importance of certain items. Or, maybe they should split their development efforts a bit. They could have a team dedicated to making these kind of improvements and another team dedicated to making big feature additions (like a loft tool). They should have a hell of a lot more resources now than they did last year, we just doubled our seat count in Revit and I don't think we were the only ones... Then, we could all have our cake and eat it too!!!

[Steve_Stafford]

...I'd love to arm wrestle! (you'll win though, but it is usually fun still)...nah...I'd slink off and hide...

[twiceroadsfool]

Aaron -

All I want is for any reference plane in a view title to snap to any reference plane in another view title, and for any reference plane in a title block to snap to any reference plane in a view title. I know the former is an easy fix since they've already got it set up for the two that come with the view title. I can't seem to get any new planes to snap together though. I just don't see how the other is a problem either. Ultimately they're both 2D annotation families in the same sheet view. Why can't they already snap. How many hours of coding would it take? Seriously! I'm not even asking for the ability to snap between 2D and 3D elements. That would be nice, but it isn't that big of a deal to me for all the reasons Steve mentioned.


First, dont take me as being argumentative. I completely agre with both you and Steve, i am just genuinly curious as to how this would work: View tiles do snap to each other already. While it would be great to be able to assign ref planes additionally, that views could snap to, what does that do for aligning the view, since the view title can be moved independantly from the view? I can be attempting to line up Head and jamb details on a door detail sheet, but since i can move the view and the view title seperately, i would need a way to constrain them in order to align them properly, yes? Maybe that what we need, a dialogue box for the viewport that tells its distance (X & Y) from the view title origin? I like that idea...

I guess the snapping to 2d annotation could work as well, im just not sure about constraints and/or locking. I mean, then... in theory, if you went in to your drafting views and strted changing the detail for construction reasons, you could very well be moving the view on the page too... it would get interesting, haha...

[Calvn_Swing]

Here's the deal though: we have a gridded system. So actually, view titles only snap to each other in reference to each origin in the view title family. So, imagine drawing a box, and the only snap is the bottom left hand corner. Now, try and make another box to the left! You can snap vertically to the existing box, but the right edge of the new box won't snap to the left edge of the existing box. Now try making one above it. It will now snap horizontally, but try aligning the bottom of the new box to the top of the old. Back to eyeballing. So, on a detail sheet where we've got 20 views, we have to place ALL the ones along the bottom and ALL the ones along the right edge in order to get the rest to snap both vertically and horizontally.

PITA!

Of course, it's even worse if you have multiple sizes of titles on a sheet, because you can't count on having something to snap to. As it is, we're always (and rarely) pleasantly surprised when a snap becomes available. It doesn't happen 95% of the time.

What really needs to happen is to let us put reference planes in ANY 2D FAMILY and have them be snappable and alignable to ANY reference plane in ANY OTHER 2D FAMILY. PERIOD. Consistency is a good thing in case any developers forgot that rule. (The All Caps is not directed at anyone in particular. I'm just hoping that someone at Autodesk filters these forums for those that contain all caps and reads those paragraphs...)

I don't care that much about 3D snapping to 2D, I also imagine that would be much harder to achieve given that 3D objects don't scale and 2D ones do, etc...

Though I do like Aaron's suggestion about an offset or something to associate view titles to views. What I'd REALLY like is a user definable origin point in View Titles that would be the center point of a view when it came in to the sheet. So, for those who don't frame their views, you could have a check box in the VT family. Yes means the view origin point is active and no means that the view title is positioned at the base of the view. Something like that...

[Steve_Stafford]

Since you can't do exactly what you want consider this for now...Two parts...

First - a detail component for the detail box (goes in sheet view) that is resizeable according to the grid module you use, one grid, two grid wide, two grid high x two grid wide etc. All the graphics you need are part of this "box", lines, circle whatever. Because they are on the sheet view they do snap to each other and to lines or tick marks on the titleblock for precise alignment.

Second - a view title that is just the information, detail number, description and scale, no underline etc. Place view on sheet within the box, if same scale as other details and a column grid or level are present they will snap into alignment if necessary. Then move the view title info into the detail box graphics, yes close enough is close enough like horseshoes and hand grenades. Just zoom in to make the first one "right" and use the arrow keys liberally to nudge it into place. Once that one is in place all others will snap into alignment along that row or above in the column.

The only difference between what I've suggested and what it sounds like you are doing is trying to get the view title to contain all the other graphics which just exacerbates the problem. The above approach is why I've moved on and it just doesn't bother me as much anymore. I get exactly what I want and it is pretty simple. Well I don't know about exactly but close enough :wink:

[iandidesign]

This seems straightforward enough. Can you give us a screen shot? Thanks.

[sccbrown]

Ok, I'm going to get beat up for this one at AU. But why not DROP the grid, does it really benefit anyone? Details with the name and scale below them, properly referenced from plans, wall sections or door/win details is all thats really needed. I want to challenge whomever thought a grid for detail sheets was a great idea. the nice lines dividing the sheet into cute little boxes is a waste of time. the contractor doesn't care, the owner doesn't care. If you can't tell where one detail ends and another starts there are bigger issues.


As for floor plans aligning from sheet to sheet, this is important to me for a number of reasons however it doesn't have to be DEAD on. no one will notice 1/8" in from sheet to sheet, so i embed some invisible guidelines in my titlblock family to help me align plan views from sheet to sheet.

[Calvn_Swing]

sccbrown...

I hope no one beats you up at AU for that! I'm sure there might be some legitimate reasons for an AU bashing, but this sure isn't one of them...

While I agree that the contractor doesn't care (hell, we are the contractor so it matters even less in that light) if the views are in nice little boxes, it does do a great deal to organize the sheet and make the drawing set look nice. Like it or not, the drawing set is still a big part of the product that we produce as architects. While the argument that it's prettiness doesn't help the building get built is usually something I agree with, that isn't a reason to not make it pretty. That just means that isn't THE reason you are making it pretty.

I actually had one owner frame several drawings I did for a sheet set for a side project I did a few years ago - it was that "pretty." While that isn't needed to build it, I also wouldn't mind a few more of our sheets hanging on people's walls. Our buildings don't usually have our company logo branded into them, our drawings do. Free advertising isn't a bad thing. Neither is having a bunch of drawings ready for publication if a magazine comes knocking without having to do any "prettying up" after the fact. Last, while nicely organized drawings don't help build the building, our own PMs and Superintendents would much prefer have a well organized drawing sheet to a sloppy one as it does make things easier to find in the set.

So, I'd like to keep my boxes thank you very much! Besides, a really great program doesn't make you give up one thing in exchange for something else. Revit is really close to being that good for us, there are just a few loose ends to tie up, and this is one of them...

[twiceroadsfool]

I would venture to say that both are important to a number of people for a number of different reasons.

For instance: Many different firms number their drawings on a sheet in different ways. As long as that is the case, (to an extent) the detail grids are necessary when communicating with consultants via telephone, and trying to get them to simply FIND a detail that youre looking at, when there are 15-20 on a sheet. It wouldnt seem like a huge issue, but it certainly eats up time during a rush when youre trying to get the structural guy to look at your detail, and hes going "Wait, im on the sheet, but i cant find the detail youre tlaking about..."

As for the latter issue, i find that to be even less important. Regardless of where i put the floor plans on the sheet, if theyre the same scale, they can always be overlayed on a light table, or measured, or compared, or whatever. Theyre the same scale!

Looking back on the comments made so far though, heres some food for thought:

As Steve pointed out, the detail grid can be set up in the title block, and the view title box can be a symbol for the sheet view, which is how we handle it. Then they DO snap to each other. The View titles snap to each other as well.

So, IMHO, the only wild card in this system is that the views and the view titles can be moved independantly of each other, and cant be held constant at a certain distance. If the view kept an instance parameter for its crop regions X and Y distance off the view title origin, this would (sort of) complete everyones needs. The only other wild card i could see, would be like text or walls, in choosing what the X&Y dims hold too: Left of crop region, right of crop region, etc... Since people could edit the crip region, it wouls have to know what dim to hold as the size of the VP changes. Of course, this would also mean that every view would HAVE to have a crop region....

[twiceroadsfool]

I guess the other thing i forgot that i remembered last night, as for that to work... The crop region would have to snap to all objects in the project as well... Or you could line up the viewports, but that wouldnt do any good as they may cover different extents of the project...

[Calvn_Swing]

I don't think it does have to snap to objects. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind it. But, everything I'm asking for could be achieved without bridging the gap between 2D and 3D. That being said, there is a simple way to bridge the gap (that doesn't allow constraints - not that it should!). When you are positioning something on a sheet the program is already calculating where that crop region (and every other object) is in relation to other objects - it has to show them on the screen after all. Given crop regions can move, or be turned off. Object can be deleted. I don't want to "associate" 2D elements to these "3D" objects, I just want to line them up! Seriously, it isn't that hard or earth shattering!

"As Steve pointed out, the detail grid can be set up in the title block, and the view title box can be a symbol for the sheet view, which is how we handle it. Then they DO snap to each other. The View titles snap to each other as well"

Sorry, we use a grid on all pages, not just detail sheets. If it were set up in the title block, we'd either have a ton of confusing parameters to turn off grid lines here and there, or we'd have 100+ title blocks to choose from in our type selector. Steve's suggestion of making it a detail component is much more useful (not in the Titleblock, but in a sheet view) but it still doesn't solve snapping to the titleblock. I also don't like the idea of having to position a detail component on every new sheet any more than positioning a view title. And once again, they don't just magically snap to eachother. The current system only handles one direction as mentioned in an earlier post. So, (we've got a 4x5 grid) you have to place 8 view titles to get the remaining 12 to snap! Heaven forbid if one of those is 2 or more tiles in either direction, now you've got to eyeball more...

Listen, I get that there are workarounds. My point is that there flat out shouldn't have to be workarounds for something that is both this simple and this common! Fix it already! Enough said about this...

[twiceroadsfool]

Sorry, we use a grid on all pages, not just detail sheets. If it were set up in the title block, we'd either have a ton of confusing parameters to turn off grid lines here and there, or we'd have 100+ title blocks to choose from in our type selector. Steve's suggestion of making it a detail component is much more useful (not in the Titleblock, but in a sheet view) but it still doesn't solve snapping to the titleblock. I also don't like the idea of having to position a detail component on every new sheet any more than positioning a view title. And once again, they don't just magically snap to eachother. The current system only handles one direction as mentioned in an earlier post. So, (we've got a 4x5 grid) you have to place 8 view titles to get the remaining 12 to snap! Heaven forbid if one of those is 2 or more tiles in either direction, now you've got to eyeball more...



Im really not arguing, i think this is a great conversation, lol.

I wasnt clear: we use them on every sheet too. For plans, elevations, whatever. We have ONE Annotation Symbol family, and one parameter in the titleblock for "Detail grid visibility." Inside the symbol family, there are 7 family types, for 1g, 2g, 3g... up to 7g. So we turn on the detail grid, put drawings where necessary, then drop in the title box symbols, and they snap.

FWIW, i DO agree with you one hundred percent. Id love for it to be automatic. I also want it to number them automatically. While were at it, can we please be able to number legends, like we could in 8.1?

:)

And oh yeah... Accurender sucks! (JK... i love accurender, seriously... :) )

[Calvn_Swing]

And oh yeah... Accurender sucks! (JK... i love accurender, seriously... :) )

You're a sick man Aaron, really sick...

In all seriousness, it isn't Accurender that is so bad, just Revit's version of it. I'm still hoping for a Maxwell plugin to Revit!

I wouldn't mind all those things you're talking about Aaron. I'm having a hard time picturing how your system works with the Grids. I'd love to see an example if you don't mind uploading something.

[iandidesign]

It's good to know it's not just us greenhorns that are having trouble picturing Aaron's trickery. As something of a sheet nazi I'd like see how this works too. Thanks.

[Calvn_Swing]

I'm dredging this one back from the dead...

Aaron and Steve, and new fancy tricks for us sheet nazi's in 2009? I know I didn't get my wish granted, but there might still be some trickery out there.

I'd also still love to see an example from each of you on how you handle it. How about a blank file with a title block and some view titles and detail components?

I went back through in the process of making our 2009 template and while I think I've figured out each of your methods, I still don't find that they work that well for us. I'm leaning towards the detail component method, but it results in yet another object to place on the sheets. So, I'm still not sure it makes sense.

I'm waiting!

[ppaige]

(revisiting old threads...)

The solution that we've developed - and have been content with - is building the drawing grid into our title block. We use invisible lines to draw the grid, including boxes for our title blocks. So when we are setting up the sheet, all we have to do is trace the snappable invisible lines with a detail line of our choosing, then we can drop in our views and place the view titles with relative accuracy.

This has a few advantages for us -
First, the grid is always there, be it plan, section or detail sheet.
Second, we can trace however much of the grid we need.
Third, using our 4x5 grid set up, we can have grid boxes as large/small/narrow/wide as we need.

And right now we're testing a method where we add more of these invisible reference lines so we can line up our notes and dimensions around details with a little more ease.

Still, it sure would be nice if we could align floor levels between different interior elevations...

[Jshaver]

*bump

There is yet another more effective workaround but it requires a good deal of planning:
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=94908

[marcoavallone]

So have they fixed the problem with aligning views on sheets yet or what? I am trying to introduce Revit to a firm that is willing to purchase more licences and the proper harware to run it, but with a quad core machine and 4 gigs running at a super slow speed this is just another "REVIT PROBLEM" I feel that I have to defend. I'm tired of sticking up for Revit. These little problems not being fixed will eventually be what stops sales. Oh well, hope all the new bells and whistles and fancy cartoon menus have more of an effect that me throwing my computer out the window when I find out that things like "NOT BEING ABLE TO ALIGN VIEWS "....are not fixed ARE YOU SERIOUS!!! YOU HAVE GOT BE KIDDING!!!. Autodesk should be ashamed of itself, and all those who take part in the desision making process should come over to my office one day.I'll straighten these people out...

[SamuelAB]

Just use Revit Guide grids, they were made for this purpose.

http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=auv2011_player
see:Autodesk® Revit® MEP: Classy Construction Documents