Handling Revisions

I thought of posting this method/technique/tip after spending a day wrestling with different ideas and concepts that didn't work.

I don't know about you, but I'm not happy with how Revisions are handled in Revit. If you feel the same, please share your ideas with Support. They'll listen.

Here's my workflow:

Duplicate the view that contains the revision with detailing. Don't mess with crop regions, leave it as is and make the necessary changes. Create a new sheet and use your addendum titleblock. Now the problem is masking....unfortunately a filled region shows great in a titleblock family, but when loaded into a project it goes infront of linework and behind text! So I did another titleblock that consists of ONLY a filled region (see attached image....that "mask" is highlighted in red). My titleblock picks up most parameters and the user inputs the Sheet it came from and name. Now change the titleblock to the "mask" titleblock, then copy and paste same view and change it to the addendum titleblock. Now you should have two overlayed titleblocks: one with lines and text and another that's just a mask behind it. Make the mask symmetrical to the sheet extents so when you print centered, it'll be right where you want it.

Please feel free to share your workflow if you feel you've found a better way to create and maintain revision sheets in Revit.

David,

I reallly like the sheet idea. An enhancment to your system which we use is to assign a "Revision No, Desc and Date" fields to your views. When you duplicate your views you can assign these fields and sort your browser showing only revised views and hiding old views. We did this before the revision system was available and still use it now. We also have a revision title block so we can distinguish between the old and the new when we issue a revision, however we re-crop the view after duplication, add it to the sheet, resort the browser. Works pretty well. Note: We also copy the file to a CA directory after 100% CD so any revisions do not mess up permit or CD.

Chris, I have a sorting parameter too, which is used to classify sheets in their appropriate folder, for presentation sheets, addenda, etc. I have not added a date parameter because I'm trying to use the revision feature. So the titleblock also has a revision schedule in it which changes according to what revision cloud is on the sheet (typically, one issued sheet covers items of one addendum only).

Views are also sorted per a sorting parameter that the user fills in, so revision views would go under such a folder. We also leave a locked version of the project as issued on the server. To make it a bit more secure than just changing the file properties to read-only, I've also opened the central file under username BIDDING or something similar and checked everything out and didn't relinquish. Also, the reason I don't like re-cropping is because if I'm using a linked structural file (which also contains the grids that are shown on architectural....no copy/monitor used), then the bubbles move around the new crop region and that isn't an exact representation of what was on the documents. Contractors like to cut and paste our revisions onto the bid set, so these need to be as close to the original as possible.

The concept of how Revit handles revisions isn't bad, it just seems incomplete. The next step is some sort of Revision Sheet view, where you would drag and drop an existing sheet view and crop it to size. The titleblock would then populate with the original document sheet name and number, besides other needed parameters. Or perhaps the possibility of dropping an already used view into these revision views, and the titleblock would also be able to read the detail number and the document sheet number and title it resides on, without having to duplicate views. Then the user would select which revisions to show on this view (as multiple revisions could occur per view and the user needs to be able to select that). You basically want to create a snapshot of what changed so you can document it and communicate it to the parties concerned.

David,

Yeah it would be great if Revit could keep track fo that. We have been experimenting using phasing to create our changes during construction to see if the display isany betterrr. Bonus, we created a series of revision schedules showing any items that have changed in the new phase. Still do not know if this will really work, but not too bad so far. Do view duplication, just change phases which only changes the items moved or added. The other lreally cool part was that we made revision and it was declined by the owner after the cost was too high. Isolated the objects in that phase erased, changed the deleted and we were back.

There are many ways to do this know, like you waiting for REAL revision process

Take Care