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.