Fake Annotation Scale in Viewport?

[resullins]

Ok... this is a bit of a weird one, so forgive me. We work with large building files (think... stadiums and arenas), and we do audio/video drawings. So we have, say, an overall FP of the entire level, with all of our devices and conduits tagged, at say, 1/32" scale. However, we ALSO have to show individual quadrants or areas of the buildings on pages at say, 1/8" scale.

Previously, in AutoCAD, we would tag everything so that they show up the "correct" size in the 1/8" scale, for the quadrant views. Then for the overall views, I would force the annotation scale of the viewport to be 1/8" scale while the standard scale was 1/32". Yes, this made the tags appear very small in the overall views, but it meant that we didn't have to touch every tag twice. And since it's only the guys in the field using tablets and PDFs to zoom in and look at the overall views, it was fine that the tags had like .0325" text... we weren't relying on prints here.

I can't figure out how to replicate this process in Revit. All tags are inherently annotative, so I can't make them stay a fixed size, and I can't force the viewport to display them at a scale that's different from the view scale.

Is this possible? Because the old dudes at my company are SO incredibly insistent that we get these overall views into the package that they're currently threatening to make me pull all of the views OUT of Revit just to do the overall pages in AutoCAD. I can't explain to them that that particular process will literally push me over the last thread of sanity I remain clinging to.

Is there a way to do this? Literally anything? Bueller? Please help. I'm already at 80 hours a frigging week just to fix this mess of a project... I can't touch everything twice.

[marmiketin]

Unfortunately there is no way to do this easily. How I see it you have 2 options.
1. Create a smaller tag for the 1/32 scale drawing and do a tag all in view to place the tags on all audio/visual equipment.
2. Create a custom titleblock family that is 4x bigger (including all the text and labels), then do an overall plan at 1/8 scale and place it on the sheet. Then edit your viewport name family using a calculated parameter for where it shows scale and divide that by 4 to make it show 1/32. Next print the sheet at to the correct sheet size and scale it down to 25%.

Other than these 2 options I don't think you have any other choices.

[resullins]

That is exactly what I THOUGHT the answer was going to be, so... while disappointed, I am NOT surprised.

Thank you for the options though/ The first one is what I'm trying to avoid having to do... but the second one is really thinking outside the box. I appreciate it.

[tedg]

Unfortunately there is no way to do this easily. How I see it you have 2 options.
1. Create a smaller tag for the 1/32 scale drawing and do a tag all in view to place the tags on all audio/visual equipment.
2. Create a custom titleblock family that is 4x bigger (including all the text and labels), then do an overall plan at 1/8 scale and place it on the sheet. Then edit your viewport name family using a calculated parameter for where it shows scale and divide that by 4 to make it show 1/32. Next print the sheet at to the correct sheet size and scale it down to 25%.

Other than these 2 options I don't think you have any other choices.

option #2 is brilliant, easiest way to trick it into doing what you want.

[boiiinng503034]

First rule of construction documents...information should not live in two places.

That being said, you could just delete and copy/paste the tags into the larger scale view each time you re-issue. Could probably even create a simple Dynamo script for that.

[resullins]

First rule of construction documents...information should not live in two places.

That being said, you could just delete and copy/paste the tags into the larger scale view each time you re-issue. Could probably even create a simple Dynamo script for that.

That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to avoid... having to touch TWO different tags every time I do something. Again, in AC I would just have the enlarged view at 1/8" scale or whatever, and the annotation scale would be set to 1/8" on all the objects... so that's fine. And for the overall view, I would set the standard scale to 1/16" or whatever, but FORCE the Annotation Scale to 1/8". That way all the tags were the EXACT same, just... smaller. Which no one cared about since they only ever used the overall views on the iPads where they could zoom.

I think I've decided to go the route of telling the old dudes asking for this **** that it doesn't work that easily in Revit and they're just going to have to give it up.

[anetace]

I do not understand why you would have to "touch two different tags" when you change something. If you change a component "ALL" the tags associated with that component will update thought the documentation set. Or am I missing something?

[tedg]

That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to avoid... having to touch TWO different tags every time I do something. Again, in AC I would just have the enlarged view at 1/8" scale or whatever, and the annotation scale would be set to 1/8" on all the objects... so that's fine. And for the overall view, I would set the standard scale to 1/16" or whatever, but FORCE the Annotation Scale to 1/8". That way all the tags were the EXACT same, just... smaller. Which no one cared about since they only ever used the overall views on the iPads where they could zoom. ...

I do not understand why you would have to "touch two different tags" when you change something. If you change a component "ALL" the tags associated with that component will update thought the documentation set. Or am I missing something?

This is true, if set up properly, you won't have to touch the tags in each view (other than adding new ones when needed).
Going back to that "option #2" I think is your best bet and really won't take much work to pull off.
Think of it this way:
You have your "quadrant" (part plans) at 1/8" scale with all the tags/annotation etc. scaled properly for a 1:1 plot sheet.
Then have your overall (full) plan ALSO at 1/8" scale.

This is the custom part:
Next, create a custom TB that is big enough to show that overall plan (2x or 4x the normal size)
Create a sheet with this new TB and bring your overall plan in.

If proper "view callouts" are needed you may need to create a custom one of those with the same scale as your TB, if not simply use properly scaled text (make a custom text style with the proper height etc.)
Then set that sheet up to plot to proper size and mentioned earlier, (save that configuration for later), you'll end up with a proper size plotted sheet, forced tags to show a smaller size without making custom tags/text etc.

It sounds like this is more of a worksheet for users than part of a drawing set?

[marmiketin]

With Option #2 (see earlier response) it also allows you to make your overall plan and then have your quadrant plans as dependant views with crop regions and annotation crops so if you move a tag on the quadrant plan it moves on the overall plan. It seems to me to be the most simple option.

[resullins]

I do not understand why you would have to "touch two different tags" when you change something. If you change a component "ALL" the tags associated with that component will update thought the documentation set. Or am I missing something?

Ah... it's mostly because of congestion. We CONSTANTLY have to manually move the tags out of the way of objects, other annotations, etc. Like, the picture below is of our object tags at the 1/8" scale... so if we were to do an overall scale, and those tags increased in size to match when printed, we would have to move every tag to work in both scales.

Screenshot 2022-09-30 203721.png

This is true, if set up properly, you won't have to touch the tags in each view (other than adding new ones when needed).
Going back to that "option #2" I think is your best bet and really won't take much work to pull off.
Think of it this way:
You have your "quadrant" (part plans) at 1/8" scale with all the tags/annotation etc. scaled properly for a 1:1 plot sheet.
Then have your overall (full) plan ALSO at 1/8" scale.

Yeah, I understand the concept, and I think I might explore that option in future sets. That seems like the most reasonable. We couldn't really get it implemented for this release. But I would like to see if it could be done easily.