Revit: Quick Tip #274

When Revit has a case of the Mondays, that is, none all of the windows (properties, project browser, etc.) seem to be frozen and you're treated to repeated blasts of whatever noise your computer likes to make to let you know to 'stop clicking that,' you can spend tens of minutes trying to break it free. 

Fortunately, there is a Konami code to fix this - just start a new project and save it as a file on your desktop.  This seems to snap any version of Revit out of its stupor.  The Big Blue R saves the day!

Journal of a Revit Noob: Small Project Challenges, Visibility & Graphics

Today, I am sharing one of the most important lessons in getting your Revit sheets to look like you want them to look using visibility graphics, phase filters and overrides (in the voices of Kim, the student and Ben, the teacher):

Student: The existing structure is printing too dark. How do I change the line weights so that the new structure appears darker and existing structure appears lighter? You know- line weight properties. 

Teacher: There's a few different ways to change the way your model will look, therefore changing the way your drawings look. Your brain is trying to make parallels from AutoCAD to Revit, so the first thing is stop making that comparison. Think of the elements as something abstract like a football team, the Saints!

Student: Noooo, the Saints lost last night...LSU Football! 

Teacher: Ok but you DO realize Revit has nothing to do with Football?

Student: Geaux Tigers!

Teacher: Moving on, let's say all the elements in our model are football players on the LSU football team. When looking at a sheet, we can control one view at a time (one player) or the entire model (the whole team). That's the difference between the "visibility/graphics override" and the "view template". 

Student: This is way more interesting now!

Teacher: The 'visibility/graphics override' box will be the first place you will visit when you are looking to set the characteristics of the lines, hatches, etc. I'll break down the categories (top tab buttons) in this property box. 

Model Category: All your elements in your model: walls, columns, floors, windows, etc. 

Annotation Category: Pretty much speaks for itself, it's where you'll control notes, section and elevation markers, grid lines, etc.

Analytical Model Category: You won't use this. Let's skip it!

Filters: This is the next level of control where you may want to control how a specific wall, specific floor, or specific window looks. Let's say this specific player is the kicker on the team. He calls himself a football player but his job is different, except for those occasional times when he has to tackle!

Student: You are pouring salt into those Saint-loss wounds!

Worksets: The control here only allows for visibility completely on or off. We can touch on worksets at another time.

Revit Links: You can think of this like an AutoCAD xref, I'm giving you that permission on this one. You'll link certain things like consultant drawings and ifc files to the main Revit model and this is where you will control how it will look. The way these files look can be customized exactly the same way you customize the way your model looks. It becomes very helpful when your structural engineer sends you his file that you'll link and his structural walls are showing up and overlapping yours; here you can control that visibility.

All of these can be controlled with a 'View Template' which makes setting up sheets quicker because you can apply its pre-modified settings to multiple views all at once. If you set up 'view templates' for your views on your sheets, when you click on the 'visibility/graphics' button, you will see grayed out tabs which means these categories are being controlled by the template. 

Student: This is clear but what about the 'existing structure' which is what I was having problems with. What's the easiest way of modifying the way it looks throughout the entire project. 'Existing structure' is not necessarily a model element, annotation, workset or link. 

Teacher: Glad you asked! Another way to manage the visibility characteristic of your model is by going to the 'manage' tab and clicking on 'phases'. Here you will be controlling the visibility based on the phase of the project. 'Existing Structure' is a phase. There are only three ways to set your phases: 'by category', 'not displayed' and 'overridden'. If all the 'existing structure' in your model wants to be purple, you can set that here as an override by phase. Set 'existing' override to purple and the whole model will show 'existing structure' as that color when that phase filter is used!

Student: Geaux Tigers!

Teacher: Please stop. The third way to control the way your drawing will look is by a right-click option called 'override in view'. This command only changes the visibility locally not universally throughout the whole model. It's best if this isn't used with larger project teams, because only YOU remember when you made this call to change the way something looks in a view and could be confusing for team members trying to navigate through the model.  

Student: It's like putting graffiti on the model?

Teacher: Congrats, you passed Revit 7th grade!

Keynote Address

Keynotes in Revit and the power they can afford any architect from a production standpoint is one of the easier sells for anyone questioning whether it is worth it to make the jump into Revit.  Production tasks are among the oldest and most basic built-in tools Revit offers, making them some of the easier tools to pick up and run with.

Keynotes are very simple at heart: they are callouts that know what they are pointing at.  They know because you can tell Revit what you want any item, assembly or material to be called. This is tied back to a single point of information, meaning that if you decide that a cypress countertop should now be pine, you make that change once, and Revit will know that anywhere it points to that type of countertop to now call it pine, and not cypress.

Coming from the world of AutoCAD drawings, that is a game changer, and can start to inform you as to how you should start to think about an Information Model as opposed to a traditional line drawing.  What’s less obvious out of the gate is how much of your focus and effort is then freed up to explore other things, knowing that notation is taken care of.

Keynotes come in 3 flavors:

Element Keynotes - These will grab any family instance and tie it to a note.  Depending on the type of family, this can serve several different functions.  For instance, a family that is made of several different parts or materials would probably want to be referred to as a whole on smaller scale drawings.

2D detail items can be grabbed as well, in which case you would probably want a work note that is tied to the work and materials involved with the elements drawn in that detail.

Material Keynotes - These will read the material from any family and tie it to a note.  This is exciting because there is no limit to the amount of unique materials a family can have, and so this can be used to dig down into an element and tie notes to individual parts.

These shouldn’t be used to tie the material to any designation (P-2, e.g.) as this is better served by the behavior of a tag as opposed to a keynote.

User Keynotes - When you are faced with a situation where, for any number of reasons, the above systems are not sufficient, you can just place an un-linked note that is not tied to any particular item or material, but is still tied to a particular note.  If you are consistent with these, they work well enough as a stop-gap, but they will stay where you put them; they will not adapt to changes in location or assembly you may make in the model.

Keynote Editing

The magic man behind the curtain here is a .txt file that is shockingly low tech.  It uses tabs and very simple coding to organize itself.  There are very good and potentially worthwhile plug-ins that create a user-friendly interface, but once you learn the rules there’s really no need.

The rules are:

1. Number everything, with no two numbers alike.
2. You can create sections and subsections by ending the line with the number you want it listed under.  (This is usually organized by CSI categories).
3. Tab to separate information.  Always.  Never space (except of course the spaces between words).  Return for a new line.

Here’s a quick sample (I write out [tab] instead of actually tabbing for clarity):

04[TAB]Masonry[RETURN]
04-1[TAB]King-size Brick: 04 21 13[TAB]04[RETURN]
04-2[TAB]Mortar Net: 04 05 23[TAB]04[RETURN]

This will read in Revit as follows:

04 Masonry
04-1 King-Size Brick: 04 21 13
04-2 Mortar Net: 04 05 23

In every family there is a parameter for a keynote number.  Within this parameter you can simply type ‘04-2’ or you can click the … and get Revit’s keynote browser with expandable sections based on however you’d like to build and group your note file.

The other beauty part of this whole thing is that you can take these notes, and families, with you to any other projects.  You can build it into a template that refers back to a single .txt file that only your spec writer controls if you want to be very rigid about things.  Or you can have an office standard note list that you start each project with that evolves on its own with each project.

However you choose to implement the system, it’s clear that, with planning, notation of drawings at all scales is changed from looming task to a quickly taken-for-granted functionality that allows for everyone, managers and drafters, to get more sleep!