As you can see, Revit is all about the views. In fact, by using Revit, not only are you replacing the application you use for drafting, but you’re also replacing your existing file storage system. This is largely because you’re now using one model, and you are using views of that model for your project navigation. I wanted to dedicate an entire chapter to project navigation. Although you’ve steadily gained experience in this area, we can expand on much more to round out your Revit expertise. The first item we’ll tackle in this chapter is the process of duplicating a view to create another. Although it’s a straightforward procedure, a lot is riding on the hope that you proceed with this function correctly. As you’re about to find out, this command isn’t a simple copy-and-paste operation. Revit will change how you organize a project. You’ll no longer open a file and save it as another file so you can make changes without affecting the original. As you know, Revit is all-inclusive in terms of files. Well, there is only one. From that one file, there are views that reside within the Project Browser. Of course, I’m not telling you anything you haven’t learned. If you’ve gone through the book from page 1, you’ve already gained experience in creating views (especially in Chapter 3, “Creating Views”). If you’re just jumping to this chapter, you most certainly have had some exposure to view creation. The reason this topic is broken into two chapters is to help you gain a more in-depth understanding of how you can manipulate and organize views. Now, let’s duplicate some views! To begin, open the file you’ve been following along with. If you didn’t complete the previous chapter, go to the book’s web page at The objective of the following procedure is to create a furniture plan of Level 1 and then turn off the furniture on the original Level 1: FIGURE 13.1 Right-clicking the Level 1 floor plan in the Project Browser Now, any time you add furniture or casework, it will only show up in the furniture plan. You don’t need to deal with a layer or display configuration. The ability to create a copy of a view and then modify its visibility graphics to display certain items is a critical function in Revit. Another similar task is also available: creating coordinated match-line divisions in a model by creating dependent views. You create a dependent view in much the same way you duplicate a view. In fact, you are duplicating a view. The function of a dependent view is to “nest” a duplicate of a view within the host view (or the view you’re making the duplicate of). This nested view is dependent on the host view in terms of visibility graphics and View Properties. You can have multiple dependent views categorized under the host view. The reason you create dependent views is to add match lines. Yes, you could simply duplicate a view and move its crop region, but when you have dependent views—as you’ll see in Chapter 14, “Creating Sheets and Printing”—you can tag those views in a specific way for Revit to keep track of the sheets they’re on. Dependent views also give the advantage of making your Project Browser much less cluttered, without unnecessary floor plans. The objective of the next procedure is to make a dependent view of the Level 1 floor plan: FIGURE 13.2 Creating the two views dependent on Level 1 Now that the views are duplicated and nested within the host view, it’s time to divide the Level 1 floor plan. You’ll do this by adjusting the crop region. Every view in Revit has a crop region. Crop regions play an important role when your plan is too large to fit on a sheet. All you need to do at this point is to slide the east and west crop regions to display the correct views. The objective of the next procedure is to adjust the crop regions to display the appropriate parts of the plan based on the name of the views: FIGURE 13.3 Dragging the crop region in the Level 1 West view FIGURE 13.4 Dragging the crop region to the right in the Level 1 East view Now you can see the area where you need to draw the match line. The crop region should overlap in the corridor. If not, drag the crop regions so that they match Figure 13.6. FIGURE 13.5 Turning on the crop region from the View Control toolbar
CHAPTER 13
Creating Specific Views and Match Lines
Duplicating Views
www.sybex.com/go/revit2012ner. From there, you can browse to Chapter 13 and find the file called NER-24.rvt.
Duplicate With Detailing, as shown in Figure 13.1.
Creating Dependent Views
Duplicate As A Dependent. You now have a view that is nested under Level 1. As you can see, Level 1 is expanded to show its dependencies.
Duplicate As A Dependent. You now have two views nested under Level 1 (see Figure 13.2).
Adjusting the Crop Regions
