Your deliverable product is a set of construction documents and specifications. So it stands to reason that the application you use to produce these construction documents is at its strongest in this arena. Unfortunately, when you see marketing campaigns related to Revit, all they show are huge skyscrapers and realistic renderings. And of course you see the slide of the architect handing a model to the contractor, and then the contractor handing it to the owner. Don’t get me wrong—all that stuff is good, but the most powerful feature of Revit Architecture is its ability to create sheets. You wouldn’t think this is the standout feature; but when it’s 4:30 in the afternoon and the job is going out the door at 5:00, you’ll never go back to a drafting application after you’ve used Revit at the eleventh hour. The first part of the chapter will focus on creating a sheet and how to populate it with views. Although you completed this task back in Chapter 11, “Schedules and Tags,” it’s time to drill into the ins and outs of sheet creation. Luckily, when you create and populate sheets, Revit holds true to form—that is, you don’t have to start setting up different drawings or models to simply reference them together. You create sheets much as you create most other views, because that is all a sheet is: a view. But a sheet goes one step further. Look at a sheet as a view that collects other views for the purpose of printing. The objective of the following procedure is to create a new sheet. To get started, open the model you’ve been working on. If you missed the previous chapter, go to the book’s web page at FIGURE 14.1 Selecting a new sheet Congratulations! You now have a blank sheet. The next procedure involves adding views to the sheet by using the click-and-drag method: FIGURE 14.2 Adding a guide grid to a sheet. FIGURE 14.3 Dragging the view onto the sheet This is how you populate a sheet using Revit—quite the departure from CAD. One nice detail is that the title is filled out, and the scale will never be incorrect. The next step is to begin renumbering sheets so you can create a logical order. If you’ve been following along with the book, you already have a sheet numbered A101. It would be nice if you could give this sheet a new number and start your sequence over. Revit lets you do just that. The objective of the next procedure is to change the sheet numbering and to add more sheets, allowing Revit to sequentially number the sheets as they’re created. Follow these steps: FIGURE 14.4 Renaming the sheet Your Project Browser should now resemble Figure 14.5. FIGURE 14.5 The reorganized Project Browser With the sheets organized, you can now proceed to create more. As you do, you’ll see that not only do the sheets number themselves, but all of the sections, elevations, and callouts begin reading the appropriate sheet designations. The objective of the next procedure is to create more sheets and to add views to them: FIGURE 14.6 Adding another sheet In the Project Browser, sheet A102 is still unnamed. The next procedure describes a different way to rename and renumber a sheet: FIGURE 14.7 Changing the title-block information FIGURE 14.8 Creating a sheet and adding views in a row across the bottom of the page Now that the first floor plans and typical enlarged plans are placed on a sheet, let’s move on to adding the details you’ve created. If you feel as though you have enough experience creating a sheet and adding views, go ahead and proceed on your own. Your new sheet will be numbered A301 and be called Building Sections, and you’ll add the views East Corridor Section, West Corridor Section, Section at West Training, and West Wing South Wall Section. Your sheet should look like Figure 14.9. If you’d like some assistance in putting the section sheet together, follow along with this procedure: FIGURE 14.9 The completed sheet A301 You’ve created a few sheets, and you may want to make some adjustments to the view without leaving the sheet. The next section of this chapter will focus on the properties of a viewport and how to make it live on the sheet so you can make modifications. Wait a second. Isn’t a viewport AutoCAD vernacular? Yes, it is. But a viewport in AutoCAD and a viewport in Revit are two completely different things. In Revit, when you drag a view onto a sheet, a linked copy of that view becomes a viewport. This is what you see on the sheet. Any modification you make to the original view will immediately be reflected in the viewport, and vice versa. See Figure 14.10 for a graphical representation. FIGURE 14.10 The relationship between the original view and the viewport The objective of the next procedure is to activate a viewport to make modifications on the sheet, and also to explore the Element Properties of the viewport. Follow along: FIGURE 14.11 Activating a view FIGURE 14.12 Stretching the crop region so you can see the entire view
CHAPTER 14
Creating Sheets and Printing
Creating and Populating Sheets
www.sybex.com/go/revit2012ner
. From there, you can browse to Chapter 14 and find the file called NER-25.rvt
. Now, follow along:
Sheet Organization
Modifying a Viewport