Views on Sheets

When you have to add views to sheets just the task itself can take a long time. You will find that trying to put a view on a sheet will take less time if there is nothing visible in the view. Try it. Close all the worksets and place a view on a sheet. Now do the same thing with all the worksets Open. Even a modest size project should see a difference. It isn't that surprising. Why don't more people think of it then?

If you are using guide grids to position views consistently you'll need to be able to see at least some grids or reference planes but not much else. Next time you find yourself waiting for views to generate as you place them on sheets remember to close worksets or at least reduce how much Revit needs to show while it is doing it.

Sheet Button is Disabled

Trying to make a new sheet but the button is disabled? Using Design Options? When you are editing an option the Sheet button is disabled. Same for the right click option over the Sheet category in the project browser. Can't make a sheet while editing a Design Option, sorry!!

As you were...

Delete Sheets In Browser or Schedules

Rooms and areas can be deleted in model views like floor plans and ceiling plans. Revit warns us that they have been deleted from the model but they are still listed in schedules. To really delete them we have to open a schedule view and delete them there. That is intended to make it easier to place them elsewhere in the model without having to recreate them from scratch if their current location needs to be changed.

We can also create rooms and areas in a schedule view before there are any walls or boundaries available to define where they should go. Revit just reports "not placed" until we put them somewhere. We can do the same thing with sheets, they are called placeholder sheets.

The contrast or inconsistency compared with rooms and areas is that you can delete the sheet from the Project Browser and it is removed from the sheet list (schedule). It wouldn't be too unexpected to think that deleting the sheet should leave it in the database as a placeholder, kind of like rooms and areas?

Whadya think?

Dept. of Unfair - Move Tool is Insensitive

When they added the Guide Grid feature to Revit they made it possible to snap to Grid intersections (and Reference Planes) through a viewport. This means we can move a viewport into the same location from one sheet to the next based on an agreed grid intersection such, "A1 will be what we use as a reference location to put our floor plan views on the sheet the same way."

They added this after many years of hearing users complain about views not lining up on sheets. Me personally, I got over it early. Seemed to me that far fewer sheets were affected by this concern than the number of sheets that weren't. I don't mind having the feature but it just never bothered me. I could get things close enough that nobody would notice, especially working with real paper in hand. Granted it is easier to tell in the digital world "flipping" pdf pages or comparing a CAD file overlay. For me though, it didn't really amount to a hill of beans in the job trailer. As a contractor in the past I was more worried about information actually being on the sheet at all to be worried about whether they stacked from sheet to sheet exactly.

Oops I digress...

In order to make this possible they needed to make Revit more sensitive to the contents of the viewport when using the Move Tool. Unfortunately Revit seems to think we live in an orthogonal world because the only Grids or Reference Planes the tool "sees" are orthogonal ones. No arcs, no grids at an angle, sorry Charlie. Now it isn't hard to place a couple orthogonal Reference Planes somewhere or to choose a different Grid intersection perhaps but it would be nice if Revit was more malleable, enough to let us pick any intersection of Grids or Reference Planes.

From Autodesk's WikiHelp:

Item 7. Snap to the crop regions or datums in the viewports and move them into alignment with the guide grid lines to specify a precise location on the sheet. (bold emphasis mine)

This means we can forget about the datum stuff (Grids/Reference Planes) and use the Crop Region. Of course the Crop Region has to be visible to snap to it and unless you are using a Scope Box to manage the Crop Region (to keep them consistent for many views) it isn't really the most reliable reference point to use either. Here's a visual aid, a short video discussing it too.

Quick Tip - Move a View to a New Sheet

I've added this bit in front of the original post (09/03/2011) after getting a couple comments: This post assumes that "you" are already familiar with the concept of dragging a view onto a sheet from the project browser. Not everyone is aware that it is possible to reassign a view to a sheet by dragging within the Project Browser itself.

If you realize that you've put a view on the wrong sheet you can just select it and "delete" it. The view is removed from the sheet, no it isn't actually deleted (on the off chance you haven't done it before now). Probably already knew that much. Did you know that you can drag and drop it on another sheet instead? When you expand a sheet listing so you can see the views that are on it, listed under the sheet name, you can select a view and drag it to a new sheet. When you let go of the mouse button (ends the drag mode) Revit will open that sheet and let you place it.

Yet another way to manipulate stuff. In practice it becomes harder to use when you have a real project with lots of sheets. Often you can't get both sheets within your view of the browser and it's a little awkward to scroll up the Browser. Revit will do it, just have move your cursor toward the top or bottom of the frame to convince it you want to.

Added this too (09/03/2011): I also like to use the Right Click option > Add View because the list it offers is only eligible views. You have to scroll the list to find your view but at least you know you won't run the risk of dragging a view to a sheet that's already on a sheet.