by John Flanagan
Project Templates
Configuring project templates to match office standards can be daunting. If you are new to Revit it is always a good idea to use an out of the box Revit Template as a base to build your office template from.
A project template enables you to start a project by providing initial conditions such as the default project units and settings, the default building levels and standard views, system families such as walls, floors, and others and preloaded component families.
You can create templates by using a completely blank project, by saving an existing project as a template, or by using one of the default templates provided with the Revit installation.
In Revit Architecture, use the Architectural Template to start a project.
- The Architectural Template is a standard template that creates a new project with two levels, Level 1 and Level 2.
- It sets the default project units, imperial or metric, and loads a subset of component families that you can use to create the building design.
Tip: Not all content can be loaded or would be appropriate to load into the templates provided. However if you require additional System Families (eg: Walls/Floor/Roofs/Stairs/Repeat Details/Railings and Fences) please review these Content files and use Transfer Project Standards to extract those families into your current Project or Template (these files are in a separate folder beneath the library, called: 'System Family Files').
What goes into a template can depend greatly on your workflow as well as your knowledge of the types of things that can be put into them.
Checklist for a Good Template
Defining Levels in a project template is helpful. They could be just a few basic floor and/or ceiling plans for a residential project.
Settings that are typically added to project templates include Units, Snaps,Temporary Dimensions, Object Styles (Lineweights, Line colour, and Line patterns), Line Styles, Materials, Fill Patterns, Annotation Styles (Text, Dimensions, Arrowheads, AND Loaded Tags), Filters, Loaded Component Families, Views, Schedules, Sheets and Views on Sheets. Discipline specific items such as Wall types, Column types or duct and Pipe types are also included.
This list does not contain everything, but it includes important aspects that you will want to address prior to starting your project.