By Dennis Collin
On a recent training course, I was asked if Revit possesses a drop-down list of names or words to assign to a title sheet. This could either be an office location or the construction stage of drawing, or even from a list of designers.
In AutoCAD, such features can be set with Dynamic blocks and visibility states, however Revit has a similar function via the Family Types parameter than can be used to control the display of families.
There are several ways of having a different note for drawings at different stages, but the family types as a parameter provides the method most like the Visibility State parameter in AutoCAD. To define the different stage notes, create a series of Generic Annotation Families, in this example ‘CONSTRUCTION’, ‘PRELIMINARY’ and ‘TENDER’. Each example gets saved as an RFA file. They are in turn loaded into a Title sheet family and linked to a Sheet parameter.
In the title sheet family, select the family note and click add label. Set the name as drawing stage as similar and in this case set to an instance. NB. If required to be seen on a drawing schedule ensure that it is a Shared Parameter type.
Once set, choose the preferred default value, save the sheet family, and load the sheet into the project/ project template.
Select the sheet and within the instance properties, will be a list based upon the generic annotation families available within the title sheet. Choose the appropriate value as required. (See Fig 4.)
LIMITATION.
The list will show ALL loaded generic annotations within the family, not just the drawing stage settings. This list cannot be currently filtered to select values at the current time of writing.
An alternate method is to link the visibility of the note to the Family Type. The sheet settings could then be set via the properties palette type selector drop down. However, this method may not be desirable for large combinations of values and display settings.