By Dennis Collin
I recently wrote a post on the importance of keeping Revit’s project browser tidy, by sorting views by associated level rather than the default view name setting. Doing this puts the views in either an ascending or descending order, which is fine. However, other plan views may be required, and they need to be located separately from conventional plans.
For MEP practices, Revit views are often arranged by discipline and sub discipline parameters. For Architecture and Structures similar properties can be employed to arrange views. A common technique is to use the Family and Type setting which replicates the default arrangement and is fine for most small to medium projects.
Within the default architecture and structures template set of views there are a mix of floor and structural plans. They are mainly intended for general arrangement plans, but there is frequently a need for other drawings, like Site Plans, Floor Finish Drawings, Foundation and Pile layouts. These drawings ideally need to be located under a separate heading for greater efficiency of working and retrieval of information.
Within the browser organisation on the Views tab, choose new and define a new set of organisational rules for views. These will be sorted by Associated Level and grouped by Family and Type properties.
To separate the different view types within the project browser, duplicate the Floor Plan system family into different types e.g. Site Plan, Floor Finishes, Framing Plan etc. Once complete, views can be selected within the project browser and the view type set as desired. Once complete the listing of views will be more ordered and unneeded types can be minimised for clarity.
Once these families have been defined, views can be changed within the property’s palette to desired view types which will then relocate the view into an appropriate heading as can be seen in Fig 4. If this sorting method does not suit, it is possible to create custom properties as either Shared or Project Parameters and use these to sort the views within the project browser. This process I will cover in a future post.