Referencing Detail and Referencing Sheet

Some of our government clients wants us to show the referencing sheet and detail numbers in the View title like:

Revit has this nice feature too!

Basically, these parameters show the sheet number and the detail number where this particular detail is referenced. This works perfect in most of the cases. However, sometimes the detail is referenced in more than one view (and so in different sheets). This can happen because of many reasons – dependent views or ‘show in – intersecting views’ parameter, etc.

In such cases, unfortunately, there are more than one referencing sheet that refer the detail in a drawing set. It looks like Revit shows the first sheet it comes across (per alphabetical order?) in the drawing set for this referencing sheet / detail parameter. It is read only and so, we cannot change it.

The workarounds is to manipulate the referencing sheet parameter by renaming / renumbering the sheet (not good) or to hide the unwanted callout / section / view tag category in the visibility graphics (not good again). (Just hiding the unwanted view tag using the View > Hide in view > elements option does NOT work!)

I think Autodesk should make this read only parameter a drop down menu where we could choose our preferred sheet from a list of available sheets…

If you like this option, please submit a support request with Autodesk.

Export to DWG from Revit issues

Even though Autodesk owns both AutoCAD and Revit, it is quite ironic that the export to CAD command does not work properly. There are so many issues outlined even in 2006, and most of them are still resolved.

The most irritating is the one related to the dimensions. When I export a sheet like:

with dimensions and if I choose any option other than the “overrides BYENTITY” in the CAD Export Format dialog box:

It results in out of scale dims like:

Not good.

Page setups are not similar in Revit and AutoCAD. So those don't get transferred too.

AutoCAD has a ‘nice’ printer called ‘None’ which has all the page sizes. Revit should retain the paper size from the title block and use the None printer while exporting sheets. This will not give a ‘printer missing’ error message in AutoCAD (when the DWG file is being opened), but still give the user an option to select an appropriate printer from the user’s network to print to the correct size.

Turn off grids and levels from linked Revit projects

We link a structural revit project into most of our revit projects. We typically develop the grid and after finalizing it, let our engineers maintain it.

We cannot show their grids in our views because, Revit does not allow the linked grid heads/extension to be tweaked. So, we typically copy/monitor the grids. However, when we tweak the grid heads, we see the linked grid head beneath:

One could go into the visibility graphics, and switch off the grids from the linked file on a view by view basis, but exploiting the workset option is more elegant.

Go to File menu > Manage links… and select the structural model and select ‘Reload From…”

and select the same linked structural file. Before pressing ‘open’, select the small arrow next to the ‘open’ button:

and select specify. Then press ‘open’. Revit shows the ‘Linking Worksets…” dialog box.

Select the ‘Shared Levels and grids’ workset and press ‘close’ and then Ok and again Ok. Now the ‘Shared Levels and grids’ workset from the linked file is closed and is NOT visible in any Revit view. Even though the linked grids are not visible, Revit still ‘monitors it!!!

If for some reason you want to see the structural grids, you can repeat the steps above to make them visible.

Structural columns dont show up in detail views

This is a corollary to one of my previous posts: http://revitize.blogspot.com/2009/09/structural-framing-and-plan-display.html

Here is a structural column in the 2nd level plan view. There are two callouts – magenta is of Floor Plan type and the blue is of Detail View type.

The column goes from the 2nd level to 3rd level.

The respective callout views we get are:

and

But if the column is changed to span from 1st level to 3rd level like:

The column does NOT show up in the detail view type:

To make the column visible, you need to edit the family and uncheck the “show family pre-cut in plan views” option in the family category and parameters. More explanation on this here.

It is painful to edit structural families, because when we get the updated structural project from the engr., the family edit needs to be done again. Unless the structural engr does it in their project.

I would really like Autodesk to make this option as the default.

Edit dimension text at view breaks

If a dimension spans a view break (split view), Revit does not allow the dimension or text to be edited. Here is a view break and a selected dimension:

The DIM text cannot be selected / clicked (we want it to say “VARIES”). To make it editable, we had to move the crop line first like,

and there after the dim text is editable.