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Customizing Element Tags |
During the construction documentation phase of a project, architects need to annotate various building components with symbolized descriptions (tags) in order to give additional information about the elements to be built. In the majority of cases, Revit allows automatic placement of the tags when the building component is created. If you don’t want to fill your drawings with annotations early in the process, you can choose to not tag elements on creation. You can add the tags later, in a manual or automated way (see chapter 15, Tag all not Tagged). The tags use annotation families in their definition. This means you create your custom tag family, however you wish to imagine it, in the Family Editor, load the family in the project, and then use the tags wherever you need them.
It’s advisable to load all tag families that you intend to use in your project or office template. That way, you can guarantee coherence and consistency in the way you document your project across the project team or office |
| You can load the various tags in the template using several tactics: |
- Choose File Load Library Load Family.
- Using Microsoft Explorer, select .rfa tag families and drag and drop them to place them in the Revit project environment. (You’ll need to have the template file open.) When you try to load more than one family at the same time, Revit prompts you either to open each of those files in an independent window (so you can modify them) or to load them all in the current project. Choose the second option.
- Use the tool available in Settings Annotations Loaded Tags (Figure 4.37). The advantage of this method is that you have a preview of all loaded and preset tags that will be used throughout the project
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Figure 4.37
Tags dialog |
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| Certain tags are indispensable in a project template. These include door tags, window tags, room tags, revision tags, material tags, keynotes, and area tags. Out of the box, Revit offers at least one of each of these tags; but you’ll probably want to create your own in the Family Editor and load them into your template |
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| Creating a Custom Door Tag |
| As an example of creating custom tags for a basic element, the following steps show you how to create the custom door tag shown in Figure 4.38: |
Figure 4.38
The custom door tag you’ll create in this exercise |
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- Choose File New Annotation Symbol.
- In the Open dialog, select the family template called Door Tag.rft or M_Door Tag.rft, and click Open. The Family Editor opens in a view with two crossing reference planes. To avoid problems later, don’t move the two reference planes. The intersection point is the center point of the tag.
- On the Design bar, select Label. Click the intersection of the two planes to position the label
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| Insert Image |
- In the dialog that opens, select Mark. In the Value group, you can enter a value that will be a symbolic value visible only in the Family Editor and that will be replaced by the number of the door to which this tag is associated. In this case, accept the proposed value and click OK.
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| Insert image |
| Inaserrt Image |
| Everything you learned about repositioning and changing the length of the section tag label in the exercise in the section “Creating a Custom Section Tag Family" applies here as well. |
- Click to select the label you just placed. On the Options bar, select Properties.
- In the Element Properties dialog, click Edit/New.
- In the Type Properties tab, select the text color, set the background to Transparent, and select a font style and size consistent with your office standards
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| Insert Imgae |
- Click OK in all open dialogs.
- While holding down the Ctrl key, click one of the lines in the sketch; from the Type Selector, select <Invisible Lines>. Doing so defines the shape of the tag, which has colored fill but no drawn boundary, as shown in Figure 4.38.
Invisible lines are for reference only in the Family Editor and in sketch mode. They’re selectable but not visible in the project environment, and they never appear on printed documents
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| InsertImage |
- On the Design bar, click Finish Sketch. The result should look like this:
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| Insert image |
- Save your tag. It’s ready to be reused in a project or a template.
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Creating Tags for Other Categories that Don’t Have Family Templates
While creating custom tags, you’ll notice that family templates aren’t available for some available Revit categories you may need to create. For example, if you need to create a furniture tag, you won’t find a corresponding template for it. What do you do. For such tags, you use the template called Generic.rft or M_Generic Tag.rft. As a first step when starting the template, you assign it to the category you wish it to be associated with. Here are the steps to do that: |
- Choose Settings Family Category and Parameters. (This exists only in the Family Editor.)
- In the dialog, select the desired category (Furniture, in this case), and click OK.
- Select the red information text, and delete it
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| You can now proceed, using the techniques shown in our previous examples |