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Depending on the type of building you’re planning, the geographical area in which your building will be built, and even the style of the building you’re designing, it’s likely that the default elements and general settings provided by the out-of-the-box Revit template won’t be what you need. Software vendors make a great effort to provide locale-specific content libraries that respect local traditions as well as incorporate local regulations in their documentation, but as we all know, that is only a good starting point and can’t cover all the types of elements you’ll need in the course of a project. Like many other software packages, Revit allows you to start with a basic template and then spawn your own custom templates to suit your specific requirements.
As your knowledge of the software progresses, you’ll soon see that the default selection of wall types, roof types, ceilings, stairs, and other families aren’t sufficient to satisfy all your design and documentation needs. This is also the case with the graphical language that you or your firm has established over the years and probably want to continue using with Revit. How you graphically present elements like text, dimensions, annotations, keynotes, and hatch patterns defines your style of design documentation. The reality of the architectural profession is that we tend to develop cus- tomized graphics, and Revit respects this need by letting you stylize your content and use that in your starting templates. One possible example of graphic style in a CD phase of a project done by BNIM Architects is shown in Figure 4.1. |
Figure 4.1
Example of stylized annotations used in a custom template |
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| With Revit, you can expect to set up your templates by doing one or more of the following: |
- Defining all the project settings to meet your graphic requirements
- Preloading model and annotation elements
- Defining system families before you start a project
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Once everything is in place, you can then save the file as a template ( .rte ) and use that template whenever you start a new project. Once you’ve saved a new template, you can have Revit open that template by default by setting options in the File Locations dialog. Follow these steps: Choose Settings Options, and click the File Locations tab.
The first option in the dialog shows the default template location. Click the Browse button to choose a new path to your default template (Figure 4.2). |
Figure 4.2
Change the path to your default template once you’ve made one |
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| Creating and reusing templates can increase your productivity and keep your documentation looking consistent. Specifically, using templates allows you to do the following |
- Reuse work that you’ve already created whenever you can
- Maintain consistency in a project, especially when many team members participate in its cre- ation
- Assure graphic consistency across projects
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In this chapter, we focus on personalizing (customizing) the Revit template file ( .rte ). The following list lays out items we suggest you go through one by one when setting up templates. This doesn’t represent all possible settings you can predefine in a template, but it includes those that we think are most pertinent:
Settings for graphics: |
- Object styles
- Materials
- Line styles
- Line patterns
- Fill patterns (hatches)
- View templates
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| Setting up annotations: |
- Dimension styles
- Text styles
- View tags
- Annotation tags
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| Setting up title blocks |
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| Setting up global project settings: |
- Keynoting external file locations
- Project units
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