Are you a designer on your team who’s responsible for drafting and creating Revit construction documents? If so, you’re probably familiar with the time-consuming process required to create and set up views, and even the sheets that host the views. Not to mention the frustration of aligning those views and renaming/renumbering them correctly on the designated sheet. 

The good news is that these frustrations can be solved with one tool – BIM Project Suite. BIM Project Suite makes Revit documentation a breeze by simplifying some of the steps needed for document creation. Here are five tools from BIM Project Suite that can easily be implemented into your workflow to save time and divert headaches. 

Detail Link

One of the most time-consuming tasks on the front end of a project is creating a drafting view for each CAD detail that will be imported/linked into the file. This manual process of creating a drafting view, naming the view, and then importing/linking the CAD detail into the view is all combined into one action with the Detail Link tool.

Simply add CAD detail files to a list and indicate that you would like Detail Link to create a new drafting view for each CAD file. This will cut down on the time needed to set up each view individually. If specified, Detail Link can also create new names that are independent of the CAD file name for each view. Watch the demo below to see how Detail Link can create 28 drafting views in just a few minutes. 

View Creator

You might be wondering why the View Creator tool wasn’t initially utilized to create the drafting views. This is because View Creator can create all kinds of views (and even duplicate views) but cannot import/link CAD files and generate associated views simultaneously, like Detail Link. However, View Creator does have the ability to generate an abundance of sheets all at once, without the need to manually create each sheet from the project browser. The video below will demonstrate how quick and easy it is to generate sheets, especially if a cartooned drawing set can be referenced.  

Spreadsheet Link

Now that detail views are created, given a proper scale and placed on sheets, the next step is to give each view the correct title. Instead of using the CAD file name as the detail view title, CTC’s Spreadsheet Link tool allows you to manipulate the data for all detail views and input a specific “title on sheet” via an Excel spreadsheet format, and then apply that data back into Revit. This keeps the user from having to manually input a unique “title on sheet” for each view in the properties window.

What you will notice upon opening Spreadsheet Link are two windows: the Spreadsheet Link Settings window and Spreadsheet Link Window. In the settings window, the user selects what information to load into the spreadsheet for manipulation. In this instance, “Views” is the selected category, and “view name” and “title on sheet” are the parameters. As these categories and parameters are selected, the spreadsheet is automatically populated in the background and is ready for manipulation. After changes have been made, the user can then apply those changes directly back to the Revit model.  

View Aligner

Two of the most frustrating and time-consuming tasks when laying out views on sheets are aligning the views and renumbering the views. CTC has included two free tools in the BIM Project Suite that expedite the process.

View aligner has a short learning curve, but it allows the user to select a particular edge of view and justify other views according to that specified edge. View Aligner also allows the user to justify views by levels set within the model. In the video below, the millwork details are justified by the bottom (floor) and left (wall) edges.  

Renumbering

The Renumbering tool is one of the most useful tools that can be used throughout the different design phases. There are many items constantly undergoing changes that require new numbering sequences. The Renumbering tool can be used for rooms, areas, spaces, doors, grids, and detail numbers.

One of the frustrating issues when renumbering items is when an item in the model already contains the value that the user wants to assign to a specific item. Especially with detail views, the user is required to find the detail view with the duplicate number, assign that detail view a “dummy” number, then continue the numbering sequence where user left off; that is until the problem resurfaces.

The Renumbering tool corrects these issues altogether and simplifies the process significantly. The user can specify what number the sequence begins with and can even designate prefixes and suffixes to the numbers. The video below demonstrates how easy it is to start with the number “1” and simply click on the detail views (in order) till each is numbered sequentially.  

Conclusion

Hopefully it is easier to understand how CTC tools can save time, but also preserve sanity, when it comes to some of the more “routine” tasks of document management. For further demonstration of some of these tools, check out the content below. 

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