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Revit Architecture 2013
by: Aaron Maller
The Content Conundrum
(Making Revit Drawings Pretty)
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ver the years of Autodesk® Revit® implementation, one resounding theme I’ve heard is that “Revit simply can’t make drawings that pop, with aggressive lineweights.” To be sure—in Revit’s out-of-the-box configuration, the lineweights and drawing presentations can leave a little to be desired. Generally though, I follow this comment directly by getting to one of the roots of the problem. I ask the company or BIM manager where they acquire their content and how it is “assimilated” into their office library. I’m usually met with confusion, as lineweights and settings are stored in the template (something else I’m passionate about), but then I dive into how controlling a drawing’s ability to “pop” can sometimes mean a larger initiative at content organization. (This is what you’ll hear me refer to as “the unsexy” of Revit implementation.) Generally, we get content in one of three ways:
Decisions are made about how to organize that content and return your investment in spades, in terms of presentation. Nesting and category selection for families is regarded as something for QTO and Visibility Control, but even with UN-shared nested families, proper category and sub-category selection can vastly affect drawing presentation.
WHAT DOES THE CONTENT NEED TO SAY AND DO? For me, the decision about category, nesting, sharing goes something like this: 1. What am I making? (Pick a category) 2. Is it one object (skip to step 3), or multiple objects? a. If multiple, do we want to count/schedule the subelements or control their definitions globally? (If so, set to Shared.)
1. We make it 2. We download it 3. We buy it (or pay to have it made)
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i. If Shared, pick sub-objects category September 2013