The Myth of a Perfect Revit Template

PRESENTER: 30 seconds to spare-- what a-- [CHUCKLES] Good morning. How are we doing?

AUDIENCE: Good.

PRESENTER: Last day.

AUDIENCE: Yes.

PRESENTER: Thumbs up. Good?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: OK, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Who stayed out the latest last night? What time did you stay up till?

AUDIENCE: About 1:30.

PRESENTER: 1:30, anybody can beat 1:30?

AUDIENCE: 3:30.

PRESENTER: 3:30, anybody beat 3:30?

AUDIENCE: 4:00.

PRESENTER: 4:00. I hear 4:00. Do I hear 5:00?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Wow. Kudos to you for coming. You probably didn't make it to the 8:00 class, though, did you?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

[LAUGHING]

PRESENTER: All right. You know, I am the worst mentee out there. I was mentoring four first-time speakers this year, and I was trying to prepare them, tell them to do this, do this, don't forget to do this. And I did none of that. So I came up here, and my computer would not connect to this. I did not bring my mini display adapter. But we got it working.

We're going to have to adapt the presentation a little bit, because I was planning on using Revit. But we'll just adapt, and we'll go on. Welcome, everybody. I'm glad you could come. My name is Mike Massey. Let me go and introduce myself-- or Michael Massey, either one. People always say, do you Michael or Mike? I don't care. I'll do either one.

I work with a company called Sanveo. We are based out of San Francisco, California area. You can see my resume there. I've got about 27 years experience in the AEC industry. I was the top-rated speaker at Autodesk University two years ago. You all let me down last year. Maybe you'll do better this year. But I'm very proud of that. That's a very prestige-- if you're speaker, you know how competitive that is, and people want that.

This is my 13th year to speak here at AU. Graduated from Texas A&M. Any Aggies in the room?

AUDIENCE: Woop.

PRESENTER: Woop, there we go, gig 'em. I am a certified instructor in all the Revit products. I also co-wrote the Revit MEP training manual for Autodesk a couple years ago, as well. So that's a little bit about me.

I'm from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Just to tell you a little bit about our company, Sanveo, we are a construction technology consulting . Company we work with primarily general contractors and subcontractors, doing BIM and VOC solutions. We can do modeling. We can do crash detection for incoming and help contractors and subcontractors who are struggling in that area or who are just too busy to get it done. We can help in that area.

We also do a lot of reality capturing laser scanning. We do have engineers on board, so we can do electrical engineering. Training and staff development-- that's a little bit about what we do, but not primarily. But that's a little bit about these companies [INAUDIBLE]. If you're interested in talking more about that, let me know, and I'll be glad to talk to you after the class.

OK, so the agenda today-- we're going to start with some introductions that I'll go through fairly quickly. And then we're going to dive right in and talk about Revit templates today. I bet I've got a wide sampling of users out there, from maybe newbies to very experienced Revit users out there. It's always hard to teach these classes or to come up with a class that will meet everybody's needs. So I try to shoot in the middle.

And So my goal is that I want everybody to walk out of here with one nugget. If you can leave you with one nugget that you can go back to your office and improve one little thing about the way you use Revit, then I've done good. So if you're an experienced Revit user, this is going to be pretty basic as far as creating templates and what should be going into templates. But hopefully, everybody will get some nuggets out of here.

But we're going to talk about what to include in a template. And I'm also going to ask for audience participation during this. So I'll be asking you questions as far as what you do compared to what I do, because I'm not the end all to say all. We've got a roomful of experts in here. And so I want everybody to share your knowledge, as well, to help improve this class.

Talk about setting up view filters and views and View Templates-- I think View Templates are the most important thing you can do in a Revit template. That is where you can really establish standards and also make it more efficient as far as getting a project setup. Including links and work sharing in a template-- that's always a question people have as far as how do we do that? Also, I'll talk about creating a master Revit project. I'll go more into that as far as what that is. But basically, it's a master project that we put all of our stuff in that we go get stuff from. And then we'll wrap up with a conclusion there.

So who's who? Let's take a little poll here. How many first-time AU attenders do we have? [WHISTLES] Wow, that's about 30% of the class. That's great. Welcome. Good so far? It's kind of like cocaine-- once you start coming, you don't want to miss it. And so you love it.

How about two or more AUs? I'll tell you what-- let's do this. Stand up if you've been to two or more AUs. And then you're going to be sitting down as we go through this, so I can see. I want to figure out who's been here the most. How about six or more? Sit down if you've not been here six or more years. 10 or more? We're getting fewer. 15 or more? OK, the three that just sat down, have long? How many years?

AUDIENCE: 12.

AUDIENCE: 14.

AUDIENCE: 12.

PRESENTER: 14, 14 is the winner, there you go. All right, next question-- I, myself, this is my 14th year to be AU, 13th year to speak. Here's another trivia question. This was AU 2005. Does anybody know where that picture was taken?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: No, it was not Mandalay Bay. Anybody else?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Huh?

AUDIENCE: Orlando?

PRESENTER: Orlando, it was at the Swan and Dolphin Hotel in Orlando. The only time that I know of it was that in Florida. That was one of my favorite AUs. I wish I could go back there, but we can be kind of stuck here as far as having sessions here. OK, who said Orlando? OK, I don't want to hit anybody in the head. These are golf balls. They're kind of heavy. All right. OK.

So how's this year been doing? How many's learned something from a class? Anything? Everybody should raise their hand. Surely you've learned something. OK, what was the best class? Somebody just yell it out. What was your best class that you've gone to, that you've gotten the most out of?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Wait, wait, one at a time. Raise your hand. Yes?

AUDIENCE: The Future of Learning.

PRESENTER: Future of Learning-- I missed that one. Was it good?

AUDIENCE: It was great. It was [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Very good. Anybody else?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: I was signed up for that class, and I didn't get to go.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Man, OK. Anybody else?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: OK, very good. I bet that was good. One more.

AUDIENCE: So You Think You're a Good Manager.

PRESENTER: So You Think You're a Good Manager-- did you learn you're not?

AUDIENCE: Well, [INAUDIBLE]

[LAUGHTER]

PRESENTER: Well, you all fail. You're supposed to say this class. OK, keynotes-- anybody go to the keynotes? Good. I don't know. I didn't go to the AEC keynote yesterday, but I did go to the main keynote on Tuesday. It was OK. Anyway, Expo-- a lot of vendors out there. Any vendors in the room? Anybody exhibiting on the Expo floor? OK. What's your company?

AUDIENCE: Microsystems?

PRESENTER: Microsystems. Go see her. She's got good stuff, I'm sure. Networking-- that's my favorite. How many's met somebody this week that you didn't know just networking? That's probably the main thing I love about AUs, being able to talk to people and meet people.

Social events/evening events-- who went to the party last night? Majority of the people. Who went to the Brooklyn Bowling Alley? Did you all hear that band? That band was incredible. I loved that band. I loved it.

Gambling-- I don't gamble too much, but anybody-- who's won the most money? How much you win?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Whoa! $1,800, goodness. Who's lost the most money?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

[LAUGHTER]

PRESENTER: OK, and finally, the exhaustion level-- who's exhausted? I'll tell you, this wears you out. I get so exhausted at this stuff. OK, enough of the fun stuff. Let's get into business. Class handout-- I want to encourage you to go to the website or wherever you get the class handout. Maybe it's on your app. But I do have a handout there. It's very informative. It is about, I don't know, 27, 28 pages, something like that. So I put a lot of effort in that, so you can go back and use this as a go-to afterwards.

I've also put a zip file up there with two sample Revit templates. One is for architectural, and one is for MEP. Sorry, structural guys-- any structural guys in the room? I did not do a structural template. I'm sorry. That's not my background. I guess structure is my weakest, weakest area. But maybe you could take one of these. But these are just some sample ones that we'll be using in the class today that I'll be talking about. But I've given those out for you to begin with your templates, if you need them.

OK, enough introductions. So let's get started. Why do we need to create a template? Anybody?

AUDIENCE: Standards.

PRESENTER: Standards. That's what I say. Standards is the number one up there. Any other reasons why we need to create a template?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Huh?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: System types, OK. Anything else?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Huh?

AUDIENCE: Ease of use?

PRESENTER: Ease of use, very good. Yeah, efficiency, increase efficiency. I think that's my probably-- outside of standards, I guess that's my number two reason of why I think it's important to create a template. If you come from the AutoCAD days, we all have an AutoCAD template that would have layers and dimension styles and text styles already loaded in there. Same thing with Revit, except you can do a whole lot more inside of Revit with templates. I mean, you could really give your project a huge boost when you're starting it up with things already set up in there. And so it's huge as far as the increase efficiency.

Of course, we can do things like standards as far as annotation types, naming conventions, title blocks, line weights, and types, all that kind of stuff, all the AutoCAD stuff that's carrying over from those CAD standards, which can be brought into Revit, as well. But I think, again, number one, increase efficiency.

Who, what, where, when, why planning-- I love this quote. I love that picture of Albert Einstein. But if I only had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution. Planning is essential when you're trying to create your company's Revit template. Knowing what you want to put in there, getting ideas from other people, working with your co-workers, it's very important, especially to get buy-in for people to use your template the way you want them to use it. So the who, what, where, when, why-- I can't stress enough how important this planning stage is when trying to create a Revit template in there.

Of course, as far as preparation for the template, we need to do our due diligence as far as gathering CAD standards. Dust off the book on your bookshelf that you never look at, that's the AutoCAD standards, that's been up there for years. Dust that off. We need to look at those CAD standards to see what CAD standards we want to bring over into Revit.

Review what's out of the box. You know, Revit's got some great templates out of the box, and there's nothing wrong with using the out-of-the-box templates. As a matter of fact, I do recommend that, especially for first time users who are starting Revit on their first project, just to use the out-of-the-box settings. We may not match your company's style. But hey, let's learn Revit, and once we get accustomed to using Revit, then we can go back and start customizing it to make it match our standards. And so know what's there. Know what's not there as far as what's out of the box.

Make a list of requirements as far as, what do we want to be in this template? I think that's very important, to have a list of items that you want include in there. Make cuts. I'm going to stress this a couple times today. We don't want a Revit template that's over 100 gig-- or 100 megs. We want to try to keep our Revit templates small and compact and have the good stuff in there that we want. But it doesn't have to have everything in there. So I think we do need to make some cuts and cut some things out of the template to decrease the size of the file.

Templates for different project types or clients-- you may not just need one template. You may need a bunch of templates. If you're doing different types of projects, from health care to educational to residential, whatever, you may need multiple templates to meet those project needs and demands that you've got going on. Same thing for clients. If you've got specific clients, a lot of times they're driving our templates as far as the standards that we have to do in those templates. So think about that. Think about what your company is doing.

And finally, develop a template review committee. Don't just try to do it yourself. Get input from others. If you can get buy-in from everybody else, you're going to have more success. And so include as many as you can as far as planning this template.

I will say this. Once the template is established, less is more as far as managing that template. You don't want a whole committee in there trying to manage the template afterwards, because people start doing things to it that you have no idea what they're doing. So I think once the template is created, then it should be bottlenecked down to one or two people that manage that template from there on out. But in the planning stage, we need to get as many ideas as we can.

Another way that I suggest people to start creating a template if they don't have one is, again, use the out-of-the-box template. Just use it as best you can on that first project. When you get done, during the process of that first project, you're going to do a lot of things. You're going to make schedules. You're going to make sheets. You're going to make title blocks. You're going to change the graphics. You're going to do all this stuff during this first project, and it's probably going to take longer. But when you're all said and done with that first project, we've got a pretty good template. And so just go ahead and dive in and do that first project.

Now, as far as saving that project out as a template, there are some cleanup process that I recommend. First of all, delete the geometry, because the chances are the geometry is not going to match your next project. So erase all the geometry. The best way of doing that is to create you a new default 3D view, select All, and hit Delete. Erase everything in there.

Do selective purge. Everybody knows what the Purge command. Is we just deleted everything in the model, and then we do a purge, we're going to purge out all that stuff. But we're also going to purge out all the settings that we've set up in that project. So be selective on that purge. Of course, purge out things that we don't need in there. But as far as settings and things like that, we want to make sure we retain those.

Delete the views-- you're probably going to have hundreds of views in that project. So let's delete the ones that are project-specific, the ones that we don't need to carry over in our template. But we can clean that up, rename them to generic names. Instead of Lobby Floor Plan for Level 2, or something like that, just call it Level 1, Level 2, Level 3. Or make it simple or short. Whatever your naming system is, we'll probably have to rename some of the views that we have in that project to be more generic.

And then finally, save that as an RVT. And that's simply just going to say, that as I'm picking a template, to save that file out-- so again, a great way to jump start your template. Another suggestion that I have as a BIM manager, you'll want to do this for your users. Yes, question?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Did I misspell that?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] RVT [INAUDIBLE] RTE.

PRESENTER: RTE-- I did misspell that. Thank you for-- yeah, oops. Yeah, RTE, not RVT. We'll talk about saving a temple as an RVT at the end, but for this, yeah, RTE. Thank you very much. Any other questions? Pause. OK.

And lastly on this section, as a BIM manager, you want to do this for your users. Take the time to establish, on the startup page, a link to the template, so they don't have to go browse and find that. Typically, it's a simple process. But I don't know how many times I've been in offices where they haven't done this, and they're sitting there browsing through folder and subfolder and subfolder and subfolder to find their template. Make it easy. Put a link in here right on the startup page so they can start that new file using that template. All right, any questions about this first part? OK.

All right, so here comes the biggie-- what to include in a template. It's not like a trip to Walmart. I know when I go to Walmart or Costco or one of those big box stores, you go in there for one thing, and you come out with everything. You come out with stuff you didn't even know you needed, didn't even know you'd wanted. But you saw it, and it's just you come out with stuff. We don't want our template a shopping cart with everything in there. We want to be kind of selective.

So of course, we're going to have standards in there that we need to think about, things like line weights, line styles, line patterns, the typical graphical settings that we want to set up in that template; and object styles; annotation symbols-- for your legends, this is a very typical annotation symbol legend. This is something that you'll probably only have to create once. You probably already have this in AutoCAD, if you're coming from AutoCAD or another platform. Do take the time to convert this to Revit stuff, because this is going to be on every project, your symbol, your symbol legend.

It doesn't take that long to convert this to Revit, as opposed just to bringing in a CAD file. But take the time to do that, so that it is actually using the actual symbols of Revit, and it's just not similar. But that's important.

Dimensions types, text types-- of course, we all know that the default text type in Revit is what? Ariel. Anybody use anything but Ariel? Some people? You can do it. There's nothing wrong with changing the default text type. Just know that everything, everything is set to Ariel. The dimensions are set to Ariel. All the out-of-the-box text types are set to Ariel. All the tags, every tag that has text on it, is set to Ariel. So if you do want to change to something other than Ariel, you can do it. Just know that you've got to look at everything, and you can't just make one change to change that text type.

Field regions, which are, of course, hatches inside of Revit-- if you've got any custom hatches that you're using, that you want to come in from CAD, you can import those custom fill regions or hash patterns and use those in our projects. And then materials, for the material library-- and we're going to talk a bit more about materials a little bit later-- but think about what materials you need. And we don't want-- again, we don't want a huge shopping cart of materials that we never ever use. And so we can purge out those weird materials that we're not going to be using in there. But of course, we can create a material library that has our materials in it, that's outside of our project, that we can bring in on an as-needed basis, if we need those additional materials.

Content-- less is more. Here's my rule. If there is something that you use in every, every, every project, it belongs in your template. If it's only used in some of the projects, it has no business being in your template. I promise you. I see stuff in templates that have no business being in there. Yes, they may use it on-- well, we used that on a project about five years ago, so we may need it again. No. Make them go out load that family if they need it again. But if you use something on every project, yes, let's take it and put it in there.

Of course, we have system families and component families. Anybody know the difference between system families and component families? Systems are created inside the project, things like walls or ceilings or floors or conduit or pipes or duct work. All those are system families, where they're defined inside the project. So we certainly want to set those up for our typical families that we're going to be using.

And then a component family is everything else. So all those little pictures over there are all component families, that we need to make sure that we have those accessed. But again, it's not too hard to say, Load family, go out and hit a button, and load a family if you need to load it. Just make sure you have a library that is organized.

We all have the out-of-the-box library that comes with Revit, and we all know that some of this stuff is lacking in that library. So we do have to go out and find more content or create content of our own. I do suggest that you put that content in outside of the out-of-the-box library, simply because, when 2020 comes out this spring, and you upgrade your Revit, it's going to be real hard for you to go in and find which families you've customized or created or imported or downloaded that are not the out-of-the-box families-- and so if you just keep your stuff separate and just in a subfolder or something, so that you can go out and quickly grab that, when it's time to upgrade to the new version. So again, less is more on this content.

Just a list-- I'm not going to go through every one of these. I did include structural for the structural guys on this. This was a stretch for me. But we've got architectural MEP and structural-specific items, things you need to think about. You may not have to do everything for every one of these items in there. But at least think about it. Think about, do we need to create specific types of these items?

There's also settings in here. So going through some of the settings, especially for MEP, setting up your piping system, setting up your HVAC systems in there, you definitely want to do that as far as going through and creating those predefined pipe systems and HVAC systems that you can already have standard in your template. Any questions about that? Does anybody see anything up there that I left off, that's major, that you say, hey, you really should have this up there? Anybody? Either I did pretty good or you're shy.

AUDIENCE: Mechanical equipment?

PRESENTER: Huh? Mechanical equipment?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: Equipment, period.

PRESENTER: Equipment, period. It's right there. How's that? [LAUGHS] Yes?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: OK, pipe set up.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] used for [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: OK. Everybody hear that? He's talking about setting up pipes, system pipe systems, like domestic cold water, hot water--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Yeah, using materials in the piping systems for color-coding. Yes, that's critical. Yes, we can do view overrides and view filters and stuff like that to override our pipe colors. But if you set it up in the pipe systems, then it's set up for the entire project. Same thing for duct-- if you want your supply duct to be blue and your return duct to be red, or whatever, set that up in the duct system types. and they'll always be that same color. Good suggestion. Anybody else?

AUDIENCE: Custom fittings.

PRESENTER: Custom fittings.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] the standard fittings [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: OK, yeah, as far as where to put those custom fittings-- if you're creating a pipe type that's using those custom fittings, of course, we're going to have to have those custom fittings in the template. My suggestion is to have those in that master template, that we're going to talk about in a minute, in that master Revit file, and already have a pipe type that's defined to use those custom fittings. That way we can just bring over that pipe type.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Any others? Yes?

AUDIENCE: Structural connections.

PRESENTER: Structural connections-- see, I'm not a structural engineer. Structural connections-- put it on the list.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Good. That's a good point. Anybody else? Yes?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: One of each thing.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] things that [INAUDIBLE] having those [INAUDIBLE] of the things that [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Very good. For those that couldn't hear, she was saying have at least one of things in there, like toilets and windows and doors in there, so that you can put in a door, at least. It may not be the right door, but just have at least one generic door family in there to start with; same thing with toilets and windows and different component families like that. OK.

Annotation content-- I define annotation as anything that is 2D. So the detail that's over there on the right of the toilet-- the mounting heights of the grab bars, that is a annotation, because it's just 2D. So this includes drafting views, legends, schedules, general notes, title blocks, and sheets. As much as you can, let's go ahead and set this up in your project. If you don't, you're going have to be setting this up each and every time.

So go ahead and create your typical door schedule, if you're an architect, or go ahead and create your typical air diffuser schedule, or whatever it is, so that it's sitting there ready for you to be used when the project starts. Of course, it's going to be empty to begin with. But as you start populating the model, it's going to populate itself.

Legends-- similar to symbols. But again, if you have predefined legends like this, something like that, you need to go ahead and make. I would make that as a drafting view or as a legend view. Anybody know the difference between a drafting view and a legend view? Yes?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Very good. You can put legends on multiple sheets. So it might be beneficial, if you have a wall legend like this, and you want that on multiple sheets, definitely do it as a legend view, not as a drafting view. That way, you can put it on multiple sheets multiple times.

Go ahead and create your sheets. If you have generic numbering systems for your sheets, let's go ahead and create them. Of course, those sheets should already have your title block on there. You should have title blocks in there for multiple sizes, for either A size, E size, D size, whatever your size you want to use in there. But go ahead and create this numbering system the best you can. Of course, this may change on the project. But I think it's easier to delete the ones that I don't mean, as opposed to starting with no sheets at all. So it's good to have these on there.

And you can already have a sheet listing schedule. Go ahead and have that index as far as your sheet list created in there-- so again, just some annotation things to think about as you're doing your template. How about this category? Anybody got any other suggestions or anything that needs to be added annotation-wise?

AUDIENCE: Do tags [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Tags, yes, tags should be up there. So yeah, if you want to customize the tags in any way, certainly have those customized tags in there that you can load. On the detail-- let me just say this on these details. There's nothing wrong with using AutoCAD details like these mounting heights over there, if you've got an AutoCAD detail. But as a BIM manager, you're going to want to start converting those standard details over to Revit details. If you want to start off using your CAD details, you can. But we have a plan to start converting those over to Revit details at some point in time.

Analytical and other items to include in your template-- these are just a hodgepodge of different things, different settings that you need to think about. I mentioned materials earlier. You can create a material library, if you have materials that you've created or you have, that you want to use occasionally. And you can store those materials in the material library that's outside of your template. And then you can simply load those materials up into your project as you need them-- a good way of doing that.

Color fill types-- if you want to do color fill plans, as far as having a colored floor plans or using hatch patterns to indicate different rooms or room names, or something like that, we can go ahead and create those color fill types. MEP systems, MEP settings, shared parameters-- it's very important to establish the shared parameters in conjunction with your template. I've seen people have multiple shared parameter files, and I scratch my head and ask them why they have so many shared parameter files.

I think, as a rule of thumb, that every office should have one shared parameter file. It's just a master list of all of our parameters that we're going to use in there. So there's really not a need to have multiple shared parameter files. You can just continue to add to that, that one existing file there. But think about your shared parameters as you do that.

Import/export settings-- if you need to go in or out to AutoCAD, there's settings in there that you can go through as far as defining how it's going to export it out and what layers it's going to put it on, things like that. So think about those settings. Also, importing in CAD files, you can define the line weights to colors in there. So if you want some line weights and some depth to your details as you bring them in, you have to go through a map those line weights and colors together, to get those line weights in there.

Keynotes-- if you're using keynotes, I think that's important to think about that. There's a database-driven keynote system that you can go in and modify in Microsoft Access. But look at the keynotes, if you're wanting to use those and use that.

The last thing I've got here is a template guide. What I mean by that, this is an instructions as far as how to use this template. In other words, you're creating this template, and you've got certain ways that you're thinking people are going to use this. There's no way that they know what you're thinking unless you tell them. So a template guide is just that. It's just a set of instructions of how to use this.

I'm seeing multiple ways of doing this. It could be a book. It could be a view inside your project, so just a drafting view in there. Spell out your instructions in there on the drafting view in there-- but just some type of guidance in there to help people understand how you intended them to use this template. All right. any questions about that?

All right, let's talk about the most important thing, I think, in a template-- views, filters, and view templates, and dive into this. Views-- let's talk about those first. We all know that plan views and ceiling plan views are all dependent on levels. We can't create a plan view unless we have a level first. So the question is, how many levels do we create in our project? I was going to ask that. Those that have templates out there, how many levels are in your template?

AUDIENCE: Two.

PRESENTER: Two? Two, two, four. OK, anybody more?

AUDIENCE: 10.

PRESENTER: 10, OK. I actually did some training for a design firm, an architecture firm that's in Atlanta, and they do nothing but high rises. That's all they do, is high rises. And so they had 50 floors in their template, 50 different levels. Because that's all they do. So if that's your case, there's nothing wrong with that. But there's no right answer to this. Whatever you think the most typical is, that's what I would do as far as the number of levels that are in the template.

And also, think about how you want to name these levels. Is it LL1? Is it Level 1? Is it 01? Multiple ways we can name these levels over there-- so think about the naming system in there.

As far as the views themself, I would go ahead and create views for each type of view that you need. If you need life safety views, let's go ahead and create them. If you need floor plans or colored floor plans or ceiling plans, or whatever, let's go ahead and make those views for those users, so that they don't have to go through and create those individual views in there. OK?

View filters-- of course, view filters is the way to override the graphics of a certain item, based on a rule-based system. So you can go ahead and create these view filters in there. This is an example of a one-hour and two-hour-rated wall. If you want those to be colored with a hatch pattern in there, great. But you can go ahead and set that up in there so that, when they do use those walls that are signed one-hour and two-hour, they automatically come in with the wall rating in there. But think about your filters that you might need. If you're a HVAC guy or a MEP guy or structural guy, you're going to have different sets of filters than everybody else. But think about how you want to use this.

View filters can be applied to views using Visibility Graphics. I'm not sure what's wrong with my text there. I think this computer changed it. Or View Templates-- we're going to dive into View Templates in just a second. But that's, of course, how we assign those view filters to views, is through Visibility Graphics, or View Templates. I apologize. My font has changed on this computer. That's kind of weird. It kind of made it wider.

View Templates-- get up there-- View Templates are the most important part of a Revit template, exclamation point. If you're not using View Templates, you need to. This is how you establish standards in your Revit projects, is a View Template. This will set all the settings for the view, to make sure the view is looking the way that you want it to look. Make sure that things are turned off that needs to be turned off, that it's turned on, if it needs to be turned on. If you've got any kind of graphical overrides as far as filters or anything like that, it's all saved in this View Template.

Of course, View Templates are a collection of view properties. View Templates are used to apply standard view settings. And I think this last one here-- each view type should have its own View Template. So if you look at the list of the View Templates I have here, I have them for all my different view types. I've got some for plans, some for detail, some for elevations, some for large plans, interior elevations, life safety plans, colored floor plans, overall floor plans, partition plans. Any type of view that you have, go ahead make you a View Template for that specific type of view.

The other thing is-- I think the next slide gets into this-- but go ahead and delete out the ones that you don't need. So out of the box, you're going to see some existing View Templates that are there, out of the box. If they're not yours, get them out of the way, so people don't get confused about which one to use. Just make sure you have yours in there.

And I would suggest like I did. I put AU in front of all these View Template names to know that they are ours. So put your company name maybe or initials in front of the View Templates, to make sure that they're using your company View Templates in there.

As far as making View Templates, it's pretty easy-- three different ways you can do it. You can create it from an existing view. So if you get one view looking right, then we can go ahead and create a View Template from that. Which means you may have to draw some geometry or something in your View Template to start making these views work the way you want them to. Because it's real hard to know what settings you should do or what filters you should add if you don't have anything in your view. So I, typically, will draw me just some walls and doors and windows, or something, and put it in there, so I can start seeing what this view looks like as I'm creating these View Templates.

You can also duplicate from an existing View Template. So if you have one that's similar, you don't have to start from scratch. You can use that existing View Template and duplicate it and just change what you need to. Then you can also create it directly from the Graphic Display Override Options. There is a button right down here in this dialog box that says Save these settings as a view template.

So multiple ways you can do this-- so let's just walk through this real quick. And I'm glad I did this. I got some of my Revit stuff that I was going to show you on video. So this is one of the things I can show you on video. But as far as creating View Templates, this is really basic here, as far as doing it. You can right-click on a view, once you get a view looking the way you want it, and just simply give it a name. That's all you've got to do.

It's going to open up the View Template dialog box. She can verify, uncheck the items that you don't want it to remember, and then you've got a View Template for that type of view. So I'm going to go through here and create a View Template for my partition plan, for my furniture plan, my life safety plan, and a presentation plan. So you can see how quickly I'm doing this, as far as making these names and coming up with this. So within a matter of minutes, you can create a bunch View Templates.

As far as the checklist in here, the checkboxes and the dialog box, as soon as I get through typing Safety, all those checkboxes over there, you can include and not include things. A couple of things that I might suggest that you not include-- one is maybe scale, because we do have plans that are going to be at different scale. And so sometimes, you want to be able to adjust that scale independently of the View Template. So he may want to think about what items to include not include in a View Template, if there are specific items. All right, any questions about creating View Templates? Yes?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: You can. The question was, what do you do-- was it specifically with link models?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

PRESENTER: OK, that was my learning objective number three, that we'll get to, working with link files. And so we'll get to that. But yes, you can go ahead and predefine those links in there and set it up for those links the way you want them. And I'll show you how to do that.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: That's OK. Any others?

AUDIENCE: So we're [INAUDIBLE] floor plan on one [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Yeah, this is floor plan 01, presentation plan.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: No. It's going to take it based off that levels level line. So whatever level line that view is based on, it's going to make the view range off of that level line.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: Yes. Yes?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PRESENTER: You don't have to. It's just a suggestion. Because sometimes, you may want an 1/8-inch plan, maybe a 1/16-inch plan, and you don't want the View Template defining that's sometimes. So it just depends on the size of the plan. OK, applying the View Templates-- once you have the View Templates created, the next step is to apply those View Templates to other views. And so we just created them for the first floor. But guess what? I've got three more levels here that I need to create views for and apply these View Templates to it.

So as far as applying these View Templates to views, you simply can just pick on the view, right-click, and say, Apply View Template, and pick it off the list. It's pretty straightforward. You can do multiple ones. If you hold the Control key down and pick Multiple views in your project browser, you can assign multiple ones at one time.

And if the View Template changes, it needs to be reapplied. We're going to talk about in just a second-- the next slide is talking about assigning View Templates instead of applying View Templates. There's two ways we can do this, apply versus assigning. If you apply them, it's not going to lock that view to the View Template. In other words, after we apply the View Template, the user can go in and make changes to the view without changing the View Template in there. So just know that, as a BIM manager, if you go in and change the View Templates, if they're applied, you have to go back and reapply those templates.