Creating and modifying annotation families for documentation

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After completing this lesson, you'll be able to understand tags, create a structural framing tag family, and add tags to a structural plan.

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The objective domains covered are, 3.1b, create and modify annotation families for documentation.

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A tag is an annotation element that reports on specific information that resides within structural elements.

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For example, a beam tag could report on an elevation, display the quantity of shear studs, display the element weight or, in fact, the type mark.

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The image at the bottom of the screen is showing the beam designation as well as the span to depth ratio.

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This is placed in one go with the beam annotation.

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Go ahead and open up the model 030-Creating and modifying annotation families for documentation.

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The model opens up in a 05-Fifth Floor plan.

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You can see here that we have a roof framing plan and here we have bracing.

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Our first task is to tag the bracing.

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To do this, select the Annotate ribbon and select Tag by Category.

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On the options bar, we can control the placement of the tag, whether it's horizontal or vertical, and also the type of tag we're placing.

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So here we can access our loaded tags.

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In the Loaded Tags and Symbols dialog box, let's expand our dialog and we'll scroll down to find structural framing.

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We can now designate which type of tag we would like to use for our framing.

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So here, I'm going to specify Structural Framing Tag-Standard.

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We can then click "OK" and you'll now notice as we move over the braced elements, we have our tag displayed.

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Another option we have here is to remove the Leader.

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I can then go ahead and place my tags.

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Now, of course, I could continue to tag the rest of the framing plane,

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but what I'd like to do here is utilize the type mark of the frame rather than the full designation.

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To do this, I'll need to edit the tag.

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Select one of the tags that you've just placed, and on the context ribbon, go ahead and select "Edit Family".

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The tag then opens up in the Family Editor.

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You can see here that I have a label shown on the screen.

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So I'm going to go ahead and select this label.

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And again, on the context ribbon, I can edit the label.

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Currently, we're showing the full type name.

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So I'm going to select this and then remove the parameter from the label.

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What I want to use is the type mark, so of course we can select Type Mark here and we can add the parameter to the label.

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You'll notice in the label parameters area, we can add multiple labels into this.

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And we can also have suffixes, prefixes, breaks, spaces, and so on.

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Here, I'm going to change the sample value and I'm just going to call this one W1.

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Go ahead and select "OK".

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We can now see a preview of our tag.

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If my intention in the project is to replace all the framing tags with the type mark designation,

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I can leave the family name the same and simply Load into Project and Close and that will replace all of the tags I've automatically placed.

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Let's go ahead and do that, so we'll select Load into Project and Close.

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I don't want to save this.

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But in the project, I want to overwrite the existing version.

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You'll now notice that the bracing now shows the type mark designation as opposed to the full call up.

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And of course here, I can use the inbuilt move tool to reposition these tags to a better location.

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Next, I'm going to create a new tag to report on the span to depth ratio of our structural framing.

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Before we go ahead and create that tag, let's view that property in the Properties palette.

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Go ahead and select a beam.

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And then the Properties palette, you'll notice here under Structural Analysis, we have Span to Depth ratio and it's holding a value.

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We want to create a tag that's going to report on this value for all of our framing members.

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To start, let's create a new family.

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Click File, then select New, and Family.

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In the Select Family Templates dialog box, open the Annotations folder and then select Generic Tag.

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Now a generic tag is generic in its nature,

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and before we can use this for a particular structural category, we must set the family categories and parameters.

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This red text here is reminding us to do this. So we'll go ahead and delete that text.

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On the Modify ribbon, let's go ahead and select "Family Category and Parameters".

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Notice that the default category is generic model tags.

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We'll go ahead and select Structural Framing Tags.

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A very important property on the family parameters is Rotate with component.

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Now when we place this span to depth ratio down, we want it to be aligned to the beam.

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So of course, yes, we do want that to rotate with the component.

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Go ahead and select "OK".

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We're now ready to create our label.

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Select the Create ribbon and then select Label.

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Here is the default label size, and then we can pick where we want the label to be created.

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I'm going to select roughly the center of my reference planes.

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I'm then presented with the Edit Label dialog box.

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Now, our span to depth ratio will not be displayed in this particular dialog because it's a shared parameter.

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So we can go ahead and add that parameter.

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Let's click "Select" and now we'll change our group to Structural Framing, and here we have our Span to Depth Ratio.

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We can then go ahead and add that across into our label parameters.

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Now we'll give this a realistic sample value.

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So I think here we'll type in something like 12.

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And then we want to designate a prefix to this, so I'm going to type in here S:D and then I'm going to put a space in.

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So span to depth ratio and then it's going to give us a span to depth ratio with a space.

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Let's go ahead and select "OK", and there's our new tag created.

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Of course, we'll need to save this, so on the quick access toolbar, select "Save".

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Save it into your current folder and we'll call this Span to depth ratio.

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Go ahead and select "Save".

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We now want to load this into our project and close, so we can click "Load into Project and Close".

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And of course now, when we have hover over structural framing, you can see that Revit is now displaying our span to depth ratio.

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We're not going to add that using a tag, we're going to use a beam annotation to add this as well as a tag.

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A more efficient way of placing tags on the plan is to use beam annotations.

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Beam annotations are capable of producing not only tags but also spot elevations as well.

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We can combine these in pretty much any combination we want.

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We can tag the end of the beams, the start of the beams, as well as the mid positions on the beams.

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And as I've said, we can use spot levels on either side of the beam.

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To configure this, on the Annotate ribbon, let's select Beam Annotations.

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In the Beam Annotations dialog box, you'll note here that all beams in the current plan view are going to be placed with a beam annotation.

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We also have two tabs here. We have level beams in plan and we also have sloped beams in plan.

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Our roof plan contains both level and sloped members, so we'll set the same settings for both of these tabs.

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Before we go ahead and set this area up, you'll also notice here we have placement settings.

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This configures the distance of the tag or the level from the end of the beam, also the vertical distance from the edge of the beam.

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You'll notice the default value is 3/8th, but of course, I could change that if I wanted to.

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Let's go ahead and select "OK" to placement settings.

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So in the first tab, level beams in plan, you'll notice at the minute that we're showing structural tags at the start and the end of the beam,

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as well as the tag in the center of the beam.

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Let's set the tag at the end of this beam.

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So here, currently, we're showing the start forces on the beam.

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Note, I could show a spot elevation, but in this case, I want to select None.

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I'll do the same for the right hand side of the beam.

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And we just want to ensure that this tag in the center of the beam is in fact our standard framing tag.

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You may remember that the standard framing tag is just going to report on the type mark.

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At the bottom of the beam, we're going to place our new span to depth ratio.

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So let's select Structural Framing Tag and you'll note the type is Span to depth ratio.

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Of course, we could select a new type if we wanted to.

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Let's repeat these settings for sloped beams in plan.

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So we'll make sure we set the start and end tags to none.

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Double check that this tag is reporting our standard type mark.

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And here, again, we'll add in a structural framing tag of our span to depth ratio.

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Go ahead and select "OK".

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And you now note that the beam designation tag and also the span to depth ratio and is now tagged on all of our roofing plan.

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Much more efficient way of placing tags.