How to Place Plans on Sheets?

MeyerFire University | TL203.06

By Joe Meyer, PE

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​How do we place plans on sheets and have them set up correctly? 

In my template, and this is a very simple job. So, this is maybe a bad example. But in my template, I've got a sheet set up with a planned view prepared, ready to go, so that I'm able to save time overall. I do have a series of sheets that are not populated and not included in the set that I can drag plans as I want. But in my template, I've got one large unbound floor plan that encompasses everything on the project. I don't have any bounds on this. So, if I go to the properties to see, I don't crop that view at all, this is if it's a large hospital, I'm seeing everything on that floor level. And then each of these views are dependent views on the main level. 

So, with this unbound view, I can see everything and update everything with each of these individual views, they're dependent, but these are cropped. So, let's say area A, if I go to the properties on this, you can see that everything is cropped only to area A. So, what's nice is that when I'm working, I can see everything I want. And when I'm dragging views that are ready to go onto a sheet for plotting, I want those to be cropped and shown area appropriately. So, if I need to create a new area, that's only a portion of the overall project. That's pretty easy too, I can select any one of these, select that one for instance, go to duplicate view, duplicate as a dependent, that's gonna keep it in this sub view. 

All of these sub views are related, they're the exact same view. They're just cropped differently. And then I can name this whatever I want. So, let's say, we are gonna call that area G just as an example, area G and I go back to my unbound view. I've got a scope box here. These are very useful for areas. And if I want this scope box to be area G maybe, you know, if this is the only the portion that I wanna show. I'm gonna go to properties. I'm gonna call that area G and in the project, if I go back to area G. This is the floor plan area G. I've got it cropped. I'm gonna set that scope box to just be area G. Hit apply. And then bam, we are only showing area G. So, when I'm setting up a job, especially a large job, I want to have scope boxes for each of the areas that I need to show on a separate sheet. 

And then I use those specific floor plans that are divided by the area and drag those onto the view. How big your scope box can be depends on the scale that you want your drawings at. For me, shop drawings, just being slightly unconventional here. I love quarter inch scale. That's a quarter of an inch equals one foot on plan. I find that I'm able to detail things significantly better and quicker when I'm at a quarter inch scale, as opposed to one eighth inch scale. What's most common for shop drawings is eighth inch scale. There's a lot of cat traditions there, and you're able to show a whole lot more. So, when I'm at a quarter inch scale for all my drawings, I end up having more sheets than most shop drawing sets wood, because I'm at a much larger scale, twice a scale. 

However, I save a lot of time detailing and rearranging text and having overlapping annotations and pipe that all kind of goes away a little bit because the drawings are cleaner. I've got more space to work with. And my font size doesn't have to be microscopic. I'm able to make that work pretty well. So once I've got each of these sub views set up and I've got the areas that I want shown, I'm then really honestly just taking these sub views and dragging them down onto the sheet. Now, this is gonna tell me I'm already on that sheet ‘cause I've already dragged this in here. But if I go to that sheet, this is my area A, I'm then gonna want to drag this title bar to the right spot. For this, it's you know, this is less critical. We got a lot of space to work with on this sheet. 

That's not always the case. Sometimes these will get really big floor plans. We gotta be real careful with how we do it. There's plenty of ways to then copy this scenario and this sheet. There's a whole lot of automation in that space. For me, I operate independently. It's just me and I'm generally not working on stadiums or arenas anymore. So, the ability to copy sheets and set up quickly isn't as critical. I can do that manually. And it just doesn't take very long. But there are plenty of tools and there's actually some good free tools on that too on setting that up. One of 'em that I've used is this D roots. They've got some nice sheet generator abilities that allows you to copy floor plans or copy sheets and do all of that pretty quickly. There's other free tools that are out there that'll set you up there. CTC software is another one that's got plenty of power behind it. This is the CTC BIM project suite. 

But in short, really what we're looking for plan views, we wanna make sure that we've got that title bar. So, if I select this and I'm on the properties and nothing's showing up, it's probably because it's on the setting that has no title. When you first drag things over, it might not have that, but you would drag go down to plan and that's gonna show how your template has it set up. And in this case, I've got a section view here. I want that to have a section call out. I wanna make sure that these names are appropriate. So here, even though this is area A. It's really not area A. It's the entire scope of work for this project. It's a small project. 

So, what I can do here is the title on the sheet will override what this is on this sheet. So, I'm just gonna call this fire protection plan, fire protection plan, enter, and let that apply. And now we've got a fire protection plan there. Here, I'm just gonna call it section A and I'll give that a letter. For some reason, I find that letters are just way easier to pick off and associate. The numbers are, ‘cause usually we have sheet numbers and if you have a letter associated with the sheet number, for some reason, I just, I find it easier to pick off. So, I like to call my sections with a letter and then have that on the sheet number. From there, we do that for each sheet and we also check the title of the sheet. 

So, this one, the title just in my title block is fire protection plan. That looks pretty good. View titles are on there. We're ranging how we want to for me setting this up, I also need to bring in my sprinkler schedule, I've got a handful of pre-set up sprinkler schedules and I like to stick this in the same spot every time. So, I go there 0.5 inch off and I've got kind of a standard spot. Any sprinklers that show in a project are now gonna automatically get added to the schedule. That's one of the advantages of Revit is having this intelligence behind the model. 

The next step I'm gonna look at is make sure my north arrow is accurate. If I need to change that, then now's my time to do that. So, I'm gonna check the architectural plans. Looks like plan North is to the right for me, that is a setting that is all the way down in. Let's see, I go all the way down to families, annotation symbols. I go down to my north arrow, scrolling all the way down to view title north arrow scale. This is how I have it set up and I give it a try, see if it turns the right direction, it does 90 and that's gonna adjust to all my floor plans. So, if I've got an enlarged, a separate floor plan or an enlarged view, it's gonna change that north arrow. So, my north arrow is good. My sheet name is good. My section names are good. The sheet name is accurate. And if I need to drag or create new plans, the way that I would go about doing that personally, again, there's a lot of ways to do this is I would take one of these empty sheets. I would change it. I'm gonna put this as FP2. I would retitle it to what it needs to be retitled, fire protection plan area B. 

I would then go up select the area that I need. I can drag that here in the properties bar, or I could just drag it right onto the view. If I've got multiple views and there's nothing here because I don't have an area B. But if I'm also looking to match exact locations, one of the things I like to do is DL for draw line. I'll snap to a specific intersection on the floor plan, and then I'll snap to a very specific location for that view title. If I tab, select all of those, and hit copy to clipboard, I can then go paste to selected views, and I can paste those two lines on the sheet to, I can put 'em on all sheet sheets. I could put 'em on what, whatever sheets I want. But if I go back to that FP2 and I can paste it right in here. 

Now, if I drag in, I'm just gonna copy this for kicks just so I have something to work with. But say I drag in a view, I can line up the grid lines exactly to where it was before. So, if I'm flipping sheets, see how that's snapped. If I'm flipping sheets that the floor plant is aligned the way that I wanted to align. And then if I select this or my property is select plan, now I've got this title again, and I can drag that right to where I want it. So, let's move that right there. Now, soon back out, I would retitle this and everything of course, but now going between these two views. If I've got 'em scaled, you'll see those two floor plans earning exactly the same spot and those view titles aren't exactly the same spot. That's a really nice consistency when you're flipping through drawings, especially digitally. 

If I wanna copy over the schedule between drawings, I can copy and go paste to aligned, to selected views, stick that on FP2. And now when I go to FP2, that's pasted on there. So, if you've got details that you need to show or schedules that you need to show on every sheet, that's a way to do that. You can copy between sheets. Again, this is a manual method. There's lots and lots of ways to do this. This is just the way that I use what I'm going through. And putting drawing sets together. 

One last thing on this browser, you may have noticed that this FP2 sheet is still not in set. That's a discipline designation that I've given to fire protection and not in set. So, if I go to the properties for the sheet, I change that to fire protection. And I have a peers and sheet list checked. I hit apply. If I go back to my browser, now it's showing up in the right spot. I can explode that. And now I've got my working plans. Again, I would retitle list and everything. I don't need an area B for this project ‘cause it's just not that big. But if I did, that's the path that I would go about doing it. That is setting up plans onto sheets, updating sheet views, plan, view names, and adjusting the north arrow all inside Revit. 

I'm Joe Meyer, this is MeyerFire University. Catch you on the next video.