It's true, when plotting from Revit there is reason to be concerned, with the settings that is. For the most part the settings are fairly straight forward, but you should be aware of a couple that might surprise you. Make sure when plotting you know what you're plotting. In Revit you have 3 choices when it comes to the Print Range. Current Window will consider everything in the View Window regardless if you 
can see it or not. This means if you've set it to center the plot, you may get some weird results since Revit is trying to center everything in that view. Visible portion of current window will allow you to have other elements in the view window but the plot will be only what you see. You should understand that the plotter will try to place a border on the sheet, so you may have to zoom out a bit to get everything you want to see. Lastly, Selected views and sheets is an excellent way to plot many sheets or views from the same plot dialog. You have to be careful when using this because once you choose to use it, Revit remembers the last selection, so make sure you check none first and then select the views and/or sheets you wish to plot. If you forget, you may end up with more plots than you want. Remember this is NOT a batch plot. When plotting many sheets or views you have to wait until th
e plot data has been transferred to the plotter. Depending on how many sheets or views you've sent will determine how long you have to wait before being able to resume your work. If you're on subscription you'll be able to avoid this by downloading the Batch Plot utility from Autodesk.
The last comment I have on plotting is, once you've set up your settings you can save them. This will allow you to choose it when you plot instead of having to reset everything every time.
These past few weeks I've been working on a sheet that will eventually become part of an .rvt file that users can load into their projects by select the Insert From File tool located on the file pull down. One thing I noticed as I was creating this page was that you cannot load a Legend view into another project using this method. Therefore what I did in this situation was created the sheet using a Drafting View. As you know, you can't place any 3D geometry into a Drafting View so I simply used lines to create the look I was after. Now I know this sounds a bit like stepping backwards, but if you think about it I'm not really referencing anything from this view, not calling anything out from here, so it doesn't really matter if it's line work. Remember, we want the software to work for us, not the other way around.
Now when I choose the Insert from File tool on the File drop down I can easily choose the file where all my common sheets live and get a nice preview as to which one I need to insert.
I know it's kind of cliche, but I really will be making a concerted effort to post to my blog on a regular basis. I'm going to try an change things up for this new year.
First change will be what I include in the posts. I'm done adding images to the blog. At least I'm done adding so many. I figure if a picture is worth a thousand words then a video must be worth a million. The bottom line is it takes me too long to snag all those images when I can just record my screen and post that. So look for more videos this year.
I guess that's the only big change right now, but we'll see how it goes.
I'd feel pretty remiss if I didn't add something about Revit in this post, after all this is a Revit blog.
So for those of you fairly new to Revit you should realize that when in Revit holding the Shift key and the middle mouse wheel will allow you to orbit. What you may not know is Revit will always orbit around the origin of the model unless you select an element in the model. If you select something in the view, Revit temporarily changed it's origin the the element selected. Very useful when your model begins to get large.
Welcome to revitED!
RevitED (Revit Education) and general BIM topics. I've been using Revit now for 11 years, and though I feel I've got a pretty good handle on the software it seems each day I learn something new. I want to share that with the readers of this blog and hope you learn something new as well.
can see it or not. This means if you've set it to center the plot, you may get some weird results since Revit is trying to center everything in that view. Visible portion of current window will allow you to have other elements in the view window but the plot will be only what you see. You should understand that the plotter will try to place a border on the sheet, so you may have to zoom out a bit to get everything you want to see. Lastly, Selected views and sheets is an excellent way to plot many sheets or views from the same plot dialog. You have to be careful when using this because once you choose to use it, Revit remembers the last selection, so make sure you check none first and then select the views and/or sheets you wish to plot. If you forget, you may end up with more plots than you want. Remember this is NOT a batch plot. When plotting many sheets or views you have to wait until th
e plot data has been transferred to the plotter. Depending on how many sheets or views you've sent will determine how long you have to wait before being able to resume your work. If you're on subscription you'll be able to avoid this by downloading the Batch Plot utility from Autodesk.
The last comment I have on plotting is, once you've set up your settings you can save them. This will allow you to choose it when you plot instead of having to reset everything every time.
