View Templates

While conducting some research on view I am reminded of some behavior regarding view templates that is worth sharing.

View templates are located in the ribbon View tab.

A template is a set of view properties saved off under a name much like a type in a family.

The commands:

Apply Template to Current View: Allows you to choose a saved template and apply its properties to the active view.  This is also available in the project browser view context menu.

Apply Default Template to Current View: Each view has a property "Default View Template".  This can be set to a saved view template or "None" the default.  When one runs this command the template is applied to the active or selected view.  This is often used to enforce certain visibility in a set of views. The command can be issued from the project browser view context menu while multiple views are selected.

Create Template from Current View: This makes a new template.  On running the command the values from the current view are copied to the template after you specify a name.  Once the template is saved you can edit its settings from the View Templates dialog.  Future edits to the source view can not affect the saved template - its a one-time copy

ViewTemplate Settings: This is where all the templates are stored.  You can rename, delete and duplicate saved templates as well as edit their settings.

Tip: One non obvious feature can be seen when applying a view template to a view:

Here we see a choice to "automatically apply this template to views of the same type".  To say this another way the option allows you to specify this template as the default settings for new views of the same view type as the one you are applying the template to.  e.g. If you are applying the template to a plan view then the next time you create a plan view it will start with this settings.  ...a bit subtle if you ask me.

This brings up a question for me.  When creating new views how do you desire to specify the view settings?

• The current behavior
• A setting dialog that allows you to specify a default template for each view type
• Ask if you want to apply a template at view creation
• Something else?

Currently most views are created by placing symbols and the scale or other options use a default that can be changed in the option bar.  Only 2D views like Legend or Drafting views ask for a name and scale during creation. In a multi-discipline environment it might be nice to choose a view template at creation but it might also be more interruptive.  The view settings in a MEP or Structure Plan view differ greatly from an Architectural plan view.

Curious to hear everyones' thoughts on this matter.

_erik

 

 

Comments

[David]

When creating a new view, I would prefer if the dialogue box included a "More Options" expansion check box that would expand the dialogue box and give you access to the view templates to choose from.

[Ivy]

"Ask if you want to apply a template at view creation"

I like this option a lot, this would make setting up views with phases and alternates easier.

[James Vandezande]

I agree with the previous two comments. Creating a new view should allow for the option to specify a view template, otherwise the workflow for applying a view template is OK.

[DaveP]

I'd prefer to be asked.
One thing that was never clear to me with the current behavior: What exactly is "of this Type"?
Let's say I make a new View Template for Exterior Elevations. If I check the "of this Type" box, does it get applied to EVERY new Elevation, or just Exterior - but not Interior - Elevations?

[Luke]

Every elevation I think - and that is the pain of it. I think View Templates should apply to 'subtypes' - not to the larger View Types. So, I can have Section-working and Section-building types, have two different View Templates, and when I make a Section-working, it uses the appropriate View Template. Know what I mean?

[Col.]

Apologies if this seems slightly off topic, but I'd like to see view templates, or rather view creation, somehow linked to sheet creation. In a current project I've got about 150 views. About 110 of them are 1 to 1 mappings with sheets, and the rest of scrap sections, legends and schedules.

I find the process of creating a view, with appropriate settings, then creating a sheet, and then inserting and positioning the view on the sheet using guide grids very cumbersome; i've thought about this and it may be that it takes no longer than setting up sheets in AutoCAD, but it feels it because other things in Revit take a lot less time than they would have in AutoCAD.

I'd like to be able to do something like create a template 'pair', e.g. a view and a sheet, with the view placed on the sheet. Then, when I want a new view for drawing production, Revit creates both and adds the new view to the sheet in the same position as it appears on the template. 1 pair could cover all levels of a building, you wouldn't need a pair for each level.

You could also include the option to apply a view template to the view at creation, meaning 1 pair could cover all disciplines/sub-disciplines.

[Tom]

I echo the Luke's comments - I'd love to be able to tie View Templates to View Sub-Types. I split my elevations up into Interior, Exterior and Detail - would be great to have a default View Template for each of those.

[Tim Waldock]

We also extensively use different "Types" for elevations, sections & detail views so it would be useful to somehow have that type associated to specific view templates. When creating some views you can choose the type in advance (if you remember), so I would prefer not to be interrupted in workflow if that would also choose the associated view template. For sketch designing it would drive you mad if you kept getting prompted for templates each new view, so it has to be unobtrusive.

However, I am frustrated by the inconsistency in not being able to create types for plan views; and likewise being able to choose between plan or detail view when creating a callout, but not when duplicating a view. Also you can change a section view from a detail to a section type, but for a plan/callout it is locked into plan or detail once created.

[Tom]

Oh and another thing, Visibility/Graphics overrides for Linked revit files don't get saved in View Templates. Our engineer has many more grids and ref planes that we need to show in our drawings, but I have to turn them off via a click-heavy dig into the VV dialog for every single new view.

[Erik]

Great feedback everyone. Some of the discussion reminds me that the way Revit handles views makes it less easy to understand what is a working view vs. a view on a sheet. There is a way to sort the browser to exclude views on sheets but its seems more might be warranted to prevent accidental changes or make it easier to work in 2D views that often carry a lot of baggage related to documentation conventions.

[Col.]

Erik, following on from your last comment, the ability to lock the scale, detail level, presentation style etc. of a view would make sheet management easier. This applies to 3D views too!

[Col.]

A task that took ages a few weeks ago was going through 100+ sheets setting the crop region (+ annotation crop region). I really reall wish the crop region could be saved in a view template.

[Josh Moore]

I definitely think a settings dialogue box that would allow us to map view templates to view types. Ideally, it would need to be flexible, as I create multiple view types for sections (details, wall sections, building sections, etc.) and would want to be able to specify a view template for each of my view types, so it would be on a project by project basis, and would also need to be available to set up in our templates (obviously).

[John Karben]

In my perfect world the Create View dialog would include a column of drop downs (the drop down contains the list of view templates). One drop down would apply to the host model. For each linked model there would be an additional drop down to apply a diffent view template.

As a MEP Consultant our host model's VV settings often needs to be different than the client's (arch + struc) link model's VV settings (cannot be by host view). We create view templates that apply only the RVT Link setting to accomplish this. Our current procedure requires us to apply multiple view template individually after the view is created.

Next to each drop down would be a radio button. The selected radio button would set that View Template as the view's Default View Template (need None as a option as well).

It would also be nice to have a dialog interface to apply a given view template to a selected set of views. The set of views could also be saved as a Named set so it could be reapplied at a later date.

[David Baldacchino]

I would like to see a little more granularity. Let's say I want to globally turn off a linked file in all views without unloading. With the current implementation, I can disable everything that I don't want to propagate. But that's where it stops; if I have 10 links for example and I don't want to change anything related to 9 of them and just propagate adjustments to 1 of them, I cannot do that. Another example would be to globally change the visibility of a category or subcategory...you cannot do this without affecting other things that you don't want to change.

[Bill]

View Templates are awesome. I would like to see the Default View Template property be a standard property in the System Families of Elevations, Sections, and Callouts.

It would be awesome to have an option to select a View Template or, resort to the "automatically apply this template to views of the same type" when creating new Plan Views.

As far as Duplicating Views, I think Revit should prompt you to select a View Template or Retain Source View's View Template.

[Jason Grant]

Posted my thoughts here:
http://jasongrant.squarespace.com/jason-grant-blog/2011/3/17/revit-view-templates.html

[Jeff Shaver]

The simplest fix as mentioned above is to allow separate default templates for the view sub-types.

Example: For a section type called "coordination" you would assign the default view template "coordination", for the section type called "construction" you could assign a the default template "construction". Current behavior limits a single default template that applied to all sub-types.
Removing this limitation allows the user to select which type of section/view they are creating (thus picking the default template) prior to creating the view.

Another view template wishlist item is the ability to capture workset "visibility Settings". Provided your revit links are assigned to their own workset, you could store their "visibility setting" in templates and apply to necessary views (as David B. was requesting) without unloading the file, or adjusting individual overrides.

[Anthony Hauck]

I agree this is a nice way to integrate the capability

[Ben May]

A little late to this discussion, I agree with being able to apply templates to sub-types.

But another little enhancement that would defiantly save time in my workflow would be the ability to uncheck/check all for the apply options. Quite often I want to just update one aspect of a view setting for a group of views which currently requires unchecking or checking all the boxes. This would be great at preliminary stage when you want to quickly make changes to view settings