Tutorial 4 - Create a View Title

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Tutorial 4 - Create a View Title

Alright welcome back, this week we are going to create a View Title.  What is a View Title? In Revit, each view can have a title that can contains the view name, the view scale, the detail number and the sheet number.

It will replace these unfinished looking lines in front of our Views and afterwards it will look great.  

But before we can start working on our View Title, I want to explain the difference between Viewports and the View Title.  The wide unfinished lines that are below each of our views are the View Titles, the titles of the Viewports.  When you add a view to a sheet, a Viewport displays on the sheet to represent the view. 

Viewports apply only to project drawings, such as floor plans, elevations, sections, and 3D views. They do not apply to schedules.

Viewports don't contain any settings or options to control what the View looks like, instead they are just a few settings that control what the View Title looks like, and they have no control over the View itself. 

The View is controlled by the Properties window when the view is selected.  When you want to Save the settings in the Properties window and use them on other views, there is something called View Templates and they are great.  We will get to those in a later blog post since they are a must have for any professional.

Let's start by selecting the Equipment Plan, once you have it selected your Properties window should look like the one to the right.

Next click Edit Type to open the Viewport Type Properties. 

So as you can see, there are only 6 parameter settings in the Viewport’s properties.

First let's change the Show Title parameter to Yes.  When multiple viewports will cause the View Title to only be shown when multiple viewports are on the same sheet and we don't want that.

Remember the Viewport only controls the visibility of the View Title, so all these settings are in the context of what the View Title will look like, not the View itself.

The View Title parameter is <none> and the drop-down is empty. Hmm...

You also can’t Load a View Title or Create a View Title from anywhere in these Properties.

Click Cancel and we will go create our own View Title.

Just like when we created the Equipment Tag, let's go to the Revit main menu, then New, then click Annotation Symbol.  Select View Title.rft and click Open.

This should look familiar from the Equipment Tag. 

Revit included some reference planes, some notes and something called a Dummy line. 

"Dummy line shows  locations of View Title line."

View Title line just so happens to be that same line that we were seeing below our Views on the QF101 Sheet.

Alright to understand what we need to do next, you first must understand what our View Title is going to look like.  Check out the View Title below which is what we are going to create now.

We are going to use Labels for the text of the View Title because we can link the Labels to Revit parameters such as View Name and Sheet Number.

Let's create our first Label now.

On the Create ribbon, click on the Label button.

Revit now wants you to place the Label, click above the Dummy line to place the first Label.

The exact location is not important, we will fix it shortly.

Once you click the Edit Label window will appear.

This Edit Label window should also look familiar.  Remember you can only add one Label at a time.

Since we started with a View Title template the Category is already set to Views.  We need to make (4) Labels, one for each of the following: View Name, View Scale, Detail Number and Sheet Number.

First, select View Name and then use the green arrow to move View Name to the Label Parameters.

Then click OK.

Revit is still in Label mode, you can tell by the mouse cursor showing the Label icon and also you can always check the bottom left corner of Revit for the status bar, here is also tells us to "Click to place label"

Let's keep going and place the View Scale Label below the dummy line.

Once again we just need to move the View Scale over to the right side using the green arrow.

The Sample Value of 1/8" = 1'-0" is also fine, the actual scale will match the view.

Click OK.

Next go ahead and place the Sheet Number and Detail Number Labels like so.

In the Edit Label window for the Sheet Number, change the Sample Value of the Sheet Number to QF###, this way we can correctly size the circle outline we are going to draw.

Once your Labels are created, align them to each other horizontally and vertically using the blue dashed lines.

Now let’s draw the circle that goes around our Detail Number and Sheet Number parameters.

First go to the Create ribbon then click the Line button.

Next go to the Draw panel and select the Circle button.

As the tooltip says, now we need to specify the Center Point and the Radius.

Click along the reference plane in between the Detail Number and Sheet Number to specify the center point.

The purple X means you are snapped to the reference plane which is what you want.

Next we need to specify the radius, we can do this by clicking a second point and the radius will be the distance between the two points.

Let's try it by clicking at the intersection of the reference planes.

Wonderful.

Now let’s just push those Labels a little closer to the center line to fit inside our circle.

Hold CTRL to select more than one element at a time.

As you move the Labels around you will notice the blue grips.  These allow you to extend the text fields, which will actually be important for to do for our View Name Label.

We also need to change the text alignment to Left using the Properties.

Perfect.

Now let’s delete the placeholder red text.

The last thing we need to do is extend our View Title line through our circle.  Click the line and then drag the endpoint and snap to the circle.

Let's also Save if you haven't already, I am going to save as Circle View Title.

Ok now we are going to insert our View Title into our Project.

Click the Load into Project and Close button.

Your View Title is now in the project although it may not seem like anything happened.

Let’s go back to our QF101 Sheet and select the Viewport then click Edit Type to open the Viewport Properties.  Make sure the Viewport is selected or you will not see the correct Edit Type button.

Once you have the Viewport Properties open, select the Title parameter and change it to our newly inserted Circle View Template.

Before we exit, lets also change the name of this Viewport.

I will rename this Viewport to Plans and Details.

I only ever used two different Viewport Types, one for Plans and Details and another for Notes, Legends, and Schedules.

The Notes and Legends Viewport Type had No for the Show Title parameter so the title was never shown.

That reminds me, before we leave let's change the Show Title parameter to Yes.

Now click OK.

If you do close a Family that you have been working on and want a quick way to get it back, just go to the Revit main menu and it will be at the top of your Recent Documents.

So how did you do?  

Look great to me.  We do need to move them a bit though so they aren’t covering up our Views.

There is one tricky thing about moving View Titles.  If you have the View selected first, the View will move with the View Title.  But if you have nothing selected, or have the View Title selected, then you can move the View Title by itself.

Give it a try. 

There is something that you can do after selecting the View that is very helpful, once the View is selected a grip appears at the end of the View Title.  Read that again, once the View is selected, a grip appears at the end of the View Title. 

This grip allows you to stretch the View Title line.  It will come in handy.

You should give this a try as well, select the View and then grab the right grip and stretch it to the right.

In practice it is common to use a combination of stretching the View Title line and moving the View Title to achieve perfect View Titles.

The Detail Number is assigned by Revit when the View is placed on the sheet.  Since we placed our 3D view first, it has Detail Number 1.  To edit these Detail Numbers, select the View and go to the Properties window.

The Detail Number parameter can be edited manually in the Properties window.

If you are wondering why there is no View Scale underneath the 3D View, well that is because 3D Views do not have a scale.

Ok well let's finish up this tutorial, switch the Detail Numbers for your views and do a little rearranging and I will see you soon.

Wonderful job, things are really starting to come together and we are just getting started.

Thank you for attending the Kitchautomation Academy!

Next up- Create a Section Marker

Cheers!