Exporting Sheets to PDF in Revit: Step-by-Step Guide

In the previous video, we went ahead and adjusted some of our, uh, our space tags. We also got our sheets put together and created. We have these wonderful sheets here all put together, and now we're ready to go ahead and PDF them.

So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to compress this down in my project browser, just so I see my individual sheets. And if you've used Revit previously, you may have noticed that you usually had to use a third-party printer to create PDFs. That's no longer the case with recent versions of Revit.

They've added in a PDF printer. It's actually a really nice aspect, but you no longer use the PDF printer. You actually export to a PDF.

So what I want to go do is I'm going to go up here to file. I'm going to go to, instead of going to print now, I can still print a PDF here. This is, there is an option where there is an export, but you don't actually go to the individual print dialogue where traditionally you may select, say in the Adobe PDF or QPDF or Bluebeam printer, or any of those kinds of things.

So you can go to print, go here to PDF, and then it's going to bring up this one, this window here. So you have a different range of items. You can export the current window.

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You can do visible portion of current window or selected views and sheets. The export setup. You can have a template set up for your sheet size, which we'll go through and create one for our 30 × 42.

You can have the file name that you're defined. You can combine the selected views and sheets into a single PDF, which is this is typically what most people do as they combine, you know, they'll print 10 or 15 or 50 sheets at a time and combine those into a single PDF. The location, you can go ahead and save it in your documents folder, but you can browse for a specific location, like a project folder.

You can set a page size with the zoom. I always want it to be zoomed to a hundred percent of size. I never want to fit the page.

This is kind of a golden rule in the terms of the AEC community. Always do zoom a hundred percent of its size and then the orientation and a few other items here. So let's go ahead.

We're going to go to selected views and sheets. I'm going to establish a set for this. And this is really a strong tool that I don't necessarily know if people really use a whole lot.

I use it quite a bit, but I'll establish sets for printing. I'll establish sets for exporting. It just facilitates a very quick and easy way of going about it.

So I'm going to go here, create a new set. I want to go ahead. I'm going to change my display filter.

So I only see my sheets. I'm going to create a new set here, a new empty set. And I'm going to name this midterm hit.

Okay. I'm going to check these boxes to include them and there. And the nice thing about this too, is now you can edit the print order.

So previous versions of Revit, if you have like S sheets for, uh, for like site sheets or demolition sheets, you know, those typically want to go at the front of the set, but in Revit, they would sort at the bottom. You can actually edit the print order now, but we don't need to change any of it here. But if I were to edit the print order, I could select here and choose which ones I want to go ahead and have there and move them up and down.

But I hit cancel. So I've select print set midterm. Everything there is good.

I could go ahead and I can check to see if there's anything else checked here. If I really wanted to, but there's nothing. And I can go hide unchecked views so that I was showing everything, but I'm hiding anything that's unchecked.

I hit select. And then I do want to save this. So I hit yes.

And then you see that midterm pops up here, moving on to the next step. I'm going to establish an export setup. So even, even though I went to print, this still calls this PDF export.

I'm going to go here, save as, let's go ahead and name this as just VDCI 30 × 42. I hit. Okay.

The file name. I'm going to go ahead and name it BIM 321 midterm. And then I'm going to put my initials at the end there, go ahead and put your initials at the end.

Just so you know, it's your file. We do want to combine the selected views and sheets into a single file. We're going to go ahead and specify the location.

So I'm going to hit browse. It's going to take me to my documents folder by default. If you're not there, just pull down, go to documents.

I'm going to go to VDCI, my file downloads, and I'm going to go ahead and save it in this folder right here. Hit open. Page size.

I can use the sheet size. I'm going to, I like to set things. I don't like to just leave it to chance.

So I'm going to choose my ANSI E1, which is my 30 × 42. Center, plate paper placement. Everything there is good.

Zoom, a hundred percent of size. Everything else here is fine. I want it to be vector processing.

And then down here, for the most part, you don't touch these too much, but you know, we want to hide the reference and work planes. Hide unreferenced view tags. We do want to go ahead and do that.

Hide scope boxes, hide crop boundaries, those kinds of things. I'm going to go ahead and hit export and it's going to work through that. And there we go.

If you were to go ahead and navigate to your, my documents folder, you would see that you have that there now. So let's see here. I can go ahead.

I'm going to go on my other monitor real quick. Go to my documents, VDCI. I'm going to go find my midterm.

If I were to drag, if I double click into this, you can see I have Adobe on this machine, but you can see that I have my midterm here and there we go. And we're good to go. I'm going to go ahead and end this video here.

And we'll see you in the next lesson.