Discover the process of creating and managing design options in Autodesk Revit, including how to use call-outs, change visibility graphic overrides, and add room tags. Learn how to duplicate views, rename and manage them efficiently to avoid confusion, and set up your design options on different levels.
Key Insights
- The article outlines a detailed step-by-step process of creating a call-out of a specific area in Autodesk Revit to represent the view for desired design options.
- The writer discusses how to duplicate views, rename them for clarity, manage design options on different levels, and change visibility graphic overrides to show multiple design options in one view.
- It also covers how to add room tags to design options and the significance of using corresponding terminology and numbers to avoid confusion.
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Now it's time to put these views together and put them on a sheet. So the first thing that we are going to do is we are going to create a call-out of this area that's going to represent the view that we want to show for our design options. So I'm going to go to my view tab, I'm going to look for call-out, and what I'll do is I'll create a call-out around the area that we're working on.
So clicking in the top left corner, clicking in the bottom right, and you'll notice that this is not part of my active option because it's part of the main model because it is an annotation element. And so I want to make sure I need to click that active-only and make sure it's off so I can adjust it accordingly. When you look in the project browser, we now have a level one call-out.
And so I'll go ahead and rename that so we know exactly what it is and I'll call it level one. And then we'll add to the end of that, restroom option A. And then I'll go ahead and I can actually duplicate that view and I'll duplicate with detailing and I'll rename this one to be restroom option B. And so now I've got both of my options, option A and option B, ready to go. And so you can see this one is set up as the option with our two fixtures.
And then this one is set up the same way, but what we could do is we can go to our visibility graphic overrides, hitting BV on that keyboard, and I can change my design option from Option Two to Option One and hit okay. Now, what's cool about this is I can have multiple views and still show multiple options and easily go back in and make these edits. And so right now my option is set to Option Two.
If I were to set this to the main model, then go into my design options and visibility graphic overrides, and set it to Automatic, what it's going to do is it's going to show that primary option. And so if we, as the designers, were thinking, we really want the other option to be primary, I can go into my design option settings by clicking that dialog box again. And if I were to select Option Two, I can actually go ahead and click make primary.
And what it'll do is it'll actually change the primary to be this option. And if I hit okay, we're good to go. And you can see we did get an error and that really has everything to do with the relationship of the walls and everything that's around it.
And so we didn't lose out on anything there. We're just getting some errors with how the walls are going to interact with each other. And there's nothing in this one that's going to have a lasting impact on our model.
So I'll hit close. And now you can see that we have our active option shown here. For these views, what I want to do is I'm going to change my detail level to medium so that we can see the full thickness of everything and all the different layers in the wall.
I'll do the same thing on option A. And you'll notice because I changed it to accept primary that this one changed as well. And so I'll need to go in and override my view from Automatic to Option One since that's what I want to show either in option A or B here. And so we want to make sure we're using corresponding terminology.
So, I did kind of break the rules here by going A and B and one and two. And as long as you can keep track of it, it's not that big of a deal. I am going to go ahead and change it to A and B in my option sets here, ensuring I am keeping track of the options accordingly.
So B is going to be my primary because it was our second option. And so Option A needs to be our original one. And so if I set that to Option A, it'll override.
My other view is going to say here because that's the one we switched back. But if I set it to Automatic, it'll always show the primary option. And so I can hit okay and you can see we have our primary option.
One thing you do notice is that we lost our tags on that option. And so we need to go back in and we can add those back. And so from here, what I can do is I can add my room tags.
So annotate and room tag. And I can tag the rooms for those options. Now, option A, if you remember, we actually deleted those rooms.
If I change it to option A, those rooms are gone. But we can add them back if we want to, the same way we did before. If this was going to be our men's room and I'll just add them both simultaneously, but this will be men.
And I believe that was 110. And it's good to use those same numbers because we do want to make sure that there is a corresponding number to both options so you can see that it is the same room. Okay, so we've got our views set up for level one.
We want to do the same thing on level two. And the key here is going to be to make sure that we have everything set up in a way that makes sense and doesn't create any confusion between the two options because you can see we're only dealing with two here and it can already kind of get a little out of control if you don't manage it. So I'll go ahead and add my call out.
You can see we get the level one call-out. We'll go through the same process. We'll do a rename.
This will be level two restroom option A. And then I'll duplicate that view and rename it to be restroom option B. And the only thing I have to do is change this visibility graphic overrides to be set to Automatic so that it always stays with the primary, which is our option B. And then Option A was our original one. And you can see by default, it's set to that option B because that's what the view we created it from was set to. So I'll set this one to Option A. And then that way we get back to our original option.
When we look at option B here, if I wanted to add the tags using the keyboard shortcut RT, I can do that pretty easily. But on option A, there's no rooms to add the tag to. So I'll have to use my room tool.
But if you'll notice, we're back in that same situation where before, because I've got this set to the main model. So it's recognizing only the primary. We want to make sure we set this to Option A and then we can go in and we can add those rooms.
So this'll be, I believe it was 209. And then we'll have room 210 for the women's room. And we're just ignoring those errors.
And there we go. Now we've got our room set up and options are ready to go. And the next thing to do is going to be to put them on a drawing sheet.