Creating Detail Libraries in Revit Architecture: A Step-by-Step Guide

Setting Up a Detail Library File for Efficient Reuse in Revit Architecture

Explore the practical approach to creating detail libraries in Revit Architecture as part of the CAD Teacher VDCI series for BIM 303 Detailing. Learn how to store and reuse details efficiently for future projects by creating a separate project file including insights on how to import details into your project file.

Key Insights

  • This article provides guidelines on creating detail libraries in Revit Architecture, highlighting the significance of storing and reusing these details in separate project files for future projects.
  • It demonstrates the process of reviewing a detail library file and how it is set up. This includes purging all views out of the file, except for the drafting views that are being referenced, to keep the file clean and efficient.
  • The article also delves into the procedure of importing specific details from the library file into your ongoing project file, showing how to import a detailed sheet from a specific library file into the current Revit project file.

Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.

Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video series for BIM 303 Detailing in Revit Architecture. In this video we're going to take a look at creating detail libraries. We will continue using the same Revit project file that we used in the previous videos, so open up bim303-lesson3.rvt and let's do a save as.

Save this project as BIM 303 Lesson 4. As you build your library of details, whether they're created in CAD and imported or natively within Revit, the best way to store and reuse them in future projects is to create a separate project file that only creates the drafted details. This will become the detail library file and it will only contain 2D drafting views because they won't have a model to reference. This works well for typical details such as a typical door, window, or accessibility detail.

Let's look at an example detail library file and review how it was set up. Let's go and open the file bim303-details-accessibility.rvt. Make sure you've downloaded this file. Click open.

Let's take a look at this detail library file and you'll note in the project browser, if we take a look at the views, take note that all the views have been purged out of this file other than the drafting views that are being referenced. So all the plans, sections, elevations, all have been removed to keep this file very clean and very efficient. Note that there's a sheet file already set up for easy importing into your project file.

If you go down to sheets, there's an A7.0 typical accessibility clearance details and you can see each one of these views in this sheet relate back to these five drafting views in this project. So I'm just going through and taking a look at each one of these views and you'll note each one of these views is a series of detail components with no relation to a Revit model file. So what will typically happen is that you will have a detail library file, something like this.

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You might have one for accessibility details, another one for door details, another for window details, and then what you'll do is in your project file that you're working on, import views from these files. So let's take a look at how to import this sheet, A7.0, into our current Revit project file. I'm going to close hidden windows and then go back to our lesson four Revit project file and to import that sheet that we were just looking at, let's go to the insert tab and then go to the insert from file and go to the drop down menu and you can see you have the choice to either insert views from file or insert 2D elements from file.

And in this case, we want to insert a view. Click on that and what it will ask next is to open up a Revit project file that we're going to take the views from. So let's go browse to the file that you downloaded, 303details-accessibility, and then select open and the next dialog box called insert views will give you a list of all the views that are importable from that file.

So you can see all the drafting views appear and it gives you a nice preview to the right so you can see what you're importing or you can actually go just to the sheet view and if it's set up properly like it was in this file, we have all of our sheets laid out nicely on a, or I should say all of our details laid out nicely on a sheet. And if you import that sheet view, the drafting views associated with that will import as well. So select sheet A7.0, click ok, and there will be duplicate types inevitably and just say ok.

Basically we're going to use the ones in this project file. And just like that, we have a new sheet in our project file numbered A7.0 Typical Accessibility Clearances. Now let's take a look at our drafting views in our project file.

If you expand drafting views in the project browser, you'll note now those five details from our detail library file have all been imported along with this sheet A7.0. In the next video we're going to take a look at 3D detail views, the first being creating a section perspective.

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