Discover the functionality and efficiency of using keynote tags and types in the Revit model documentation process. Understand the difference between element keynotes, material keynotes, and user keynotes, and how each can be utilized in different scenarios.
Key Insights
- Keynote tags can be added to elements within a model, and if a keynote is pre-assigned, the tag will appear on screen, speeding up documentation.
- Three types of keynotes exist: element keynotes (which reference the keynote assigned to a model element), material keynotes (which read the keynote value assigned to a component's material), and user keynotes (which override predefined settings and allow for custom selection).
- While keynotes offer increased documentation efficiency, limitations exist, such as an inability to keynote certain items like repeating details, and the need to manually assign keynotes to every component as they are not pre-assigned in out-of-the-box content.
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In this video we're going to look at keynote tags and types. So first let's go to the view in large elevation southwest window. Keynote tags are added by selecting elements in the model.
If a keynote is already assigned to a selected element, the tag will appear on screen, thus speeding up the documentation process. You can either note using the keynote number or the text description of the keynote. In the previous Revit classes, you keynoted by number.
We will use the text descriptions in the three details we have created. Now let's toggle on the crop region and select it. What this is doing is now we can see the annotation extent, which is this dashed line that surrounds the entire view.
So what we're going to do is just drag the right side so that if we add keynotes to this area, it won't be hidden if we go beyond this annotation extent. Now let's go to the annotate tab in the ribbon. And if you go to the tag panel, we can see we have the option to keynote.
If you expand that, you can see we have three options, element keynote, material keynote, and user keynote. With an element keynote, this option reads the keynote assigned to the element in the model such as the keynote assigned to a door or a window or a wall, not the individual layers or subcomponents of the door or window or wall. With the material option, this option will read the assigned keynote value for the material of the selected component.
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For a user keynote, this option will override the predefined keynote settings and allow you to choose any keynote. This is great to use when you just want to drop in a keynote but don't necessarily have the right thing to reference in your model. There are limitations to keynotes, however.
Certain items cannot be keynoted such as repeating details and bat installation. Keynotes have not been pre-assigned to out-of-the-box content, so you'll need to take time to assign keynotes to every component. Now let's select the element keynote.
Now in this project file, we have a keynote tag that's specifically designed for text, and it'll be left justified. Let's select that type. It's called keynote tag dash text.
Now we're going to select the following items. Let's first select the awning windows, and you'll notice as we hover over the view, anything that's already been pre-assigned with a keynote value from our previous class comes up automatically. So for instance, this awning window, if I left-click once, left-click again for the bend, and left-click a third time to finish the command, you can see I added a callout for awning window.
Now let's go ahead and keynote a few other things, like the mullions. You can keynote the vision glass here, this smaller 2x5 mullion, the spandrel glass. We can go ahead and continue keynoting all the items we'd like.
Now if we want to add an arrowhead to these keynotes, we simply have to just select one of them. Let's go to the edit type menu, and then let's change the leader arrowhead to dot filled sixteenth of an inch, and you can see it added an arrowhead at each one of our keynotes. Let's go ahead and turn off our crop region, and if you want to go ahead and maybe clean up some of these keynotes, it's kind of nice to get these in alignment to one another to kind of clean up the graphics and fix the alignments vertically as necessary.
In the next video, we're going to look at keynoting with tags and types in the Windows Cilin Jam details.