From the course: Revit 2024: Essential Training for Architecture

Creating a new project from a template - Revit Tutorial

From the course: Revit 2024: Essential Training for Architecture

Creating a new project from a template

- [Instructor] In this video, we're going to create a new project file. Now, the word project and model are synonymous in this context. So when we look here on the home screen you're going to see that it says models over here on the left and it says models here under recent files. In both cases, model files are the same as project files. Now in Windows Explorer they're going to have an RVT extension. So the Revit file itself would have this RVT extension and that's how you know it's a project file. And over here it's simply referred to as a model. And to create one, I would click this new button right here and that will open up the new project window. So hopefully that's not confusing that both model and project really mean the same thing in this context. Okay, so once we're here in this dialogue, the most important setting in here is choosing a template file. Now, what you see on this list might vary. This is dependent on what you've installed, what region you're in, what you configured in options. So let's not get too hung up on what is shown here in the list. What we're going to do instead is we're going to use this browse button. So I'm going to click on that and I've got the US Imperial installation of Revit. So it takes me to this English Imperial folder here. And you can see that folder contains a variety of template files. Now, as I mentioned project files have an RVT extension, but notice that template files have a different extension, RTE. So when you create a file, initially it's going to be based on an RTE file, but then when you save that project it becomes an RVT file. So the template is just the starting point for a project and it can configure any number of things, all the different settings, it can be office standards, anything that you want to include in a template file. And the goal is, again to just give a consistent starting point from one project to the next. And just looking at some of the names that you see in here you could see that there's a lot of different ways you could approach that starting point. So there's one here for plumbing and mechanical. There's another for commercial. There's one down here for residential. So there's a lot of different possibilities. Now, the one that we're going to use in the projects in this course is called default multidiscipline. And when you select it, you'll see this little 3D icon over here on the preview window on the right hand side. So that's now you'll know that you've gotten the correct thing. Now in this course, you can work in either imperial units or metric units. So this one default multidiscipline is the imperial version of this template. If I go up one folder, that takes me to the templates folder with a number of different languages. If we go into the English folder, you're going to see all of the same templates here as metric versions. And if you would prefer to work in metric units, this is the one that you want to choose. Default Multi-Discipline Metric. Notice it's got the same preview icon over here on the right. So on screen I'm going to use the imperial version but as I said you are welcome to use the metric version if you prefer. And I'll refer to both units along the way. So I'm going to open that. And then I'm going to click okay here to create a new project based on that template. And if you're not finding either of these templates in the locations that I'm indicating then I've provided copies of each of those with the exercise files in a folder called OTB. So there's some visual things that we see right here in the middle of the screen. So you've got these indicators around the four sides. These are elevation markers. Now if I zoom in on some of these you'll notice that those elevation markers already have sheet references in them. So this one at the top says that it's one on sheet A201 and this one says that it's one on sheet A203 Now those sheets are already included over here on the project browser. So if I scroll down and locate the sheets branch so here's sheet A201, and here's sheet A203 And you can see there's two additional elevation sheets here as well. In addition to the elevation markers that you see there's this section marker running across the middle of the screen. Now this one, if I zoom in, is not yet on a sheet. So notice it does not have a sheet reference filled in and it's actually grayed out in this dash line indicating that it is a working view or a temporary view that's not really intended for a sheet. Now we have these two dash lines in the middle of the screen. Those are really just there for convenience, marking the center point of the view here. But they're also showing us where the origin point of this model is. Out here we have this item which is referred to as a scope box. Now, what a scope box does is it controls the size and scale of either a view or a data element. We're going to talk about data elements in the next few videos, levels, and grids. So we'll discuss those more in the future. But the view itself here is being controlled by another one of these scope boxes. Now, the best way for me to show you that is to come up here to the quick access toolbar and click on this default 3D view icon at the top of the screen. So that's going to open up a 3D view. And here you can see that there's actually two of these green dash boxes. This inner one here is called grids and levels. And so that is meant to control the extent of the levels and any grids, which again, we're going to talk about shortly. But this one out here is labeled views overall. So here's how this works. If I were to select this scope box you'll notice that it's got the series of grip controls on all of the different sides. If I were to drag one of those grips and resize the shape of that box, notice that if I go back to the floor plan this floor plan has already re-cropped itself to match the size and shape of that scope box. Furthermore, if we were to open up one of these elevations which I'm going to do by double clicking this little triangle on the south elevation, notice that it also has been resized accordingly. So the purpose of a scope box is to give you one place to go to be able to modify the extents of lots of views all at once. And that just helps with a consistent sheet layout. So when you consider all of these sheets that I have down here at the bottom, if we needed to resize the view port of one of them, there's a pretty good chance we might want to resize the view port on several of them. This is a convenient way to do that and it's already built right into this template. Now, I don't want to keep that change, so I'm going to come up here and click the undo button in order to resize that scope box back to its original configuration. And then I'm going to close the south elevation to return to the first floor plan. So those are just a few of the settings that are already here and configured in this template file. Now there's lots more. So I just want to point out that this was a multi-disciplined template. So I've been focusing on architectural views because that's our focus here in this course. But if you scroll down you'll notice that there are several other branches here electrical, mechanical, plumbing, structural. So you can use the same template for any discipline as a starting point. Now, there's also some symbols here, a north arrow and a bar scale. So there's lots of different settings in this template far too many for us to go through in exhaustive detail. But what I wanted you to see was just some of the things to be on the lookout for. Now, I promised you at the beginning that I would contrast this to a file created without a template. So if I come up here and highlight new from the file menu, slide over here to project, and then open up the dropdown list here and choose none I'm going to click okay. It's going to ask me what units I want to use. I'll do imperial. You can do metric as well. And notice I get a blank screen. I don't get really any views at all. I get just one floor plan, one ceiling plan. I don't get any sheets. There's no symbols. So none of that set up. There's no scope box. None of that set up that I just showed you that was in the template comes across if you don't use a template. So using template files is the easiest way for you to get a good starting point on a project that matches whatever office standard or configuration that you're after. So I'm going to close this one without saving it and this is going to be our starting point moving forward for the files that we're going to be building in subsequent videos. Now, if your office has its own custom template then you would certainly use that for projects that you do within the office. But for purposes of what we're going to do here together in the course, I recommend that you work with this template and the files that I'm providing to get the best experience. But you are certainly welcome to use your own template if you prefer.

Contents