Tags - Revit Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this video, I'm going to add some tags to our floor plan. Tags are symbols that are hosted to model elements and report information from those elements. Now, you can tag just about anything in Revit. So nearly every model category supports tagging. And to add any kind of tag, it's the same command. It's just simply called Tag by Category. So I'm going to come up here to the Quick Access Toolbar and I can find the Tag by Category button right there. You can also find it on the Annotate tab right here, or you can just simply type "t + g". So what I'd like you to do initially is don't click anywhere just yet, but I want to direct your attention to this setting, Leader. It's here on the Options Bar. With that turned on, notice that if you hover over a taggable element, like this window, it will start to create the symbol offset away from the window with a leader. Now, we could do that on the door, we could do that on a wall. So notice that several different categories support tagging, and the symbol is changing depending on which item you're hovering over. If you turn the leader off, then the tag is just simply going to be placed next to the object instead. So I think the leader off is appropriate for things like windows and doors. And let me just zoom in a little closer here so we can get a better look at what I'm doing. And then I think leader turned on is a little more appropriate for things like walls. So I'll go ahead and do a couple of those walls there. So I'm going to cancel out of the command, and now I want to talk about the information that's displayed in the tag. So let's start with the door tags that I placed. And you may be surprised by the numbers that were input there. They seem kind of random. Now, I first want to comment on an assumption that's made by a lot of beginning Revit users that's not correct. The tag itself is not what sets the number of the object. The number was already there, okay? All the tag is doing is reporting the information that it finds. So a lot of folks, when they first start using Revit, think that the act of tagging is what is numbering the elements, and that's not the case. So if I select this door and scroll down, you're going to see that it has a property called Mark, and that mark is number 102. If I select this door, it's mark number 112. This one is mark number 111. Those numbers were already there and assigned at the time the doors were created. The tag is simply reporting that information back, okay? Now, you can change those values later and the tag will simply update. So if I wanted to take this door here and change that to door mark 99, when I enter that, notice that the tag will update to reflect that change. So that's the job of a tag, okay? Now, having said that, if we come over here to these windows and I select this window, you can see it's mark 106, and this one is mark 105, but clearly the tags are not telling us those values. So what's going on there? Well, all that is telling us is that the tag doesn't have to ask just the one question. Many tags do report the mark value, but they don't have to. So these tags, the window tags, and actually these wall tags, just happen to be asking a different question. So that's another way that I like to think about tags, is I like to think of a tag as just a symbol that is asking its host a question and then it reports the value it finds. So what question are the window and wall tags asking? Well, if I select one of those elements and go to Edit Type, it's asking not what the mark is but rather what the type mark is. So if I wanted to, I could change this from mark 42 to, say, mark A. And when I click OK, notice that both of those tags will update. Furthermore, if we go somewhere else in the plan and we add some new tags- I'm going to turn off the leader here- and add a couple more tags there and there, those are also Type A windows as well. So it's just a matter of, is the information in the tag telling me what specific door this is, or is it telling me what kind of window this is, right? And likewise, with these walls here. It's telling me what kind of wall that is, okay? Versus this one, which is a different kind of wall. Now, you could tell very easily by selecting it. If you look at the type selector here, you could see that the name of this type is different than the name of this type, and that's reflected in the tags. So what's also important to understand is, if I were to select this wall and change its type and make it the same as this one, so here, in the imperial file, this is an interior 5/8, a 5-inch partition. I'm going to open this up and choose that from the list there. Notice the tag updates immediately to reflect that change, okay? So those are some of the immediate behaviors of the tags that you want to be aware of. Now, we can tag many more categories than just the ones I've shown you. So if I go back to Tag by Category, I'm going to turn the leader off, and then I'm just going to touch a few of these pieces of furniture here. And then, I'm going to slowly start to move my mouse around to other portions of the plan. Notice that the stair can be tagged, notice that specialty equipment can be tagged, notice that casework can be tagged. In fact, even this floor element here can be tagged. And you may not notice where the tag is, it's kind of going right in the middle of the screen there, but it says "Concrete 4" on my screen. So that means you want to be careful, too, because if you accidentally click on something that you didn't mean to tag, you could be creating a tag where you don't want one. Now, in some cases, you will click an element, like these columns out in front, and it will tell you that there isn't a tag loaded for that category, but it will offer you the opportunity to load one. So if I really did want to tag these columns, I could answer Yes here, load in a tag, and then I would be able to tag those elements. Or if I clicked it accidentally, I can just simply click No to cancel out of there, okay? So now I'm going to cancel out of the tag command without continuing there. Let me zoom back in over here in this little grouping of furniture. I did place some tags here, but as you can see, they're not reporting any information at all. So the tag is able to be placed even if the information, the question that it's asking has no value. So what we'd want to determine here is, what question are these tags asking? Now, the most obvious things to look for is the mark or the type mark, because most of the time, tags are going to ask those questions. Now, they don't have to, actually. Your tag could ask any question you want. It could ask the comments, it could ask the name of the type, it could ask the manufacturer. Now, in this case, notice the mark value is empty. So if I put in a value there and apply that, nothing happens in the tag. So that tells me that this tag symbol is not asking that question. But here's an easier way to figure out what question it's asking. If you click on the tag itself, you'll see a question mark. You can click right on that question mark and edit this value. So I can make this CH1, as an example, and then that's going to tell me that this is a type parameter that I'm modifying and ask if that's okay. So I'm going to say Yes. And because it's a type parameter, notice that the other chair over here is getting the same value. And in fact, if I were to tag this chair, it is also the same value. Those are all the same type. So what that tells me is that if we go to Edit Type, it was actually the type mark value that was input into that symbol, okay? So that's how you can kind of figure out what question those tags are asking. Now, I'm going to come down here, and sometimes, floor plans can get a little cluttered. There's a lot of information in a tight space. So another feature of tags is they can associate to more than one element. So what I'm going to do is turn on the leader, I'm going to tag this wall, and then I'm going to cancel out of the command. Then, I'm going to take this tag and I'm just going to bump it a little closer to this wall. And up here on the ribbon is an Add and Remove Host command. If you click that, it will highlight the existing host, but now I can add to it one or more additional ones. So as long as you choose another host that reports the same information, then the tag will display nicely. If you pick a wall that's a different type, then it's going to say varies, and so that's not going to look so good. So what I'm going to do is remove that host that's different. So you want to limit yourself to choosing similar hosts, but now you can see I can have a single symbol that is referencing multiple elements. Now, these leaders here kind of just terminate. I personally prefer to give them an arrowhead at the end. So if you select the tag itself and go to Edit Type, there is a dropdown menu here and a number of arrowheads to choose from. I like this one called Heavy End, which will just add a nice little terminator to the end of those tags. And the last thing that I want you to see is, I want to tag the remaining elements in this floor plan. Do I need to touch them all individually? No, there's actually a command right here called Tag All Not Tagged. So in this dialogue, it will list out all the tags in this model that are currently loaded, and you can check one or more categories and tag them all in a single step. So I'm going to do doors and windows for this example and then click OK, and notice that I will get tags throughout the floor plan in all the locations where they were required. So if you want to experiment further with tags here in this file, I welcome you to do so. Perhaps, go up to the second floor and add a set of tags up there as well for some additional practice.