In this Revit Click Saver, I’ll discuss one of the most overlooked tools on the Revit Platform. Can you work in Revit without view templates? Sure, but do you want to? No. Once you learn to use them, you will become more efficient and you will save a lot of clicks. Look at one of your views and all of the objects you recently changed: turning filters on and off, overriding graphic display options on objects, setting level of detail, turning off or on annotations in linked files, setting the view range and display to be correct in your RCP, and the big one for me is the display settings for sun location, shadows, lighting when doing 3D views. All of this takes a huge amount of clicking, so let’s see if we can kill most of that.
1. Step one is getting into or setting up a view that has all of your different settings set the way you’d like.
2. Now go to the “View” tab and choose “Create Template from Current View”.
3. Type in a name that you would like to use.
4. The View Template manager will now be on the screen and this is where you can fine tune some of the settings. Something to consider is the scale and if you want to include it or not. Also, go back through the settings and make sure everything is set the way you would like.
5. At this point you are ready to rock and roll and start applying these View Templates to any view in your project. Remember to add these to your “company template (.RTE)” so you have them on every project. To apply one to a view, first get into the view and then go to the “View” tab and choose “Apply Template to Current View”.
6. If you want to apply to multiple views at the same time, then this is where the magic right-click comes into play. On the “Project Browser” using either the “Shift” or “CTRL” key, select as many views as needed. With the views selected, right-click and choose “Apply View Template”.
I hope you see the tremendous value when losing all of those picks and clicks while creating and using view templates in your daily Revit use. See you in class! – Jarod
