How to Populate a Mechanical Cover Sheet in Revit

In a previous video, we went ahead and talked about some sheets and some of the standards associated with sheets. And now we're going to go ahead and start to populate this Mechanical Cover Sheet. So a lot of times different offices may have information from pre-existing projects they want to use, or container files that contain those project standards.

Now we're able to bring over certain non-model view elements, or certain non-model views—things like detail views and schedules—that are pre-set up into our project so that we can use them here. We're going to go ahead and bring out a couple of items that we want to go ahead and get into this. So where I want to go ahead and be is I'm on my M001 sheet.

I want to go ahead and, under my Insert tab, I'm going to go to Insert from File. So this Insert from File allows you to insert views from file, copy specified views, sheets, schedules, or drafting views. Again, no model views.

I can't bring over, say, a reflected ceiling plan, or I can't bring over, say, a floor plan into this. But it allows us to reuse schedules, sheets, or drafting views among projects. You can insert a schedule from another project to replicate its formatting and customized parameters.

But because the schedule is looking at the model elements, it won't replicate the content. And then you can insert a drafting view from another project to reuse the entire view, including its 2D elements and text. That's really what we're going to be focusing on.

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So I'm going to insert views from file. Now what you're going to go ahead and do is you're going to go to your Documents where you have that VDCA folder saved. So I'm going to go to VDCA.

You're going to go into the BIM 321 file downloads. And I'm going to go to my Families and References. There, you should have a file called Details and Schedules.

I'm going to go ahead and hit Open. Now when it brings this in, we can go ahead and show a lot of different information. So it's showing me all the views and sheets that I can bring in.

You notice that I have this Trap Primer and Access Panel. I'm going to go ahead and hit Check None. Or you could just uncheck that one.

But you have your Suspended Equipment Mounting. We have a whole bunch of different views here. Now we're not going to be using all of this stuff per se.

But we'll bring in some items. The first one we want to go ahead and bring in is going to be our Mechanical Legend. So I'm going to go ahead and check that box.

And let's go ahead and hit OK just to see what it does with just one view. And we'll bring in more. I'm going to go ahead and hit OK.

There we go. It's saying the following types already exist but are different. The types from the project into which you are pasting will be used.

That's fine. So our text and Standard Viewport. So I hit OK.

And it creates. Now this is a detail view or a drafting view. If I come over to here, I'm going to expand this out.

And I see a Mechanical Legend. Now one thing you may notice is I have some notes here. Let's zoom in and see what this is.

So replace California with international for military jobs. And what this is kind of bringing attention to—a lot of times things like general notes or other items may have code-specific items in here. Let's say that our current project will be in California.

We do want to comply with California Mechanical Code, California Plumbing Code, and all these other kinds of items. So I can go ahead and just select it and delete that text. A lot of times we'll go ahead and put those little notes in there for us to go ahead and let us know that, hey, we need to check this.

Anytime you bring something into a project, you want to go ahead and make sure that you're bringing in the right information. Now I will say I am seeing a few things that are kind of going wrong here. You can see that my numbers don't quite line up.

We'll fix that real quick. Let's check this one. Same thing kind of here.

Again, sometimes those kinds of things happen. You may want to speak to—if this is being held in a container file, like maybe it's an office standard—you may want to speak to whoever manages the BIM content or talk to your PM and say, hey, by the way, the content that I pulled in was not set up 100% correctly.

Sometimes it happens, but you know you can rectify that situation and that saves you from having to type all this stuff out. So I'm just going to come into here and kind of grab these and I can just use mine and move them down. And who knows where these came from or why they are this way.

It could be because it was imported from CAD, brought in, and these numbers were separate. Sometimes it's just the way that it is. So I'm just going to go ahead and align these.

You can move them individually—do that—or you can just use your arrows.

There we go. Up here. Come down here.

And these ones need to go pretty far. So let's go ahead and move those guys down. There we go.

Looks pretty good. Cool. We have some general notes, and we have a Mechanical Legend.

What I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to go to my cover sheet here—Mechanical Cover Sheet. I want to choose Mech Legend and I'm going to drag this over and place it on my sheet.

Now in this instance, these guys already have titles drawn in here. So I'm actually going to change it for Viewport One. I need to create a new viewport to have no title.

So I only have a Standard Viewport, which actually has no title. It's kind of not named right. So let's go ahead and rename that.

So I'm going to select this. Change it to Standard Viewport. I'm going to Edit Type.

I'm going to go ahead and hit Rename and just change this to No Title. There we go. Hit OK.

And there we go. A lot of times what I like to do is I like to drag this so that these lines that define the border are kind of nestled in the edge here with the other lines. I do have my Thin Lines active.

So my line weights are showing. If I hit TL, you can see I do have some line weight there. Then there we go. There is my Mechanical Cover Sheet.

So the other thing I want to do is I want to bring a 3D view of my model onto here—just kind of a nice little reference. If I go here to my HVAC 3D,

I'm going to go to my 3D view—HVAC 3D. I kind of like this view because it just shows my HVAC system. It's not showing me anything specific with the building model or anything.

So to bring this onto a sheet now, I can just drag this view into a sheet if I want to. But one thing I like to do with these is I like to actually make them locked to a certain orientation. So I'm going to find something similar about this.

If yours isn't the exact same, that's okay. I'm going to come down here to my bottom and I'm going to find where it says Unlock 3D View. I'm going to go Save Orientation and Lock View.

And what this does is it makes it so I cannot orbit or change the view. I can zoom in, I can zoom out, and I can pan around. But if I try to hold Shift and orbit, notice how I get this international no symbol.

So it says this command is disabled when the view is locked. So I'm going to go ahead to my Mechanical Cover Sheet. I'm going to go ahead and grab my HVAC 3D view.

And obviously it's a little bit too big. So I'm going to change the scale here. Let's go ahead—we just want it kind of there for reference.

Let's make it like a 1/32" and see what happens. Okay, maybe that's a little too small, but it does kind of fit on our sheet. Now you may want to—not going to worry too much about it right here.

But we may want to adjust these general notes or the project notes or the Mechanical Legend. Maybe we can get it down here in the corner. Let's see here—and sometimes you just play with it.

We're not too worried about this being to a perfect scale just because it's only on my Cover Sheet. Now notice that my system is actually showing completely here, but my Scope Box is in the way. I'm going to go ahead and go into this view here.

I'm going to hit VV, and I'm going to go to my Annotation Categories and turn off my Scope Box. There we go. I'm going to go ahead and change this to my No Title viewport.

And there we go. And you notice I get a little bit more exercise that I can actually move it up into here. So the scale I set it to is 1" = 20'.

I'm not terribly worried about the scale here. This is just for a general overview of the drawing. And there we go.

Great. We're going to stop this video here, and in the next one, we'll start bringing in more items. See ya.