Placing Projects on Drawing Sheets in Revit Structure: A Step-by-Step Guide

Hello, welcome back to Revit Structure. Let's get started. Now that we've finished annotating or placing notation for the elements in our project, let's start placing our projects on drawing sheets.

As we did previously, we created a drawing sheet and named it 2.1 Foundation Plan*. Let's double-click on it. Very good.

Here we see our typical drawing sheet with our name, address, plan to be placed, and the pertinent information: project number, date, your name, who it’s checked by, and the sheet number. Very good. Let's get started.

The first thing we want to do is go to our View tab. Under the View tab, we have Sheet Composition*. Here again, we can see that we can load a Title Block from this point, but since we already have one, what we're going to do is create a Guide Grid*.

This will, as shown in the dropdown, create a grid that doesn't print but helps us place our project in the same location every time. So let's pick Guide Grid*. Let's create a new one.

Learn Revit

• Nationally accredited
• Create your own portfolio
• Free student software
• Learn at your convenience
• Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

We'll call this Plan Location or Typical Plan Location*. Click OK*.

As you can see, it gives us a grid extended over the face of our drawing sheet. Now, if you look down here in the Properties panel, we see it listed as well. This gives us a toggle to turn the Guide Grid on and off.

Select None*. We can go back and select the Guide Grid we just made, and it will place it in our plan. Okay, let's get started.

We want to pick Level 0, which is our foundation plan, and drag it from the Project Browser into our sheet. Let's place it. Now we’ve placed it as a random element on our drawing.

Let’s give it a permanent location. What we want to do is move it slightly to the right—because we open drawings from right to left—and we want the drawing, or the plan, to be the first thing we see. So let’s zoom in here.

Okay, let’s pick a location. Let’s go to our Modify command. Then go to our Move command.

Let’s pick it. And we want to move it from this intersecting point to a relative point—as you can see, it’s snapping to elements of the Guide Grid*—to here. Okay, let’s take a look at what we have.

That gave us a good right-hand location. And this is where we're going to place each level as we put our plans into our drawings. Now, what we're going to do is isolate this area so that at every level, it will provide the same location every time.

We pick it, find the control handle, and draw it in. I like to allow a small crossing margin—you can do as you wish. Again, check with your BIM Manager to see what type of standards you may have in your office.

Let's pull this up. Let's pull this one over. And there we have it.

Within this small Guide Grid*, we have a central location that we can identify and use to place each drawing consistently. Okay, let's zoom out. Now, let's take a look at our Title*.

We have a Title Line*, which includes a number we don’t want to use. Let's move it into position. Let's select our drawing. That displays handles on each end that we can use to adjust the size of this line.

Now, we'll exit that command, and you'll see that if we select the line itself, we can move it independently. But if we select the plan, moving the line also moves the entire plan—so be careful. Okay, what I'm going to do is change this in our plan.

We want Title with Line*, and we don’t want the number included. There we have it. It's identifying as Level 0*, which is correct.

No scale is displayed. What we want to do now is change the name. We don’t want to change the View Name in the Properties panel, so we’ll only change the Title on Sheet*.

We'll click into the field, turn Caps Lock on, and type in: FOUNDATION PLAN. Return to the drawing, and you’ll see it’s updated without changing any other information. Very good.

That’s our first plan. Let’s move on to our other floors. First, we’re going to create a new sheet.

Again, we can insert a Title Block using Sheet Composition in the View tab, or we can simply right-click on Sheets in the Project Browser and accomplish the same task. So let's right-click here, select New Sheet*, and save the project when prompted. And here we have our loaded Title Block, which is exactly what we want.

We click OK*. You see it automatically assigns the next sequential number. Sometimes this updates; sometimes it doesn’t.

In this case, it doesn’t, so we’re going to use that, but we’ll change the sheet name. You can either click the name in the drawing, or right-click on the sheet, go to Rename*, and we’ll call this First Floor*. Click OK*.

And there we see we have the sheet titled First Floor*. Let’s go ahead and go to our Properties panel. Let’s use the dropdown to select our Typical Plan Location*.

Let’s pick that and turn on our Guide Grid*. You can see it displays the Guide Grid here. Let’s drag in our Level 1 plan and place it randomly so we can view our grid alignment.

Let’s go to our plan. Again, go to the Modify tab, the Move command, and let’s select our plan. Identify our intersection, click it, and place it at our predefined intersecting point.

Press Escape*. You can now see we’ve placed the First Floor at the same location as the foundation plan. Okay, again, let’s select our Title*.

We want to change it to Title with Line*. Again, we’ll update the Title on Sheet to read: FIRST FLOOR. Very good.

Let’s shrink this line a little to make it visually clean and professional. And there you have it. Go ahead and repeat this process for Levels 2 through the High Roof*, and we’ll continue once that’s finished.

Now that we’ve placed all the floor plans, let’s finish with the roof. Let’s go to Sheets*, right-click, select New Sheet*, confirm the border is there, and click OK*. Let’s rename our sheet—double-click on Unnamed*.

You’ll see the dialog box appear. Let’s name this sheet: Roof and High Roof Plans*. We’re going to combine two framing plans onto one sheet.

Okay, let’s turn on our Guide Grid again in the Properties panel. Select Typical Plan Location*. You’ll see the Guide Grid appears in the same location on every sheet.

Let’s drag our roof plan onto the sheet. Now let’s use the Move command. Find the same intersection point we used earlier—at 1.1 and E.9. Place it at that intersection and press Escape*.

Now let’s clean up the layout. Bring up the Title Line*. Since we’ve selected the plan, we have access to the annotation bubble—let’s shorten it.

Set it to the correct style: Title with Line*. Then rename it to: ROOF PLAN. Very good.

Now, we’ll select the viewport element and turn on the perimeter boundary so we can crop it slightly. This gives us room to place the High Roof Framing Plan below. Once done, turn off the perimeter crop box.

In Revit 2015, double-clicking outside the viewport exits the active view, allowing us to continue with the layout. Now let’s grab the High Roof Framing Plan*.

Drag it into the sheet. We can place it freely to fit the layout. When you move the plan into position, you’ll see an alignment line appear—this ensures the High Roof aligns directly above the Low Roof where it belongs.

Let’s clean this up. Zoom in. Rename the plan first.

Let’s call this: HIGH ROOF PLAN. Very good. Let’s adjust the Title Line here.

Shorten it, then move it independently into position. Now we want to clean up the grid lines since they’re overlapping the border and the lower framing plan.

Double-click to activate the view. Select the grid. Set it to 2D*.

Drag it inboard slightly. Repeat this for Grid Line 3 and for the opposite ends.

Since we’re outside the view boundary, we can make these adjustments freely, as they’re already set to 2D*. Click outside the view to deactivate. And there you have it.

We’ve now placed all plans onto sheets. This forms the foundation for the drawing set. We no longer need the Guide Grid*, since all plans are now properly located.

Let’s go back to the Properties panel. Set Guide Grid to None*.

Return to each drawing. Now the grids are gone from our other sheets. Let’s review starting at the High Roof*.

And the Roof*—we have our plans laid out, each with its Title Block in place. Let’s close that one. Here’s the Fifth Floor*.

Zoom in. We have the Fourth Floor*. We have the Third Floor*.

And we have the Fourth Floor again. Let’s turn off the Guide Grid*. Note: you’ll need to do this individually on each sheet.

I’ll correct myself—it does not turn off globally. Let’s close this one.

Again, set the Guide Grid to None*. Let’s close this sheet. There we have the Foundation Plan*.

Let’s turn off the Guide Grid*. Now that we’ve placed all of our floor and framing plans on sheets, we’re ready to begin applying general notes and construction details.

We’ll get to that in the next video.

That’s it for this video. We’ll see you in the next one.