Please, Please! Please!!!!!! Make Titleblocks Less Painful!
(Preemptive apologies for this one, but I feel very strongly about this!)
I hate to say it but Autocad Titleblocks are better than Revit. And that's pretty sad!
Revit has about a million flexible ways to get info into a titleblock and that unchecked complexity makes it almost impossible to manage. In the MEP field we have to manage several models and separate sets and get them all to match.
You have to be a veritable Revit expert to competently manage titleblocks in an MEP (or structural, etc.) production environment! And explaining the issue to new users or boss-types is impossible. Here I'll just fix it myself!
In Autocad you can XREF in a titleblock and have some parameters write in into the fields. When the titleblock changes it updates, the users just have to make sure the fields are filled in properly. Generally they're right where the look like they are. Pretty simple, two files, only a couple places the info can come from.
In Revit here's how confusing this is:
- Revit does not allow referencing in a centrallized titleblock. You can insert a titleblock from a family, but once it's loaded into a model congratulations you have your own version that goes stale.
- (I need to write another whole diatribe about how I hate this as well.)
- Revit allows a titleblock to draw from the following data sources (at least):
- Sheet Parameters
- Titleblock (which is not the same as the sheet?!?!?!) parameters
- Shared Parameters
- Project Parameters (only OF whichever model that it's in!!)
- Oh and the above can be both instance or type parameters
- Let's not forget that static text and numbers can be stored in a titleblock as well
The workflow just ends up being atrocious:
- First ask the architect to send you a PDF so you know what you want it to look like.
- Because like many other things in Revit you cannot trust linked models.
- Update your titleblock family
- A) Ask the Architect to send you a titleblock .rfa file or
- B) open the architects model and pray the RFA you can extract out of there is OK.
- Once you have it make sure to manually reload the family.
- Then save the family for your other colleagues to do the same thing (btw, better email them because it's all manual). Autocad notifies you when an XREF is modifies!
- Now the fun begins:
- There's a date on your sheet....you can click on it and update it...ok cool. But was that a project parameter that updated all the sheets? Or (more likely) the "Sheet Issue Date" that exists on each and every sheet in revit as an instance parameter? So you have to click through all the sheets and click and update. Unless you make a schedule (or select all instances of sheets) and assign a value. Rage.......rising...must....vent....on....Revit....Ideas!!!
- Now I need to add my firms CA # and our PE numbers. So I hit edit family, now I'm editing the copy of the family in my model. I get it the way I want, then have to remember to save it out to a central place and again yes notify everyone else to update.
- What's the revision info and date supposed to be...wait what's that? every model has a separate set of "revisions/dates/#" lines and they all must be manually synced?
- How come this sheet has this logo and that sheet has that logo? Well the architects used intance parameters (yes/no) to control the visibility of an image...now you've got to go through each sheet and make sure it right.
- Same for the north arrow, etc.
- Bonus Problem: How come our viewport bubbles look this way, when the architects looks that way? Nevermind
And then, Oh God! There's a mistake on the titleblock. They mispelled my company's name! You better clear your afternoon because you're going to spend 2 hours fixing it. I hope you didn't print and Sign and Seal five sets!
Revit really needs to step back and rethink the whole system. Revit is used in teams. Things need to match. The architect should make the master and everybody else's should easily and quickly match that. Revisions, phases, project parameters, Project info, room tags, text formats, north arrows, callouts, etc, etc, etc. There's duplicate copies of it everywhere and it's ALMOST ALL JUNK!
Simplify man!
And don't tell me "Transfer Project Standards". That heap of junk propagates so much garbage it's almost not worth using!