Plan Key Notes

[JLHALL-ENG3]

There is an existing Architectural Keynotes feature , that works fine for Architects.  It is NOT what I am requesting, and entirely different than the problem we need solving.

As MEP engineers, we need to point at things on our sheets and label them with a key.  That key references a keynote legend off to the side near the titleblock.  This legend tells you something about the object we have called out.  Some keynotes are object specific, area specific, or just in general.  Some are unique to one sheet, and others may be re-used across many sheets.  Some keynote labels need to be in the same physical location from sheet to sheet, plan to plan, or level to level.

Like Legends and Views, it would be nice to be able to setup a list of keynotes in Project Browser.  The Keynote would consist of a Legend with that legend's sub-notes (Keynotes that belong to a legend).  They can belong to more than one legend.  Drag the individual sub-notes onto a sheet, or a model view.  Some sub-notes will be model view specific, showing up on whatever sheet that view is dragged onto.  Others are sheet specific.  However, Legends are only added to Sheets.

General Notes, would be a subcategory of Keynotes.  They are similar, but do not have sub-keynotes that label objects.  General notes can be added to sheets like a legend.  Both Keynotes and General Notes as a feature helps us to be consistent across many sheets, and edit the notes in one location instead of on each sheet.

[lee.imbimbo86EM4]

The problem you're going to have is that you're looking for Legends to do something that Legends don't do, and you're looking for an easy fix to a noting issues that is more contingent on a proper use of filtering within your Plan Notes and the creation of multiple Plan Note Family Types. I'm fairly familiar with what my MEP Engineers do, so I suspect the following may serve you well if you use the Plan Note function and then modify it using Family Types and Filters to serve your function. Let's start with your Legend, you can create a graphical legend to represent the symbols you will use throughout your drawings, but you could also set this up as a Family that you import for placement on your drawings. Frankly I've found it better to create the graphical family and it makes it easier to import in other projects as the legends don't always cleanly copy from project to project. But the problem is that the Legend is purely graphical and won't catalog the different instances that you use the symbols in. Next you need to create your Plan Note and Symbol Families. I'd start by categorizing the different types of symbols you're planning on using. Are they purely symbolic? Or will they include a reference numbers that are going to be listed on the sheet. For the symbols that are just symbols you will probably be best served by just making them Annotation Components and Annotate the drawing with the symbols as need be. If you need them to be categorized, and/or they are general notes, and/or they are rarely changing you might take advantage of the more generic keynoting function in Revit, but to be honest I find that function cumbersome and rarely use it myself. For notes that need to be sheet specific or even document/project specific you will be best served by using the Plan Notes and then creating different family types to serve that function. My Standard Plan Note has triangles, squares, diamonds, circles, ellipses, hexagons and octagons all built into it as I use these different symbols regularly throughout my drawings. I just switch the type based on what I'm noting and the symbol I want to view. Secondly, you need to better master the use of filtering within your documentation to filter out the plan notes. My standard Plan Note has a pretty general Filter Function called NOTE CATEGORY that I use typically as follows "SHT#-Keynotes." This allows there to be multiple number 1-whatevers, and then allows you to filter them as appropriate for the sheet you want them on. For MEP I could see you going a step further and adding another additional Parameter for Filter but subspecialty, and then just leave it a text box so you could put anything into that category for filtering by, (i.e. Mechanical, Plumbing, Electrical, Fire, Telecommunications, etc.) But in general it looks like you just need to become more comfortable with parameters and filtering and then create the necessary family types to suit your document production.