Thursday, September 6, 2018

Revit Basics: Viewport Title Overview and How to Edit Them

A viewport title, or drawing title, is automatically added when a view is placed on a sheet. There are a few subtle things related to editing, or modifying them, that are helpful to know. And that is this "Revit Basics" post.

When you select the viewport, or drawing, on a sheet you can edit the length of the extension line which appears only in this situation (i.e. the viewport is selected). If you move the viewport now, the view title goes along for the ride.


If you select the view title directly, the grip is gone and you can move the view title apart from he viewport.

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The family used for the view title is found in the viewport's Type Properties as shown here. In this case the family used is "View Title" which can be found in the Project Browser under Families\Annotation.


If you right-click on "View Title" in the Project Browser and select Edit... you can see it in the family editor. When a Label is selected, you see a box and grips appear. The location of the grip on the right determines when the title text (in this example) will wrap to create a second line. It is helpful to have two or tree families of different lengths. For example, interior elevations benefit from shorter titles.


It is also possible to have a drawing, on a sheet, with no title. This is done for diagrams, such as standard mounting heights, or a legend. These drawings are not referenced from anywhere. See the image below for details on how to select no title for a specific view.  If your project does not already have one, just use the Duplicate button shown in the image to create one.


Final note... sometimes the View Title family cannot be modified. For example, you right-click on the View Title family in the Project Browser and the Edit... button is grayed out. This is due to the project having been upgraded, or possibly the template you started the project from. In this case, your only option is to locate a copy of the view title as an RFA file, edit it and load it into the project. After that, the family will be editable from within the project. If you cannot find one, you will have to recreate it. I have not found any other way to do it. As it cannot be saved out of the project either.

Although this is basic Revit information, I find that a lot of users do not typically have to mess with this. So when the need arises they are not sure what do do. Mainly because the view title family is a sub-option within the Type Properties of the viewport.

Hopefully this helps!

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