Choose a Template

I was asked recently what a company should look to include in their Revit project templates.  There are a lot of options and opinions out there on this topic.  You can go from the very complex to the very simply.  I sort of think it should be a combination of both, which is difficult to achieve, but has the most benefit.  The general idea is that you would like enough information in your template to do about 80% of what you do every day without having to go outside your template.  It’s the old 80/20 rule. Here are some of my thoughts on what you can include in a template:

• Set all the parameters on Wall types that you include.   Include all type marks, fire ratings etc.
• Don’t include too many wall types.  Get the 6 that your company uses the most.   Include a few generic walls as well to help with conceptual design.
• Remove families that you don’t typically use.  Think about your top few doors and windows and only include those in the project template.  
• Any families you include, preset all the parameters in those families give them all a keynote if your company uses keynotes.
• Setup a few default sheets that you always use, like the title sheet for a set.  Typically, it always looks the same from project to project so include it and have spaces for images, schedules etc.  The same goes for detail sheets.
• Have a few standard title blocks loaded.  Include one or two for presentations and have your standard construction document title block loaded. Include standard title blocks for addendums.  
• It’s a little bit of a no brainer, but only include your company standard symbols, if you just use the out of the box stuff it can make your life a little easier, but if you don’t, make sure you clean out all the stuff you don’t want people to use.
• Setup your standard schedules.  Create Room, Door, Window, and Hardware schedules with all the standard fields that you use.  This will allow you to have schedules on the fly as you work on the project.
• Build a few standard legends for wall and window/door types.  Per building this stuff can save the project time. 
• Create some drafting views for your standard details.  Have a window or door detail that you use from project to project with small modifications?  Create a standard drafting view for those details.  
• Setup phases and graphic overrides if you often work on renovation projects.  Don’t make a user do this later.
• Setup Life Safety and occupancy schedules and sheets with specific Visibility and Graphics and view filters. 

This is just a small list and I am sure there are many other things that can be in a template.  The idea is not to include everything, but to include the items that can be automated and that are used over and over again.  Make sure that you are not just including the basics, but going deeper to make sure your parameters are set in families and that your schedules look the way you want.  If you work on a large variety of different project types, consider multiple templates, different ones for each project type.

Building a standard template that is deeper than just which families to include goes a long way to standardizing the look and feel of projects in your office and saves you time on a project. A little bit of effort up front can save you mountains of work in the future.  You don’t want your template to do everything, but you do want it to get 80% of the way there.  I'd love to hear from you on interesting things you have done with your project templates to make working easier and more productive.

Comments

[davoud]

Dear Sir:
I am Mechanical Engineering Student.Ineed tosome Files:
(m Adding Lighting Fixtures.rvt
m Placing Switches.rvt
m Placing Receptacles.rvt
m Creating Usage Reports.rvt
m Placing Electrical Equipment.rvt
m Creating Power Circuitry.rvt
m Creating Lighting Circuitry and Wires.rvt
m Creating Switch Systems.rvt
m Creating Multi-Circuit Wiring.rvt
m Checking Your Design.rvt
m Defining Circuit Loads.rvt)
Could you send me these files.Ireally need to these files in some part
accept my apologize me If i had some mistakes in my letter.i am waiting to hear from you.
your faithfully.
davoud.m

[Harlan Brumm]

Hello,

I believe that you are looking for the Revit MEP tutorial files in the Datasets 2 file. You can download these files from this link:

http://revit.downloads.autodesk.com/download/RME2009/
Tutorials/ENU/Metric_Datasets/Revit_MEP_Metric_Datasets_2.exe

Run the exe file once it is downloaded to extract the files.