Printing Tips for Revit

Here are some quick tips when printing from Revit.

1.       "Crtl. - P" is the keyboard shortcut to open the print dialog box.

2.       You can combine multiple sheets into a single file. this is very handy when print to PDF. Here you will have to specify the file location, I have found this works fine over a network (some other programs seem to crash when printing files over a network).

3.       If you choose to create separate files you will have to append the file name. Here you specify the name and location of the PDF file. If needed, click Browse and navigate to the target folder.

If you are generating multiple PDF files, the specified file name is used as a prefix. It is appended with the names of the selected views and sheets.

4.       Select what you want to print, either the current window which will include everything in that view or the visible portion of current window (self explanatory there I think). Or you can Select views/sheets by hitting the Select icon. here you can sort views/sheets or both. If you have previously selected views or sheets it will remember these settings. Be careful though, If you sort by sheet and have previously selected views these views will also print and visa-versa. You can save a view/sheet selection for future use.

A  good rule of thumb, if you haven't created a Sheet/view Set clear the selection by choosing the Check None icon and then select the sheets or views you want to print.

5.       You can print multiple sheets as well as Collate and/or print the set in reverse order.

6.       You can save printer set up for future use. So you can save and name set-up's for printing to Letter, 11X17 and one for full size sheets.

Remember what you see in your view is what will be printed, this includes hidden objects using the temporary hidden/isolated tool will also print. 

You can hide Reference planes, work planes, crop boundaries, unreferenced view tags and scope box's by checking the Options under Print Set-up  on the print dialog.

You may find that the lines on your prints don't come up very clear or that are made up of dots (pixilated). You can fix this by selecting Vector Processing or try Replace Halftone with thin lines.

 Vector processing times vary depending on the number of views processed and on view complexity. Raster processing times depend on the dimensions of the view and on the amount of graphics. Vector processing typically produces much smaller print files than raster processing.

Vector is where every line is a point and they are connected.
Raster is an image that is made up of pixels, so you would select Raster when printing images.