Wednesday 22 May 2013

Starting Views

A Starting View is where you can specify what Revit view opens by default when you open (and close) a project. 

"When a model is workshared and synchronized with the central model, the specified starting view is applied to all local models. This view is opened when the central or any local model is opened, and when any team member uses the Open dialog to detach from the central or create a local model." 

You can specify the view you want to use by going to the Manage Tab and the Manage Project panel.




A drop down list is available where you can select which view you want to specify, the default setting is "Last Viewed".



You can use your Starting View to your advantage.

What I have done is set the Starting View as a project Welcome/Message board.
This achieves a couple things, the Message Board view is a Legend view so it loads very quickly when opening the project.

There is contact information the Revit user can fill in with the tech's from the other consultants. I have information on how we have the project browser set up as well as examples of the line types loaded and a area where team members can place messages and communicate with other team members or place reminders.

Sc.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Scott! Great post, as usual.

    Another tip I want to share with you is using a drawing sheet as a starting view. Drawing sheets can have custom titleblocks and these will automatically read parameters from the "Project Information" dialog box that will also be "live" on the main project titleblocks, like project number, project address, consultants, etc.

    I even made ours more powerful yet!

    Because I manage firms with lots of users on lots of differet projects, I was looking for a way to communicate standards and what's new with all the teams in one shot. Nothing is better than a starting view, as it's the first thing they'll see when they open their projects everyday. However, I didn't want to open their projects, one by one, to update the information. So I created an empty Revit file named "NOTES" that's saved in a secure folder that I have access. On that file, I add any kind of information I want the teams to be aware of (can be in a drafting view, or any other view). This empty file is then linked into our template file. Because the starting view is a titleblock, it can have views loaded into it, right? I created a dummy view which shows the linked file NOTES (by linked view) and added that view to the starting view titleblock. The starting view titleblock now shows live info from the "Project Information" dialog box as well as the view from the NOTES linked file. The beauty of that is everytime I open the NOTES file and change the information there, it will automatically update on the starting view of all projects. Because the NOTES file is very clean it doesn't take time at all to load.

    I use it to communicate new families, standards and even BIM events like lunch & learn or a local BIM users group meeting.

    I hope this helps.
    Cheers,

    Andre Carvalho
    Toronto - ON

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    Replies
    1. Hi Andre

      I love your concept but having some issues implementing it from the description above

      How do I get the drafting view from the linked file into the template as a view I can pull into the starting view sheet on the template

      Regards
      Graham

      Delete
  2. That's GREAT...
    Thanks for the tip Andre..
    Sc

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