So, you’ve added some sections and slapped them on a sheet. Cool. Good old Revit gets the detail number and referring sheet populated automatically. It’s one of those magical things that computers should have been doing for years.
If you have a client that requires the good old 3 part bubble, then you find yourself with having to show the detail number, the sheet it’s on and the referring sheet in the bubble. Some callouts, being datum elements (section cuts, elevations, levels) can actually show up on more than one sheet. When you put a view on a sheet, how does Revit determine the “referencing sheet” and “referencing detail”?
Simply put, it looks through your sheets. The first sheet it finds that has the callout mark is the referencing sheet. And that’s what gets put into your three part bubble.
Now, let’s suppose… you have an A2.1 sheet that is going to have your floor plan on, but you haven’t put it there yet. You also have an A9.1 reflected ceiling plan sheet and you haveput a view on. I have a wall section that I am placing on an A5.1 sheet. So I drag the view on there, and since the callout shows the “referencing sheet” info, it fills that in with A9.1. Well, that’s not the view I wanted. I wanted A2.1. What is one to do?
Well, sometimes you just drag the view onto the sheet. Drag the plan onto A2.1 and magically the referencing sheet of the section on A5.1 updates. POOF! Your work is done and Revit read your mind!
Sadly, sometimes that doesn’t work, especially if the sheet that you drag the desired plan onto is after the already placed sheet. Then what do you do?
You jump through some hoops. But let’s try to understand what appearsto be Revit’s behaviors for the hoops.
- When you place a view on a sheet, Revit looks through your sheets to see what the referencing sheet should be. It also does this when you adjust the scope of your view.
- Revit will only call a view/sheet referencing if the callout is actively in a view, i.e. not hidden.
OK, nice simple (theoretical) rules. I say theoretical, because I have no possible way of knowing that the code works this way. This is all based on observation. The following are the hoops:
Find all the views that have a callout to the section (or elevation or whatever that you need to change the bubble)
Hide in view the callout in each view EXCEPT for the one that you want to be the referencing sheet
Activate the section (or elevation or whatever) and change the crop region ever so slightly. Just drag it a little teeny bit. You’ll see the bubble update as Revit finds the only view on which you have the callout not hidden
Go back to the views from Hoop 2 and unhide the callouts. Oddly, this will NOT update the section (or elevation or whatever)
This will keep the referencing sheet set, unless you change the crop region for that view, then you have to repeat. And if you need to show multiple referencing sheets, pull out some text as the monstrous last 10% rears its ugly head one more time.
Ideally, the referencing sheet parameter would be a drop-down, and you could select what view/sheet you want, and possibly even build tags that can generate from a list of multiple views/sheets. I’m certainly not the first to hope for such a feature, and I wager I won’t be the last.
RVIT 