Introducing Project Templates

Like many other applications, Revit allows you to start with a basic template and then evolve your own custom templates to suit specific needs. As your knowledge of the software progresses, you'll begin to create new and reusable content such as wall types, roof types, ceilings, stairs, tags, and other families in order to meet your design and documentation needs. This is also the case with regard to the graphical language that you or your firm has established and needs to implement within Revit. How you graphically present elements such as text, dimensions, annotations, keynotes, and hatch patterns defines your graphic style of design documentation. In reality, the architectural profession tends to develop stylized graphics to convey design intent, and Revit respects this by enabling the customization of almost all aspects of the project template.

With Revit, project templates are configured by one or more of the following tasks:

• Defining all project settings to meet graphic requirements
• Preloading model and annotation families
• Defining standard system families

We'll explain these tasks in greater detail throughout this chapter. For now, know that you can save the completed settings as a new project template (with the file extension .rte) and use these templates whenever you start a new project. You can create templates either by using a completely blank project, by saving an existing project as a template, or by using one of the default templates provided with the Revit installation. To start from scratch, click the Application menu and choose New Project. In the New Project dialog box, shown in Figure 4.1, choose None for the Template File option, and choose Project Template for the Create New option. Once you click OK, you'll be asked to choose a default unit of measurement—Imperial or Metric. Note that this dialog box does not appear when you press Ctrl+N or click New in the Recent Files window.

FIGURE 4.1 Starting a new project template from scratch

Starting a new project template without a base template requires you to develop all common content such as levels, grids, sections, callouts, tags, and model elements. If you have completely custom graphics and system families, this approach would be appropriate; however, if much of your graphic style is similar to the defaults, we suggest you start with one of Revit's default templates and edit it as necessary. You can find these templates by clicking Browse in the Template File area of the New Project dialog box. The template files are by default installed in the root folder of the templates directory: C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataAutodeskRAC 2012Imperial Templates.