The Elevation Views Creator tool in the Creators group of the Project Setup tool-set can help create multiple elevation views at once with various options such as discipline, type, template, phase, scale, existing elevation views, and most importantly flexible naming convention.
After the button is clicked, the main dialog will appear as follows.
The Discipline/Type/Template group specifies the view discipline, view type, and view template. The view discipline, type and template can also have aliases so as to be used by new view names. When a view template is chosen, the view discipline will be defaulted to the template discipline automatically.
The Existing Views group lists out all existing elevation views for checking to create new views from. They also have aliases.
The Phases group indicates what phases are going to have plan views created. They also have aliases so as to be used by new view names. If the Use the Original is checked, all phases will be disabled and the phase in the existing/original elevation view will be used for the new view.
The Scales group indicate what scales are going to have plan views created. If a view template is chosen, the group will be disabled since views cannot have both template and scale flexible. If the Use the Original is checked, all scales will be disabled and the scale in the existing/original elevation view will be used for the new view.
The Other Settings can exercise some further controls over the coming plan views.
- Default TitleOnSheet as View Name: default the title on sheet of each view as its view name.
- UpperCase the Default TitleOnSheet: make the title on sheet of each view all upper case.
- Skip Templates: skip the template setting when creating views.
- Use Name If Alias Empty: in the naming convention, if the alias of the item such as level and phase is empty, its name will be used.
- Replace Hyphens with Underscores: in the naming convention, if there are hyphens they will be replaces with underscores.
- Trim Spaces Close to Hyphens: in the naming convention, if there are spaces around hyphens they will be trimmed.
- Align Hyphens/Underscores in Names: the hyphens or underscores will be aligned with each other in different view names so that they look well formatted.
Naming Convention
It specifies the naming convention for the coming plan views. Both names and alias can be used. Both prefix and suffix can be given if necessary. A lot of good options are provided and better each one can be edited further directly in the edit box. Two simple rules need to be followed, one of which is all provided names such as ScaleValue and TypeAlias should not be changed, and the other is they should be enclosed by braces. All other can be customized at will such as component count, component order, spaces, symbols, and any other extra info. And better, the edition will be saved not only for this time to use but also for future. The names can be of any possible cases such as Sentence, Title, Upper, Lower, and As Is.
Buttons
- The (Re)Populate Rows button will populate the grid with the data input and options as specified.
- The Add New Rows button will add some new rows to the grid based on the current input.
- The Examine All Rows button will examine all rows for errors such as name duplicates and improper scales.
- The Remove All Rows button will remove all rows from the data grid.
Views Data Grid
In the data grid, default properties such as name, template/discipline/scale/display mode/detail level/parts visibility, based on view, title on sheet, and phase for each view can be changed if necessary. When a template is chosen, the discipline, scale, display mode, detail level and parts visibility will be defaulted to the template values automatically.
If the OK button (with the green check mark) in the dialog is pressed, the elevation view candidates will be created accordingly into the current model.
If the data input and options are the same as in the sample UI, the resultant elevation views and their properties may look as the following.
If the Cancel button (with a red cross symbol) is pressed, the dialog will be dismissed without doing anything to the Revit model.