Creating a new project from a template

- [Voiceover] This movie we're going to talk about creating new projects and specifically creating a new project from a template file. Now a template file is just a starting file that contains all of the typical configurations and settings that you like to have when you begin a new project. It's a way of providing consistency from one project to the next. Most offices will actually have their own standard template, but the software does ship with some basic templates to get you started. So we can see those templates in a couple different places. If you have nothing open in Revit, then you're most likely going to see the recent files screen which is what I have displayed here on my current screen.

In the projects area here, you'll see a list of templates. Now, I've got the out-of-the-box installation here, as it comes from AutoDesk. So I'm getting an architectural template, a construction, structural, and a mechanical. Your list might vary depending on any of the settings that you've configured. If we look at the Application menu under Options, on the File Locations tab, the list here is what populates the list here. So you can actually add and remove templates from the list with these buttons and you can shuffle the order around as well.

So if you've got an office standard template that you want to indicate or point to, you can add it here. If you want to put it to the top of the list, you can do that. Again, your list might vary. To access one of these templates, you just simply click the link there and it will open that template and create a new file from it. Now, notice that when it does, the name of the project is just simply called Project1. So when you open a template, what you're really doing is a Save As. So it's actually opening that template and creating a blank project based on that template.

Now, the other place you can get to the templates is to go the Application menu, highlight New, and then slide over here to Project. When you do that, the new project dialogue will display and this list here will display the same list of templates that we just saw. If the template you want is not on this list or on the previous one on the recent files screen, then you can use the Browse button here to locate the template anywhere on your system. So you can see here that there are several more templates available here and we'll look at some of those in a moment.

So let's start with this basic architectural template that I'm looking at right now on screen. This is probably the simplest template that's provided with the software. If you look over at the project browser, there's a couple views. There's a few floor plans, a few ceiling plans, and a few elevations. There really isn't much else in here. Under schedules, there are no schedules. Under sheets, there are no sheets. There are some families loaded, but it's a very simple, basic template. So the concept here is just simply to get you into the software so that you can start drawing, but it doesn't really do a whole lot of configuration.

Let me contrast this to a different template so that we can see the difference. So I'm going to go to the Application menu here and close this file. I'm not going to save it and then I'll move to the next template down, the construction template and open that one instead. Here in the construction template, at first glance it looks similar. Ok, you're still seeing these elevation symbols on screen, but if you look over at the project browser, now you can see that we have different views listed here in each category. So under Floor Plans, there's a few more floor plans that we had before.

There's quite a few 3D views that are available. Down under schedules, we have lots of schedules and we even have a couple sheets. So in order to understand some of what's already in here, you really need to have some geometry on screen. So what I'm going to do is on the Architecture tab, click the Wall command. Now don't worry too much about the specifics of drawing walls yet. We're going to cover that in a future movie, but what I'd like to do is just simply click two points on screen to create a wall of any length and then I'll click this Modify tool here to cancel it.

Then I'll zoom in with my wheel. Just roll my wheel to zoom in a little bit and locate the Door command next. Then click anywhere on the wall, one, two, and three times. Now what will happen is that these doors will come in and as you can see, they'll cut holes in that wall. Now with just adding those three basic doors, what I want to do now is under Schedules, right here, I'm going to scroll down and you can see that there's a qa-Door Quantities door schedule.

So I'm going to double click to open that up. What this schedule does is it lists out the quantity of each kind of door that you currently have in your model. So as you can see, there's a single line item here with a count of three. That count of three represents those three doors that we just saw. Now, if I scroll back up to the top, reopen the Level 1 floor plan by double clicking it, and then select any one of these doors, doesn't matter which one, and change it to a different size. I can do that right here on the properties palette.

I'll just choose a 34 x 80. That door will get slightly smaller, but the impact it will have on the door quantities schedule is that we'll now have two line items. One that shows two doors, the original two that we didn't change, and one that shows a single door, the one that we just changed. So notice the total is still three, but it's separated out into two separate line items. So if I was a contractor using this template, you can see that all of these titles of these schedules have to do with things like quantities or quality control or quality checking.

This is a series of views that are used to assess the collection of objects that I have in my model and give me accurate counts of everything that I need. So that could be a very useful template. However, let's close it and not save it and let's try a different template just to see some variation here. So the template I want is not actually included on this list right here. So if I click this little New link here, that's the same as opening the Application menu, highlighting New and sliding over here to Project.

Ok, we saw that a moment ago. This is just a shortcut to that and it displays the new project dialogue. Again, here's the list of templates, but the template that I want is not on the list, so I'll click Browse. Now, in the dialogue that appears, I'm in the US Imperial folder and these are the templates that installed by default. The one that I want to look at next here is called the Commercial Default. It's just a slightly different template and this is actually the template that we're going to use in future movies to create our simple building.

I'll open that up, then I'll click Ok. It again will essentially do a Save As and create a new project. Now at this point, this is the third project that I've created so it's now called Project3, but it's based on that commercial template. Now, if I put my mouse near one of these little markers here and roll to zoom in, you'll notice that this says it's two on A5. Then I'll zoom out and this one over here is one on A5. Then I'll zoom out and this one is one on A4.

Then finally this one is two on A4. Now you can roll the wheel to zoom in and out and you can hold the wheel in and drag to pan. That's all I'm doing here to navigate to those. What that's telling me is that those elevation markers are actually indicating what sheet those elevations occur on. Now, in order to understand what we're seeing there, let's go to that Wall command again and this time instead of a straight line, I'll draw a box. So I'm going to switch to a rectangle and just sort of draw a box here.

Then just to help us orient ourselves so we know which side we're looking at, I'll add a door in one side of the box. So I've got this really simple box and I've got a door placed in there. Now what I want to do is take a look at some of those elevations. Well let's look at the project browser again. Notice again, we've got a different list of floor plans from this template. Ceiling plans are there, elevations are there, but when we scroll down now, it's a much simpler list of schedules than we saw in the construction template, but we do still have a basic door schedule, room schedule and window schedule.

The door schedule is showing us that single door element right there. I'm going to close that view. However, this particular template, what it's got that's somewhat unique is it's got a whole list of predefined sheets already. You'll notice here that sheet A4 and A5 are listed here just like we saw on these symbols. If we expand, you'll notice that the four elevations which are listed here are already placed on these sheets. So if I open up sheet A4, you'll see the box on its long dimension, and if I open up sheet A5, you'll see the box on its short dimension.

So the real benefit of starting a project with a template is that you can hit the ground running as soon as you create the new project. You just simply start drawing your model and it will already potentially be appearing on sheets, appearing in schedules, quantities will already be calculated simply by working from that predefined structure that's already built into the template. Now most firms will have a custom template. So you may not be using one of the ones that I'm showing you here that come with the software. You might be using one that's been customized by your firm, but the concept will still remain the same.