Using the Project Browser

- Your Revit project is a complete virtual building model that can be viewed, edited, and explored three-dimensionally, two-dimensionally, and in various reports and tabular lists. Each such representation of the project is referred to in Revit as a view. Views are listed and accessed from the project browser palette which functions much like a table of contents for your project. So similar to how you have a table of contents telling you where you would locate various aspects of a book you can use the project browser to help you locate the various views within your project.

So let's start with where the project browser is located which by default is over on the left hand side of the screen, directly below the properties palette. Now I have the default installation. Your project browser might be located somewhere else on the screen or it may not be displayed at all. If it's not displayed at all you can use the tool on the View tab, the User Interface tool that we looked at in the previous movie. At the very top of the project browser you'll have a branch called Views. In parentheses next to that branch it says the word All.

Now All is simply the name of what we call a browser organization. Now when I select Views here you'll notice that the Properties palette actually changes to reflect the selection just like it did in all the examples that we explored in the previous movie. So up here it says browser views and then there's the type called All. And there actually are some other types that we could choose from, but for this movie we're gonna stick with the default grouping of All which just simply means it's gonna display all of the views within your project. Some of those other types would actually filter out the list and show a limited subset of views and in some cases that might be appropriate.

Now beneath that you see different branches for the different kinds of views. Now these branches are named after your most common types of drawings that you would have in architectural production. So we have a Floor Plans branch. We have a Ceiling Plans branch. We have Elevations, we have Sections. Now when you scroll down a little bit further there's also a Legends branch, Schedules and Quantities, Sheets, Families, and even Revit links down toward the bottom. Now we're gonna look at some of these other branches in future movies throughout the course so we won't necessarily explore every single one of them here.

But they all function in a similar way. You can expand open the branch and then beneath that will be indented whatever views belong to that branch. So for example, let's say I wanted to look at the second-floor plan of this model. So I locate my Floor Plans branch and then expand it if it's not already expanded and then just simply double-click Level Two to open up that floor plan. Now I'm gonna use simple navigation methods in this movie, but we're gonna talk about navigation in a future movie, but you can use the wheel and just zoom in and out and you can drag with the wheel to pan if necessary.

So this is a floor plan of the project from the second floor. We also have third-floor plans and a roof plan and so on. There are ceiling plans, there are elevations. Now down here I've got two sections: Section One and Section Two. Now in many cases the views will actually have on-screen representations as well so you can see over here that there is a section cutting all the way through the building model. If I just kinda pause my mouse over that it should give me a little tool tip on screen telling me what view that is so you can see that that vertically cut section there is actually Section One which corresponds to this view right here on project browser.

If I do the same thing with this section that's Section Two and you can see it listed right here on the browser. So you can open these sections in one of two ways. You can either double-click directly on that item in the project browser the same way we opened the floor plan or here's that Section One again because we're now cutting through the building looking at that Section Two and it intersects the Section One. If the tool tip doesn't display on screen you can look down at the status bar at the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

So notice at the bottom left hand corner I see Views, Section, Section One. That's the same information that we would've seen in the tool tip and you can see that it points to that Section One that we had there in the browser. You can open the section directly from the on-screen control here. So there's two ways you could do that. You could either double-click this blue section head here and it kinda functions like a hyperlink in a web browser and you can see that will open that one up. Or you could actually highlight the section marker, right-click, and choose Go To View and that would take me right back to Section Two there.

So there's a couple different ways that you could navigate around the various views in your project, either by using the on-screen indicators or by double-clicking them over here in the project browser. Notice that the level heads are also in that blue color and if I highlight over that it says the same thing: Go to the floor plan that corresponds to this level. So if I wanted to return to my Level Two floor plan, I can double-click the level head to get back there as well. Alright, now let's direct our attention back over to the browser at a few other functions that we can do over there.

Now it should be fairly evident that these little minus signs here can be clicked and they become plus signs and that will either collapse or expand that grouping. So if you have a project with lots of views and you want to make it easier to scroll through that list, you could easily collapse down the views that you're not using at the moment to make it easier to scroll. You can also search anywhere in the browser to find views. Now in this project it's a very simple project. There's not that many views, but in projects back in your office you might have hundreds of views in some cases in the browser and so it can be difficult to locate them.

Just simply right-click anywhere in the browser and you can access a search feature. When you do that it will display a dialogue and you can begin typing in what you want to search for. So for example, if I just type in the word Section and then I click Next, notice that it will go to the Sections branch, then it will go to Section One, Section Two, and so on. So if you type in something very specific in the search field it'll go to maybe just a few views and if you type in a more broad keyword then it might actually have several views for you to filter through.

Let me go ahead and close that. Now in some cases there are other right-click options available as well so really the best thing you can do is just sort of right-click on the various parts of the browser and see what comes up. Notice when I right-click here on the Elevations branch I only get Search, but if I right-click on an actual view, an elevation in this case, I get lots of choices. I can open that view. I can duplicate it. I can delete it, rename it. So in some cases the right-click menu will offer you many, many more choices.

So the project browser contains all of the views that are available in your project and we can use it to open views, navigate views, rename them, duplicate them. We can do a variety of things. So make sure that your project browser is open and in a nice, convenient location on your screen so that you have easy access to all the views in your project.