7 Steps to Optimizing Revit Templates for Strategic Advantage

A Revit template is foundational to starting many projects, as it sets the tone for a project moving forward. Yet, it’s often a specialized tool that gets overlooked in the excitement of project go-ahead. Generic templates may get the job done, but they require constant adjustments and rework to match your company’s specific needs. It’s a repetitive setup process that eats away at your team’s valuable time and can introduce the risk of errors creeping into your models and documentation.

Tailoring your Revit templates to your company’s needs can provide significant benefits in terms of efficiency, consistency, and productivity.

Optimize Your Out-of-The-Box Templates

Here are seven ways to optimize your out-of-the box templates for long-term, consistent, efficient, and high-quality project delivery.

Define Modeling Standards

Define guidelines and conventions for how family types, wall assemblies (e.g., studs, insulation), floor/ceiling systems (e.g., structural pieces, finishes), MEP components, and other modeling elements are commonly used.

Establish Naming Conventions

While this seems obvious, it’s a step often overlooked. A consistent naming protocol for views, sheets, families, and other Revit objects ensures clarity and organization across all your projects making it easier for team members to quickly identify and locate specific elements, improving overall project coordination. When all Revit projects use the same naming conventions, it ensures a uniform look and feel to the documentation, ensuring brand identity and quality standards across a firm’s deliverables.

Customize Annotation Settings:

Standardized annotation styles, such as dimension formats, text styles, and leader styles, ensure a uniform look and feel across all project documentation. These settings might also include preconfigured graphic standards and title block configurations such as line weights, colors, and rendering preferences. These pre-configured settings streamline the modeling and documentation process, save time, and reduce the chance of errors and inconsistencies.

Organize Project Structure

A well-structured Revit model and documentation set can significantly improve the efficiency of a team’s workflows. A structured template ensures a consistent and efficient way for team members to navigate the model and documentation and makes it easier for team members to quickly orient themselves and find information, regardless of which project they are working on. A well-structured template also supports coordination between different disciplines working on the same Revit model for more effective data management and reporting.

Incorporate Client and Project Type Standards

Populate project information templates with company branding and logos, project information fields, drawing metadata and other sheet-level content. Consistent title block layouts and project data make it easier to adhere to client-specific or project type-specific standards and coordinate the documentation. Title block and project information templates can be tailored to meet industry standards, client requirements, or your firm’s own drafting conventions.

Document Standards and Conventions

Well documented standards and conventions serve as a reference guide for how a template should be used across all projects. It also makes it easier to efficiently onboard and enable users to leverage the template effectively, supporting consistent implementation, efficient training, and ongoing maintenance. It’s an investment that helps ensure the template remains a strategic asset that delivers long-term benefits to your organization.

Train and Enable Your Team

To truly capitalize on its benefits, you must ensure your entire team is properly trained and enabled to leverage its features. Provide hands-on training to ensure all Revit users understand how to properly leverage customized templates. Emphasize the importance of maintaining consistency by adhering to the established standards and conventions.

Getting Started

If you’re looking to take advantage of customized Revit templates, evaluate your existing Revit workflows, project requirements, and company standards. Identify areas where the generic Revit templates fall short in meeting your specific needs.

By evaluating your existing workflows, project needs, and company standards, you can pinpoint areas where the generic template falls short. A well-designed Revit template enables the entire team to work more efficiently and productively since they are all using the same pre-configured environment. It should seamlessly integrate with your established design and documentation processes and ultimately ensures a uniform look, feel, and quality of all deliverables.

A Revit template can become a strategic asset that boosts efficiency, ensures consistency, and elevates the quality of your work – delivering long-term value to your team, clients and your business.

Need help customizing Revit templates, contact us today.