Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Project Font - A Family and Project Variable

Anyone who has implemented Revit knows that the process to change the standard font style, office and project(s) wide, is not as simple as just changing a single setting. Unfortunately every form of annotation has its own setting for font data. That makes it incredibly flexible but it also makes it incredibly annoying and such a mundane task to change.

In the past I've suggested (others have as well in one forum or another) that Revit needs a notion of a Project Font. A single setting in a project that defines the font that SHALL be used. Okay fine for the project but what about families. That's where the hard part is anyway, opening up all those families and changing one parameter...close...repeat.

I suggest that in addition to the list of fonts offered us, while we create annotation content, that Revit provide a "font" choice that tells the family to use the project's Project Font assignment instead of being an individual going its own way. This way nearly all annotation content would simply be assigned the project font and whatever project file it was used in would display accordingly. No extra work for us.

If we need to use a specific font, to spite the project font, we just pick one instead and that's what the annotation uses in the project environment, thumbing its nose at the project font setting, radical upstart that it is.

In projects text and dimensions would also offer this option so a single change to Project Font applies internally as well as to external content loaded for use.

Sure sounds good when I write and read it...let's hope I'm right and they listen to me taking advantage of my little bully pulpit.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that having a project font would be ideal. My firm has one font for presentation and a different one for CDs.It is fairly easy to switch fonts in Autocad. It should be just as easy in Revit.

Blue Jay said...

It's amazing I was just talking about this with my Revit A Level 1 class this morning. This falls into the'It would be nice if' category...If there was a central annotations dialog box which had ALL of the options and settings in one location. This could be applied to existing projects or templates.

Great blog, keep it up!

Anonymous said...

What I'd like to see is something more akin to text styles in AutoCAD. Define text styles in the project and families. When a family is loaded into a project with the same text style already defined, the family would take on the text style of the project. That way it would be easy to make changes to fonts globally while still being able to have several different text styles within a project.

Steve said...

As long as it is easier than now I'm game!