View Reference - Customization

If you want to create your own view reference family you can start by editing the one that is provided with Revit. You can also start with a Generic Annotation family template and then assign it to the View Reference Category via Settings menu > Family Category and Parameters.


The View Reference family is a system family that can have different annotation families assigned as a type parameter. To use your own view reference annotation you can alter the existing one to use your family or duplicate the existing type and then assign your new family to the new type you just created.

To actually make the change you need to start the View Reference tool > click Properties > click Edit/New then either change the View Reference assigned or click Duplicate to create a second type to use.


Now you can use either the original or your new view reference.

Personally I think that a View Reference tag should show up in the Settings menu > > Annotations > Loaded Tags dialog just for the sake of consistency.

Sections and their Dependent Views

Sounds like a daytime talk show subject? When you create a section view and then create dependent views using the new feature found in Revit 2008 you end up with some additional annotation that you may not really want to see. Like this perhaps...

This also any view that would show the section annotation.

So we can try to use the "Hide at Scales Coarser" parameter to change this condition.
If you select the views in the project browser all at the same time and then attempt to change the parameter you'll probably find that the parent view's annotation disappears too.

If you select one at time and change the parameter you'll find you can change some of them but not all of the them or you might find that changing one of them also affects the parent. I've seen both situations.

Interestingly enough, if you select the unwanted annotation in a view however you'll find you are able to change the parameter without losing the parent annotation along with them. I don't know why it should matter and it may be a bug that you can change them via the annotation element instead of through view properties but nonetheless it is possible at this time.

Naturally you can choose to hide them using the Right Click option Hide in View > Elements but you'll have to do this in any view you don't want to see them in.

Dependant Views and Hide in View - Elements

The new feature (Revit 2008 products) Duplicate View > Dependant Views is intended to provide an exact copy of the parent view but allow you to crop the view differently making it easier to document in an overall view but show partial plans on sheets. This makes it simpler to manage annotation and avoid the copy/paste process of putting annotation in various duplicate views.


Take care when you use the new feature (Revit 2008 products) Hide in View however.

If you use this feature either in a parent view or a dependant view the hidden element is only hidden in the view you do it in. The other view(s) are not affected. In my opinion, this is not consistant with the implied behavior of parent/dependant views. I believe that when we hide an element in a parent view, the dependant views should also have that element hidden. The view specific behavior should be limited to non-dependant views. As it is now, remember we must un-hide/hide this element in each view.