Having a good Revit template is a good start to build your BIM environment. If you want to create the template for yourself or your company, there should be some criteria that should be ticked off.
Naming Convention
It is critical to create the naming convention for all contents before starting to work on a template. A well-organised strategy will be required. It will represent the brand of the company and every content you create will be easy to manage. ISO 19650 illustrates the naming convention, so it will be good to check it out if you don't have any to start with.
Graphic Style
Graphic Style including documentation will represent the company's identity or brand. Therefore, it is extremely important to implement your graphic standard here. It will differ your company from others and make it outstanding from others.
However, be mindful of the technical standard related to your region. In Australia, we need to comply with AS1100 for the technical drawing.
Hatches and Patterns
By default, there are not many patterns available in Revit, so they need to be developed before starting a project. Otherwise, you will end up using Autocad to bring all the hatches that you need.
Coding System
There are several ways to code the documentation such as using noteblock, keynote, or tagging elements. To maintain consistency in your drawing throughout the projects, the coding systems must be decided to avoid additional works involved here. For the medium-large scale projects, I would recommend developing the coding system in Keynote, so that it can be used for other projects. If you don’t know where to start from, have a look at the architecture abbreviation.
View Types/Templates
View types and templates setup is essential for your documentation. As drawing categories are different in many companies, it needs to be specified to meet your standard. Moreover, the View template will represent your graphic style and drawings so make sure it is carefully considered.
Filters
All elements which affect the drawings should have a related filter to have better control over graphics. For instance, Fire-rated walls should be set up as all architects need to show it on the drawing. It is a great way to manage the elements and control the visibility.
Project/Shared Parameter
BIM is about information modelling and management. In Revit, all information comes from parameters and there will be parameters that don’t exist or have limitations in Revit. To overcome this, project and shared parameters should be developed in relation to your documentation requirement.
Don’t let your team use text to indicate information in Revit.
Title Blocks
It is an optional item that you may consider. You may look at the technical requirement in your country. If you are not a start-up, you should have it already as an Autocad file. There is not much constraint to design the title block, so once you set up all the essential stuff, then you can now design your own.
Workset
Workset is like the layer system in Autocad and is mainly to control the visibility of the elements globally. As it will give you great control over every element in the project, it must be set up if the project requires collaboration with other companies. If it is a house or small-scale project, you don't need to consider this as it required work-sharing enabled.
Shortcut
It is not as important as other items above, but using the shortcut will increase your team’s productivity. Moreover, most BIM managers or BIM gurus have their own shortcuts. That’s why they finish the task so fast. We often get questions from the team members and as there is no shortcut set up, it forces them to use icons and spend time looking for the function.
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