Settings for "Align views"

It is well known that an element can contain a lot of goods. Depending on the element type it can contain goods such as cast-in materials, MEP keys, recesses, openings, holes, panel thickening etc.

For all these goods, one wants to have them dimensioned when generating Shop drawings, and at the same time to have the dimension and the element aligned and centered in the viewport so that there is no large unused space left. 

In IMPACT for Revit, it is now possible to specify the alignment in the viewport in Shop drawings. The setting is called "View Alignment" and can be found for each element drawing view in the Shop drawing settings in the "Views" section. 

The option "View Alignment" works in close relation with the "Scale to Fit" option. This is because having a lot of dimensions coming from the goods and the element itself, the "Scale to fit" is resizing the element and the dimensions in order to fit them in the viewport. 

Figure 1 - View Alignment option in Shop drawing settings 

1. First step is to define the viewports in the Shop drawing template. In order to do that, go to the Shop drawing settings, select the element view and give a name to the viewport. Press on "Create or Update Viewport " and draw the viewports. 

Figure 2 - Creating viewports in Shop drawing template 

2. Next step is to define the alignment of the drawing views. The "Elevation Front" is considered as the main view on the drawing sheet. For the main view, one needs to activate both the "Vertical" and "Horizontal" alignment options. As mentioned before, the "Scale to fit" option needs to be activated in order to resize the element and the dimensions in the viewport. 

Figure 3 - The main view with both options activated for the "View Alignment" setting

3. Next step is to activate the "View Alignment" and "Scale to fit" settings for the other drawing views. In this example, the "Horizontal" option is activated for Detail Section B and "Vertical" for "Elevation Top". See Figure 5 for a legend of the settings. 

Figure 4 - View Scale and Alignment for Detail Section B 

Figure 5 - The view above or below the main view should have the vertical alignment activated. Views on the left or right side of the main view should have the horizontal alignment activated.  

3. Once the settings are made, one can generate the Shop drawing. 

Figure 6 - Shop drawing generated with "View Alignment" settings