This tutorial demonstrates how to align views on sheets using Dynamo. When setting up sheets in Revit, it is possible to enable the Guide Grid to assist in placing views. This tool can be activated by first creating the guide grid by going View > Sheet Composition > Guide Grid. Once created, the guide grid needs to be enabled for each sheet via the Properties pallet. By using snaps, viewports can then be moved so that they align from sheet to sheet. This process ensures that all sheets have a consistent graphic layout to them for better legibility. However, this process is time-consuming and may need to be repeated multiple times throughout a project, for example, if the extents of the view change.
Aligning views on sheets with Dynamo
To solve this problem, we’ve developed the ‘Align Views on Sheet‘ Dynamo graph. The graph, which can be run within Dynamo Player, assumes that views have already been placed on the sheet. The graph requires only two user inputs – the template sheet, and the sheets to be modified. Once the template sheet is selected from the pulldown list, select the sheets to be modified in the Project Browser. These sheets should have the same number of viewports as the template sheet.
Computational logic
The graph collects the location of the associated viewports and title blocks based on the sheets to be modified input. A translation vector is then applied to the viewport(s) so that the viewports are centre aligned relative to the title block. This setting means that if the title block family has been moved from its initial insertion point, the viewports will still align. Viewports that have been modified are returned separately.
If the number of viewports does not match the template sheet, these sheets will be excluded and returned separately. Similarly, if the user forgets to selected sheets in the Project Browser, the graph will be aborted, and an error returned. For best results, all views should have the same extents by assigning the same bounding box to the crop regions. If however, the extents of the viewports do not match, a warning is returned with the offending viewport. This warning might arise due to scope boxes not being applied to define the crop extents or annotations outside of the crop region. If desired, the user can then modify the views and re-run the graph.
Conclusion
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