Sheets, title blocks, and export

Project Information drives everything

Manage → Project Information. Project name, number, client, address, issue date, status, and any project parameters you've added to the Project Information category.

Title blocks read these as labels, so filling this in once populates every sheet. The general rule: anything appearing on every sheet comes from here, never from a text box.

Sheets

View → Sheet, pick a title block.

Sheet Number and Sheet Name are sheet properties. Number to a standard — A-101, A-102, A-201 — because the numbers drive index sort order and exported filenames.
Sheets are the only thing that prints. A view not on a sheet does not exist as far as the deliverable is concerned.
Views in the Project Browser show their sheet number beside them once placed. Views with nothing beside them are unplaced — an easy visual audit, or use a View List filtered to blank Sheet Number.

Sheet List → New can create placeholder sheets — a row in the drawing index with a number and name but no actual sheet. Used to publish an index of the intended set before the sheets exist. Converting a placeholder to a real sheet later keeps the number.

Title blocks

A title block is a loadable family (.rfa) containing:

The border and graphics
Labels bound to parameters (sheet number, sheet name, project name, date)
Optionally, a revision schedule — a special schedule embedded in the title block family that reads the sheet's revisions

To customize: edit the family, and change what each label is bound to. Adding a firm logo means placing an image in the family, not on each sheet.

Sheet size is baked into the title block family. A project with A1 and A3 sheets has two title block families.

Placing views

Drag from the Project Browser onto the sheet.

A view can be on exactly one sheet. Need it twice? Duplicate the view. The single exception is a Legend, which can be placed on many sheets — that's why legends exist.
The placed instance is a viewport, with its own type controlling whether the view title shows, the title line length, and the text style. Two or three viewport types per project, from the template.
Scale is a view property, not a sheet property. Set it in the view.
Rotate on Sheet is a viewport property for landscape/portrait plans.

Guide grids

View → Guide Grid creates a snapping grid that can be shared across sheets (assign the same guide grid in each sheet's properties).

Snap each view's crop boundary to the same guide grid intersection and your plans land in identical positions on every sheet. A stack of printed drawings then doesn't jump around as you flip pages. It's a small thing that instantly reads as professional.

The sheet list

View → Schedules → Sheet List. Fields: Sheet Number, Sheet Name, and whatever else — current revision, date, drawn by.

Place it on the cover sheet. Now the drawing index is a live query: add a sheet, the index updates. Sort by Sheet Number.

Add a Sheet Issue Date or custom project parameter to the Sheets category if you need per-sheet metadata in the index.

Revisions

View → Revisions (Sheet Issues/Revisions):

Sequence — the order. Per-project or per-sheet numbering.
Numbering — Numeric, Alphanumeric, or None.
Date, Description, Issued to / Issued by.
Issued checkbox — locks the revision so clouds and tags can't be edited.

Then in a view: Annotate → Revision Cloud, draw, and set the cloud's Revision property. Tag it with a revision tag.

The title block revision schedule populates automatically on every sheet containing a cloud from that revision. That automatic behaviour is the whole reason to use the real tool instead of detail lines.

PDF export

Revit has native PDF export (File → Export → PDF) as well as printing to a PDF driver. Native is better — it handles multi-sheet sets and filename patterns properly.

Settings that matter:

Select sheets, not views. Use the Sheets tab, and the Show sheets in list filter plus a saved Set (View/Sheet Set) so you export the same list every time.
Paper size and orientation per sheet. Mismatched size is why drawings come out tiny with a huge margin. Use Fit to page only deliberately — it changes scale, so a scale bar on the drawing becomes wrong.
Combine into one file vs. one per sheet, and the filename pattern — configure once, save the setup.
Hide crop boundaries, hide scope boxes, hide unreferenced view tags, hide ref/work planes. Without these, your set has boxes and empty bubbles all over it. This is the single most common "why does the PDF look wrong" cause.
Vector vs. raster processing. Vector is sharp and smaller. Raster is required when a view has transparency, shadows, or sketchy lines — Revit warns you and falls back. A single raster view in a set is fine; a whole raster set is a large, blurry file.
Colours: Colour / Grayscale / Black and White. Black and White flattens everything, including your carefully coloured filters.

Always open the exported PDF and look at every page. Every experienced person does this.

DWG export

File → Export → CAD Formats → DWG.

The important part is the export setup (the ... button), specifically Layers: which AutoCAD layer each Revit category and subcategory exports to, with colour and linetype.

Firms have a standard mapping, usually as an exported .txt layer mapping file loaded into the setup.
Standards presets exist (AIA, BS1192, ISO 13567, CP83).
Exporting without configuring this produces DWGs nobody downstream can use — every entity on a layer named after a Revit category.

Other tabs worth setting: Lines (linetype scaling), Text & Fonts, Solids (ACIS solids vs. polymesh for 3D views), and Units & Coordinates (shared coordinates vs. internal origin — match what your consultants expect).

IFC export

File → Export → IFC.

Choose the schema your recipient wants: IFC 2x3 Coordination View 2.0 is still the most widely supported; IFC4 variants where the recipient asks for them.
Class mapping — which IFC entity each Revit category becomes. A Revit "Generic Model" maps to IfcBuildingElementProxy, which is a downstream headache; this is another reason to model in correct categories.
Property sets — which parameters travel. You can export Revit property sets, IFC common property sets, and a user-defined set from a text file.
Export quality depends entirely on this configuration.

Test your IFC export in the first weeks of a project, in whatever tool the recipient uses. Not the week of the deadline — the failure mode is discovering that half your data didn't travel and needing to re-map and re-issue.

NWC export

For Navisworks coordination. Requires the Navisworks exporter add-in (free from Autodesk, installed per Revit version).

Export the 3D view you want coordinated, usually a dedicated NAV - Coordination view with the right categories on and everything else off.
Options control whether to convert element properties, element ids, and room geometry.
Consistent view name and file name per discipline is what makes an automated federated model refresh work.

Images and other exports

File → Export → Image for a single view raster at a chosen DPI. For renderings and presentation graphics.
File → Export → Reports → Schedule for delimited schedule text.
File → Export → Reports → Room/Area Report for area calculation documentation.
ODBC export for a full relational dump into a database. Old, clunky, occasionally exactly right.
File → Export → gbXML for energy analysis. Requires rooms/spaces and volumes computed.