Browser organisation for Views – Part 03

Now that you have already done with the nomenclature for the views the next thing would be to setup a Browser Organisation for views, without which all the naming would be in vain and look super messy.

1. Go to the project browser, right click on main View category and select ‘Browser Organisation’

2. From the Browser Organisation pop-up select ‘New’

3. Give it a name and click OK.

4. Leave the Filtering Tab untouched and go to ”Grouping and Sorting’ tab and setup the the various fields as shown below and click OK.

5. You will notice all your Views are organised as below, once you are used to Naming abbreviations you can quickly navigate to any view with precision.

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BIM – View naming standard

The major difference between CAD based workflow and BIM oriented workflow is the ability of softwares like Revit/ArchiCAD to create Parametric BIM Models. A BIM model is not just a 3D Model, it’s a model that contains almost all the information about the project which can generate Geometry Model,Discipline Specific Model, Energy Analysis Model and a lot more. To access and work on all these within the model, these softwares allow you to create various views like plan, sections, elevations etc.

Even within a small project there can be hundreds of views and imagine browsing through each of them just to find the one you want to work on? It is not really necessary to organise and name the views, Revit has it’s own organisation system that comes OTB. But I personally prefer creating a standard view nomenclature system and integrating it across the office for all the projects to keep things sorted and also helps you to find something precisely in a much more efficient way .

These view nomenclature standards vary from firm to firm so you might agree or disagree with what I am proposing. After trying many different nomenclature, I have finally created something that works almost perfectly for me and I will be sharing that here.

This nomenclature is Phase-View-Purpose-Level-Location-Dependency based where ‘-‘ will indicate transition in categories. Again, we won’t use spaces and thus spaces are replaced by ‘_’ wherever required. So, lets begin.

Following is the overall View nomenclature that I use to name my view. It follows ‘NN-AA-AA-NN_A-AAAA..AAA-A’ nomenclature.

N=Number A= Alphabate

1. Phase: NN

A project can have various phases. And at times you might need to segregate views and objects depending on the Phase. So, the first part of the name is Phase.

example – 01, 02, 03, …..
2. View: AA

By default, Revit provides you with few OTB views namely Floor Plan, Structural Plan, Reflected Ceiling Plan, Area Plan, Elevations, Sections, Callouts, 3D Views etc. And the next part of the name is for that. e.g. 01-SP (Phase 01, structural plan)

3. Intended View Use: AA

Lets say I have a floor plan, a floor plan can be an architectural plan, civil layout plan, brick work layout plan, detail plan, etc. Thus the intended use of the plan further defines it’s purpose. Hence, the next part of the code defines the intended use of the view. If needed you can add a new category here. e.g.  01-SP-DT (Phase 01, structural plan used as Detail Plan)

4. Level and Sub level: Format: NN_A

Lets say my project has 5 major levels, Ground Level(01), Plinth level(02), first floor(03), second floor(04) and Third floor(05). All these levels are visible in all the building sections and elevations, but then there are intermediate levels that are introduced in project after certain details and are not necessarily visible in all views i.e. Water Tank Base level, Mid landing level, Overhead tank base levels etc. So, I name these levels using the level below them i.e if OHT base level is between 02 and 03 level, I number it as 02_A and obviously this part of the name is not applicable to views like elevation, sections etc and thus can be left blank i.e. ’00_0′.

ex. 01-SP-DT-03_A (Phase 01, structural plan used as Detail Plan at level 03 and sub-level A)

05. Location: Format: AAAAA_AAAAA…AA..AAA

For Floor/Ceiling plans location is the floor name, for elevation it’s Front, back, rear etc. For sections it is AA, BB, CC, Entrance_Ramp, Beam_C12X14 and so on. Whereas for 3D view you name it according to it’s location.

e.g. 01-SP-DT-03_A-Staircase_2 (Phase 01, structural plan used as Detail Plan at level 03 and sub-level A, at Staircase_2 )

e.g. 01-SX-BS-00_0-AA (Phase 01, Section used as Building Section AA )

06. Dependency: A

Last category for naming is Dependency and Linkage which you are not going to need unless you are working with a lot of linked files. Some views are dependent on linked files, i.e Coordination layout is dependent on linked Services and Structural model and thus while naming such views we add ‘D’at the end or else we add ‘I’  but if there are not many linked files, you can ignore this category and do the naming without it.