Sifting Through Unreferenced View Tags in Revit - Part 1

If there is anything that I am guilty of in Revit, it is the overuse of temporary, or what Revit calls unreferenced, views in my model. When I create model geometry, I need to get a quick look it at from a variety of vantage points. The problem is, I tend to forget to delete the unreferenced views after I create and use them. As the model progresses, I find that my model is littered with views, which can lead to confusion between model geometry and unreferenced views. The best practice, of course, is to delete all unreferenced views. Not only does it make searching through your model a lot easier, it will also keep your file size down and your model streamlined. It is probably safe to say that no one likes sifting through hundreds of unreferenced views the Project Browser until they find the view that they are looking for. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we can easily see the unreferenced views in our model and then make an informed decision on what to do with them? With the following instructions, we will show you how you can take all of the unreferenced views in your model and color them so that they graphically pop out, allowing you to quickly decide on whether you want to keep or delete the view.

Stay tuned for the second part of this blog post, which will demonstrate other ways to deal with temporary views in your Revit model.

Most often, unreferenced views are placed so that certain portions of the model can be viewed during design and production. The problem is we tend to leave them in our model and the tags start to blend in with adjacent geometry.

One of the ways in which you can sort for views that are not on sheets is to organize the project browser by the "Not On Sheets" option. Once toggled, the Revit Project Browser will only display views that are not on sheets. From there, you can identify the views that you want to keep and those that you want to discard.

If you are interested in changing the graphical display for the unreferenced view tags, then we can use Revit Filters for this task. The first step is to define a new filter by Defining Criteria. In this example, we are going to call this filter Unreferenced Views and select the "Define Criteria" radio button.

Once you have created the filter, you are ready to define the criteria. For this particular example, I went ahead and picked "Callouts" and "Sections". You can certainly add other categories if you wish. Once you select the categories, then you need to define the Filter Rules. In this example, I want to filter by a Sheet Number that does not contain anything.

Now that you have defined the filter criteria, you need to apply that filter to the views that you wish to alter the appearance of the tags in. In this example, I added the "Unreferenced Views filter" to my 01 – Entry Level plan and decided to override the color of the unreferenced view tags with a red color and a #4 line weight.

Here are the results of the filter and graphical override once applied to the view. If you intend on applying this filter and override to many views, it may be a good idea to include it in your view templates.

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Sash Kazeminejad, ACI, LEED AP
AEC Senior Application Specialist
Sash brings proficiency in Autodesk solutions including AutoCAD and Revit Architecture to Ideate customers. His industry experience includes project management, BIM Management, and design for Architectural firms in California, Montana and Oregon. He is LEED accredited professional and is on track to achieve California licensure with Oregon to follow. In his academic life, Sash was awarded a variety of college scholarships, earned a BA in Environmental Design, a MA in Architecture from Montana State University (MSU) and taught Building Information Modeling courses at MSU Gallatin College. As a Revit Architecture Autodesk Certified Instructor, Sash provides Revit Architecture training and support for AEC firms. @sashpdx

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