Sheets Tools

In this guide

• Align Viewports
• Auto Views on Sheets
• Duplicate Sheets
• Dependent Views
• Section Box & Quick Section Box
• Renumber Viewports
• Viewport Move
• View Filter Builder
• Workset Manager
• Zoom Selection & Visibility Detective

Building a whole set from scratch? That's Sheet Generator. Printing it is AECOprint.

Align Viewports

Makes the plan on every sheet sit in exactly the same place as the plan on a master sheet — the thing that separates a drawing set that flicks cleanly from one that jumps around. It lines up the model, not the viewport frame, so a crop that is a little bigger on one sheet, or annotation that pushes a frame out, doesn't throw it off. Positions are measured from each sheet's title block, and title blocks are never moved.

How to run it

1. In the Project Browser, select the master sheet and every sheet you want aligned to it — at least two sheets.
2. Click Align Viewports.
3. Choose which of the selected sheets is the master.
4. Tick the options you want and click Align Viewports.

Options

What makes a master "aligned-ready"

• It must have at least one plan viewport — the tool aligns plans, not sections or 3D views.
• One plan at each scale. With Allow overlap on, several plans at one scale are fine as long as they already line up with each other — otherwise there is no single answer to "aligned to what".

What happens on each sheet

• Each plan is matched to the master's plan at the same scale. A plan at a scale the master doesn't have, or one rotated differently from the master's, is left where it is and listed under Notes.
• The view title's position and line length are matched to the master's too.
• Pinned viewports are unpinned for the move and pinned again afterwards.
• A sheet that can't be aligned is put back exactly as it was and listed under Not aligned with the reason; the other sheets still go. The whole run is one undo.

Auto Views on Sheets

Takes the views you have selected and puts one view on each new sheet, numbering as it goes. The quick way to get a pile of details or elevations onto paper.

How to run it

1. Select the views in the Project Browser. They go onto sheets in name order (Detail 2 before Detail 10). Anything that can't be placed is skipped — the dialog says how many.
2. Click Auto Views on Sheets.
3. Set the options below and click Create Sheets (Place Views when placing on existing sheets).
4. Making new sheets in a project with more than one title block? Pick the one every new sheet gets.

New sheets are named after the view they hold. A number already in the model is stepped over — the run takes the next one and the summary says … is already a sheet - stepped over it. Schedules are placed at the top left of the title block; everything else is centred unless you choose a sheet to copy the position from. A view bigger than the title block at its scale is still placed, and flagged so you can check the scale or crop. The whole run is one undo.

Options

What is skipped

Each one is listed under Not placed in the summary, with the reason: view templates, sheets, a title block's own schedules, views already on a sheet, and views Revit won't put on a sheet (an empty view, for one). A view that can't be placed never leaves an empty sheet behind. Legends and schedules can go on as many sheets as you like, so they are placed even when they are already on one.

Duplicate Sheets

Copies whole sheets — title block, viewports and the sheet-level annotation you choose — and renames the copies by rule rather than one at a time.

How to run it

1. Select the sheets in the Project Browser — or just have the sheet open, and it uses that.
2. Click Duplicate Sheets. Every sheet starts ticked; the filter narrows the list without unticking anything.
3. Choose the mode, the renaming rules and what to copy, then click Duplicate.

View duplicate mode

A view that can't be copied the way you chose is copied the nearest way it can, and the summary says so.

Renaming rules

Three independent sets of Find · Replace · Prefix · Suffix — one for view names, one for the sheet number, one for the sheet name. They start pre-filled with sensible defaults (views get - Copy, numbers get .COPY) so a duplicate never collides with its source. Clear or overtype them to suit. Find ignores upper and lower case. If a number is already taken (duplicating the same sheet twice), the copy takes the next free one — A101.COPY-2 — and the summary says so. A view name that is taken gets (2), (3) on the end. Characters Revit doesn't allow in names are removed. A number rule that leaves nothing at all means that sheet isn't duplicated.

What to copy

Tick what travels to the new sheets: Views · Legends · Schedules · Text notes · Lines · Generic annotations · Dimensions · Images · Revision clouds + tags · DWG imports · Additional revisions · Sheet parameters (Drawn By, Checked By, grouping and the rest, plus the title block's own settings). Views, legends, text notes and sheet parameters are ticked to start; revision clouds only travel when you tick them. Viewports keep their type, rotation, title position and detail number.

Each sheet is copied on its own: one that fails is removed again and listed under Not duplicated, and the rest still go. Anything Revit drops along the way (an annotation it won't copy, a name it won't take) is listed under that sheet in the summary. The whole run is one undo.

Dependent Views

Revit duplicates as dependent one view at a time, names the result "Parent - Dependent 1", and leaves you to set the scope box yourself. A plan split over eight scope boxes is eight duplications, eight renames and eight trips to the properties palette. This does the lot in one go.

Making them

1. Pick the view (or views) in the Project Browser — or just have the view open, and it uses that.
2. Sheets & Views ▸ Tools ▸ Dependent Views.
3. Choose a set number (1 to 100 per view, numbering from any start between 0 and 9999), or one per scope box.
4. Check the preview, then Create.

One per scope box

Tick the scope boxes you want and you get one dependent each, with that scope box already applied and the crop switched on — which is the whole job for a split plan. This mode starts with the pattern {parent} - {scopebox}, since the box name is what tells the views apart; each mode keeps its own pattern, so switching back and forth doesn't lose what you typed. Here {n} counts the ticked boxes 1, 2, 3 in list order. If Revit won't apply a scope box to a view, that dependent isn't made — rather than left uncropped — and the summary says which.

View references

The tool makes the dependents; it doesn't put view references on the seams between them. Revit doesn't let an add-in do that properly: its API can't create a view reference, and a copy of an existing one can't be pointed at a different view — every copy keeps pointing wherever the original did. Rather than leave references on your plans that send the reader to the wrong drawing, the option was taken out.

Place them by hand with View ▸ View Reference, choosing the Target View in the Options Bar. Place them in the parent view: dependents share the parent's annotation, so a reference shows in every dependent whose crop it falls inside. Where scope boxes overlap, keep each reference out of the overlap — otherwise it also shows on the neighbouring tile, pointing at that tile itself.

Naming

Names come from a pattern, so they land right rather than being renamed afterwards:

Tick Leave Revit's default names to skip naming entirely. The preview lists every view before it is made, and anything whose name is already taken by a view of the same kind (ignoring case) is marked name in use — Create stays disabled until that is sorted, because Revit would reject the rename and leave you with "Dependent 1" to clean up. The same goes for a misspelt token (unknown token), a character Revit doesn't allow in a view name, or a pattern that leaves no name at all.

What can't have dependents

Plans, ceiling plans, sections, elevations and area plans can have dependents. 3D views, drafting views, schedules, legends and view templates cannot, and a dependent cannot itself have dependents — Revit allows one level only. Anything selected that doesn't qualify is skipped and counted at the top of the dialog, rather than quietly ignored.

Section Box & Quick Section Box

Two buttons on the Sheets & Views ▸ Tools pulldown that put a 3D view's section box around whatever you are looking at, instead of dragging six arrows until it's roughly right. Follow Selection and Toggle Section Box sit beside them.

Quick Section Box

Select elements, click it, done — the box lands around them in the 3D view you're in, using the padding Section Box was last run with (in any Revit session). No dialog. If you aren't in a 3D view, one is made and opened — and pressing it again from a plan reuses that same view rather than making another. Elements you Tab-select inside a link count too.

Section Box

The same thing with the options, and it remembers how you last set it up — including lining the box up with an element, which is on from the start. With nothing selected it asks you to pick instead — elements inside links included — and you finish on the ribbon.

• Padding in millimetres (0 to 100000): the gap between the elements and every face of the box — sides, top and bottom. It is measured from the elements' actual shape, so a diagonal run lined up with the box gets exactly this much room, not the extra a square-to-the-project measurement would add. It is remembered, and Quick uses the same figure.
• Line the box up with what you selected — if a wall, pipe, duct, cable tray or beam is in the selection, the box turns to follow it instead of sitting square to the project, which is what makes a long diagonal run readable. With several, the longest run wins (so a diffuser on a duct doesn't steer it), and an element inside a rotated link is followed as it sits in your model. With nothing line-based selected, a rotated family (a fitting, a piece of equipment) sets the direction instead. If nothing in the selection has a direction, you simply get the usual square box — no question, no interruption.
• Put it in a new 3D view, named as you like, leaving your working view alone. Outside a 3D view a new one is always made, so the tick is only a choice when you're in one, and it isn't remembered.
• Put back previous returns that view's box to what it was before the tool last changed it this session.

Follow Selection

Switch it on and the section box moves with you: click a length of pipe and the box closes around it, click the next and it follows. Built for walking a long services run without touching the box handles once.

A small window opens with the controls:

• A slider for how much room to leave around what you select — 150 mm at the bottom, up to 1500 mm. Moving it re-applies straight away, so you can feel the right amount rather than guess it.
• Pause leaves the box where it is while you select other things, and Resume picks it up again.
• Closing the window stops following — the same habit as the Navisworks tool. So do Stop following and pressing Follow Selection again.

• It only ever changes the 3D view it started in (switched on from a plan, the first 3D view it works in). Selecting things in a plan, or in another 3D view, while it's on leaves that view alone, and the window says why the box didn't move — as it does when someone else is editing the view in a workshared model. Put back previous on that view returns it to the box it had before following.
• Select nothing and the box stays where it is, rather than snapping out to the whole model.
• It starts from the Section Box padding. Once you move its slider it keeps its own figure, and the slider never changes the padding Section Box and Quick use.
• It lasts the session: closing Revit switches it off. Each move is its own undo step. Clicking the section box itself (to grab its grips) doesn't move it.

Toggle the box off and on

Toggle Section Box turns the active 3D view's section box off, and back on exactly as it was — the quickest way to check what you've cropped away without losing the crop. If something else set a new box on the view while it was off, that newer box is the one that comes back. It is on the pulldown, and on BB. It only works in a 3D view; anywhere else it says Not a 3D view.

Keyboard shortcuts

AECOtools offers AS for Section Box, QS for Quick Section Box, FB for Follow Selection and BB for the toggle — AS and QS are the keys the old COINS tool used, so the habit carries over. They are only taken if nothing else is using them. If any of those keys already belongs to a command of yours, it is left exactly as it is, and nothing else in your shortcuts is touched. Your KeyboardShortcuts.xml is backed up alongside itself before the one change is made.

Revit reads shortcuts when it starts, so they come alive on the next launch. Clear them in View ▸ User Interface ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts if you'd rather have the keys back — they won't be re-applied.

Notes

• Elements picked inside a link are measured in the host's coordinates, so a link that sits rotated or offset still boxes correctly.
• A flat element still gets a usable box — nothing collapses to zero thickness.
• Each run is one undo.

Renumber Viewports

Renumbers the detail numbers of the viewports on the active sheet. Three ways to decide the order.

Select some viewports on the sheet before you start and Auto and Spline renumber only those; with nothing selected they renumber the whole sheet.

Options

• Sequence start — where the numbering begins: 1, 01, A, A1 and so on. The shape of what you type sets the shape of the sequence: digits keep their width (09 → 10) and letters run on like spreadsheet columns (Z → AA). It is checked before anything changes — a start that uses a letter you've ticked to skip is refused.
• Exclude letters I, O, L — skip the letters that read as 1 and 0 on a printed drawing. Each is a separate tick, and all three are ticked to start.

Viewport Move

Slides the model inside a viewport while the frame on the sheet stays put — and the annotation goes with the model. (To move a viewport to a different sheet, drag it in the Project Browser.)

Use it when the building sits badly in its frame: instead of moving the viewport (which moves the frame) or re-cropping (which loses the annotation's relationship to the model), this shifts the crop and compensates the viewport, so on the sheet the picture appears to slide inside a stationary frame.

1. Select one or more viewports on a sheet.
2. Click Viewport Move and enter how far the picture should move up and/or right on the sheet, in millimetres (negative for down or left).
3. Click Move.

What it does under the hood

• The view's crop region moves the opposite way in the model — sliding the window one way shows the model moved the other.
• The viewport is lined up so the model lands exactly where asked and the frame doesn't move. Rotated viewports work the same way.
• The view's annotation is left alone, so text, tags and dimensions stay on the things they label.

Everything is one undo step, and a viewport that fails is put back and reported without stopping the rest. Pinned viewports are fine — they stay pinned. Some viewports are left alone and listed under Not moved, with why:

• Legends and schedules — there is no crop to slide.
• Crop View off — there is no frame to slide the model in. Turn the crop on first.
• Crop from a scope box — move the scope box instead, or take the view off it.

View Filter Builder BETA

Revit's Filters dialog starts from a blank page. View Filter Builder works the other way round: pick an element, and its parameters — with the values they actually hold — are laid out for you to build rules from. It's on Sheets & Views ▸ Tools ▸ View Filter Builder and needs an AECOtools licence.

• Rules from real values — text, numbers in your project's units, Yes/No and element references, with several rules per parameter, AND/OR sets, and "has a value" / "has no value".
• Edit filters you already have — pick one from the model, change its rules or categories, and update it in place: every view and template using it keeps its graphics.
• Categories worked out for you — only categories that share every parameter you used are offered, starting with the ones you picked.
• Applied where it counts — when a view template controls filters, the filter goes on the template, so it actually shows.
• Graphics presets — halftone, white-out, solid colours and line styles, ready to apply in the same step.

Workset Manager BETA

Keeps a workshared model's worksets tidy: every Revit link on a workset of its own, and datums, rooms and spaces on theirs. It's on Sheets & Views ▸ Tools ▸ Workset Manager and needs an AECOtools licence.

• Scan — lists each link with a proposed workset name, and anything sitting on the wrong workset.
• Tick and apply — missing worksets are created and the ticked items moved, as one undo step.
• Plays well with others — elements someone else is editing are reported and left alone, and the rest still move.
• Stays open — work in the model, then Refresh; select any row to find it in Revit.

Zoom Selection BETA

Revit's own zoom-to-selection only works when the view is already drawing the element. When it isn't, Revit stops and asks "there is no good view … open one?". Zoom Selection never asks. It takes the view straight to where the elements are in the model, drawn or not. If something is covering them, the built-in Visibility Detective tells you what it is and, where it safely can, clears it with one click. It is the quick way to act on a warning list or an audit report: paste the ids and you're there.

Zooming to the selection

1. Select the elements in a model view.
2. Sheets & Views ▸ Tools ▸ Zoom Selection.

The view is framed around the elements' full model extents, with a margin all round. A single small element isn't blown up to fill the screen: the window is always at least about 1.2 m across. If every element is framed and the view is drawing all of them, that's it, with no dialog. If anything isn't drawn, or there's something to report, the dialog opens. Run it with nothing selected and the dialog opens with the id box ready for a paste.

Annotation (text, tags, detail lines) only counts if it belongs to the active view. A note that lives in a drafting view, on a sheet or in another plan has no position in this view, so it is left out of the framing and counted as having "no geometry to aim at". The same goes for element types, which have no place in the model. The rest of the selection is still framed.

Pasting element ids

Paste into Element ids and click Zoom to IDs. Use selection loads whatever is selected in Revit instead. Use any separators you like: commas, spaces, semicolons or one per line. Text around the ids is ignored, so a whole warning line can go in as it is.

• Ids marked "id": when the text says id 316435 (or id: 316435, id=316435, any case), only the marked numbers are used. Walls : Basic Wall : Generic - 200mm : id 316435 is one element. It doesn't also pick up element 200.
• Plain numbers: with no "id" anywhere, each number standing on its own is used.
• Numbers that aren't ids are skipped. A number joined to letters, dots, slashes or hyphens doesn't count, so dates (2026-11-05), sizes (1200x600) and decimals are left alone. In text that has words in it, a number needs at least three digits, so Level 2 isn't taken as element 2.
• Repeated ids are used once, in the order pasted. A number too long to be an id, or one that isn't an element in this model, is listed in the status line as Not in this model rather than silently dropped.

Select in Revit (on by default) also selects the elements, so they highlight once whatever is covering them is cleared.

Results

Each element gets a row with its Id, Category, Name and In view: Visible or Not drawn here. "Visible" means the view really shows it, so an element outside the crop region or a 3D section box counts as not drawn. The list starts on the first element that isn't drawn, since that's the one to deal with. Click any row to see its findings below. Double-click a row to zoom to that element alone. Zoom again re-frames on the whole set.

The status line sums it up, for example "Zoomed to 12 elements · 9 visible, 3 not drawn here." or "Zoomed to where the element is — the view isn't drawing it."

Visibility Detective

Why it isn't visible runs every check against the selected row, not just the first one that fires, because causes stack up: a hidden category and a hidden workset are both reported. Confirmed causes come first. Causes that are present but not proven to be the culprit come last, marked "Not proven to be the cause — worth checking." Where Revit can safely set something back, the finding has a button. Each fix is a single undo step, and afterwards the view is re-framed and the element checked again. The status line then starts with "… — fixed."

View templates. When the view's template controls a setting a check looks at, the template's setting is the one Revit uses, so that's the one checked. This covers the V/G tabs (model and annotation categories, line styles, transparency, filters, worksets), the view range and the phase filter. The finding ends "(set by view template '…')", its steps say to make the change in that template, and its button is Fix in template, which changes the template and so every view using it. If the template leaves a setting to the view (its box unticked in the template), the view's own setting is checked and fixed as usual.

If the view is drawing the element, you'll see "The element is already visible in the active view." If nothing is found, you'll see "No API-confirmed cause was found." with a list of things to check by hand.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting