Placeholder Links in Revit Tutorial (Office Hour Sessions) 

The use of a "dummy link" is most powerful in my opinion when it comes to showing linked annotations specifically room tags. If done correctly, you can get the architect's tags to show in your MEP model template without having to run anything. It's also useful to set up some 3D coordination views that are already filtered by color so all the Arch stuff comes in blue, structure shows in red, etc.. Love these videos! I ended up reaching out to Paul about the lookup table video. He actually got back to me! I wanted to know if he'd ever went down the rabbit hole trying to do specs in Revit. Have you ever thought about this? It would be so cool to have some kind of checkbox for specs, then Revit just prints them out organized correctly without using word.

This is awesome, I've been doing PHA (Placeholder approach) for many years. I have sub-view templates that allow me to control the backgrounds as well so if the architect has tweaks I can update globally with RF Tools.

Being on the General Contractor (MEP) side of things I found Linked Views with a combination of links as Attachments VERY helpful. I am self thought in Revit so anything I say that I do here might not be ideal... Since we get structural models from a design team that will have concrete work and structural steel (which is usually superseded by our subcontractor). So the scenario I have in one of my projects right now is the design steel is removed, a linked view is set up and all out subcontractor steel is linked as an attachment. The linked view is cleaned up with grids turned off etc. Come into the MEP model, this linked view is then set. This means if we get additional steelwork models (for future phases) or updates, I can load this into the original steel model that's got the linked view. I do the same for architectural if our internal and external walls are different. Other scenario was pretty similar which was a project with multiple floors so it's just multiple linked views. Now, what do I do in the MEP model? This might be where people cringe or internally scream no to themselves, I set up a template that affects ONLY revit links and sets my revit links to have linked views (arch and structural) and do one for each floor. Then I can run dynamo to apply that template based on what the reference level is so it can sweep across and apply the linked view to all my level 0, level 1, etc. Then I can swap back to a template that affects model and annotation categories specific to MEP services be it an electrical or piping template, these could then be used on multiple floors. So linked view templates are floor specific across multiple disciplines (mech or elec). Services tempaltes are discpline specific across multiple floors. But working on data centres now, we work on 1 floor really so I haven't needed to go to that extent. I don't know if good or bad practice but it worked for me and cleaned up a lot of stuff real fast and means it's consistent with linekd views.

Intresting gonna try this in my new project.

I was told, someone in this meeting is very tired, but i wasn't told who. Can someone help me find out?

We have never been able to save links in a template file. We have always had a Revit model that stores the placeholder links. If the links are linked in by shared coordinates does it maintain that connection or does it use only center to center or origin to origin?

We have one architect that uses Archicad and gives us IFC files. :( Our template is setup with placeholder links for arch, structure, etc. Currently, due to poor handling of some categories with IFC, we use CAD exports of their model for print views but it would still be nice to have our placeholder setting apply to the IFC link. I know when you link a IFC file it generates an intermediate .ifc.RVT file. I'm wondering if you link the IFC to generate the Revit file then unlink the file and do a reload from on the placeholder link and choose the generated intermediate will the link update when you override the IFC file with a new version? Does it only know that the intermediate needs to be updated if it was linked using "Link IFC" command? There is also a add-in by Graphisoft that has it's own commands for importing, linking, and exporting. I was under the impression that the link command had some kind of custom settings to more reliably create the intermediate Revit file, but in the documentation it simply says that their command runs the Revit "Link IFC" command. If this is true what is the point of having that included in the add-in? Anyone know if this does anything special? I'm also wondering instead of linking if we should start a new project and use the add-in to import the file and save it every time we get a new IFC. That way we could simply reload from in our file on project startup and then just reload when we get a new file.

hello, jeff, I am a avid follower of the B.A.D today I saw this session with your template could you share that template if possible

Hey There, I did this and I can't seem to get ONE thing to work. We're an interior design firm and we want all link walls to be Poche (Grey Solid Fill). Unfortunately, when I "reload from" and bring in the link, the Wall Visibility setting just changes to a different pattern instead of solid Fill. So for example, I brought in Arch's link, and all the walls are set to a Grey "Diagonal Up" pattern instead of the poche that I had set up in the view template. Any ideas why? It wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't such an obvious visual error.

Can you linked Revit Template?