Off-Center Prints

When printing a sheet to PDF or to a printer, it is important to select the proper options in print dialog box. Revit “printing area” is not well-defined and based on your setting you may get different output even if you have selected a correct sheet size for your print. Time to time, you may find sheets that are printed off-center.

Let’s discuss how we can solve these issues.

When in Print window, Select your Printer and then go to “Setup…”

In “Print Setup”, Select your “Paper Size” and set your “Zoom” to 100%.

You may have some pre-set sheet size as quick setting you can choose.

Our main focus is going to be on the “Paper Placement” section, shown above in yellow.

Under “Paper Placement” we have two options:

Option 1: CENTER:

This option should work perfectly if you have no other information floating on the side of the sheet. However, if you have notes, views, or on the side, using this setting forces printer the find the center of everything you have on the sheet. This could cause an off-centered print.

Let’s say you have a sheet that looks like this:

Notice that with “Center” option selected, the print area (shown in red) can change from sheet to sheet based on the location of other texts or views placed on that sheet. Imagine a rectangle that extends enough to contain every part of the drawing, this is your Drawing Area (shown in blue)

OPTION 2: Offset From Center:
Second option for “paper Placement” is “Offset from Corner”. Set that to “No Margin”. This is often the best option (especially if you are printing several sheets at once).

This is how it works:

First thing to understand is that the “Corner” is the lower left edge of your Drawing Area. So if the corner of your drawing area happen to also be the corner of your title block, then everything would print perfectly.

To Achieve this, the simple rule is to avoid placing anything on the left or bottom of your title block as that will make your drawing area extend beyond the desired corner and could cause off-center print.
This should be discussed and communicated amongst your teammates so everyone can still keep items they may need in the future on the side (top and right side of your title block are safe places to store things)

Below, you can see how the print area (shown in Red) can change if there are other views placed in a way that they go below or to the left of the title block:

So to recap, Set your print option to:

And always remember this:

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One-Click Dimensioning

When selecting the “dimension” tool, Revit offers few options on ways you can dimension the walls.

– Wall Center
– Wall faces
– Center of Core
– Faces of core

This will force Revit to pick the selected option as the first choice for dimensioning, while you can still hit “tab” to go through other layers of the wall to dimension.

Dimension tool in Revit is set as default to dimension “Individual References”, meaning user needs to click the two points or more to get the dimension in between.

But there is also a second option that allows users to dimension the “Entire wall” with any doors, windows, intersecting walls, or even grids along the way by only one click on that wall.

Select the “option” tab and check to include the dimension reference:

Now let’s take a look at different dimensions each of these options will get you when dimensioning the “Entire Wall”.

(Examples below are with “Face of Core” preference selected, and one simple click on the vertical wall)

Openings, Centers:

Openings, Widths:

Intersecting Walls:

Intersecting Grids:

And, of course, any combination of these, for example:

Openings: Centers & Intersection Grids:

If you uncheck all the options and don’t select any openings, or grids or intersecting walls, all you’ll get it the overall width of the wall:

Disclaimer: Check with your Project Manager and follow office standards prior to using this feature!

Cut.It.Out!

There are times when you need to have an object cut another object.

In this example, the sink is placed on the countertop, but it doesn’t look right in 3D view.

(Now, I know in this case, you might have seen a countertop family with the hole in it that you can adjust. Please read through and see why I think this method is better!)

We can resolve that by editing the sink family and adding a “void” box for the area you want your family to cut the other object. (Lock your void so it flexes with your family, so it changes size when you modify your family size)…

Then in “family Category and Parameters” tab, make sure the “Cut with Voids When Loaded” is checked.

Now, just load the family back into the project, and use the “cut” option.

First select element to be cut (Countertop), then select the family instance to cut with (Sink), and there!

In this method, if you had to move your sink, the cut (void) moves with it. Same if you change the size of your sink.

If you use the countertop family with an opening hole in it, you just have to modify the size of opening every time you move or adjust your cutting element.

Dimension Line Snap Distance

There are times you wish to create a dimension string and snap it at a specific distance from your building or object. If you have multiple strings, it’s easy to have them snap at a specific “Dimension Line Snap Distance” from one another, by assigning the distance needed in the Type Property of your dimensions (See below)

But How do we assign the desired distance for the FIRST set of dimension string?

Well, here is the trick: dimension’s tick marks can snap to reference line, so we can draw a reference plane at a desired distance from your building:

Then use ALIGN (AL) tool to snap and align your dimensions’ Tick Mark with this reference line. (Not the dimension line itself, but the actual Tick Mark).

You can also do this by selecting your dimension string and use these tick marks as grab point to move and drag to snap to the reference lines.

The Reference lines you have created can stay in the project since they do not get printed, or get deleted to avoid clutter.

Give this trick a try next time you come across this problem!