Creating Clear and Graphic Site and Campus Plans in Revit

Before diving into camera views and view templates, let's address a critical aspect of professional documentation: optimizing the graphics for your site plan and campus plan. While we covered floor plans and sections earlier, these site-level views require specific graphic treatments to communicate effectively with clients and stakeholders. The key is creating visual clarity that tells the complete story of your building's relationship to its context.

One essential consideration is clearly indicating where upper-level building elements will impact the site design. For instance, you need to show where a second-floor overhang will cast shadows or affect landscaping decisions. Nothing undermines professional credibility like specifying mature trees directly beneath structural overhangs. To address this, we'll adjust our site plan graphics to clearly delineate the second-floor footprint and its spatial impact on the ground plane.

The most reliable method involves activating the underlay feature in your view properties. When you enable the level two underlay, Revit displays the boundary of the floor above as a reference overlay. This approach ensures accuracy because you're working with actual model geometry rather than approximated graphics that might become outdated as the design evolves.

From here, you have two primary workflow options. The first utilizes the line work tool, accessible from the modify tab (that distinctive icon that's become familiar to seasoned users). Most professionals rely on the keyboard shortcut LW for efficiency. Set the line work to "overhead" and systematically select the upper-level lines to establish visual hierarchy. This method leverages actual model elements, ensuring your graphics remain synchronized with design changes—a crucial advantage in today's fast-paced project delivery environment.

The beauty of this approach becomes apparent when you deactivate the underlay: the level two walls remain visible and selectable, maintaining their connection to the building information model. This parametric relationship is what separates professional BIM workflows from traditional CAD drafting, where such connections would require manual coordination across multiple drawings.

For enhanced graphic control, consider implementing masking regions over your floor plan elements. However, this technique requires careful consideration of documentation methodology and long-term maintenance implications. While masking regions offer superior graphic control, they introduce manual elements into an otherwise parametric workflow. This trade-off between visual impact and automated coordination is a decision every design professional must weigh based on project requirements and office standards.

When you create masking regions that follow building outlines, you're essentially creating custom graphics that won't automatically update with design changes. Should the building footprint shift during design development—a common occurrence in contemporary practice—responsibility for updating these elements falls entirely on the design team. Revit won't flag outdated masking regions, making this approach suitable primarily for design phases where major changes are unlikely, such as construction documentation or presentation drawings.

The workflow for creating robust masking regions involves strategic layering of graphic elements. Begin by selecting your boundary line and copying it to the clipboard using CTRL+C before completing the sketch. While the resulting masking region provides clean coverage, the default line weights rarely meet professional presentation standards, even at maximum thickness settings.

To achieve publication-quality line weights, overlay your masking region with a filled region. This is where the earlier copy operation proves invaluable: use Paste Aligned to Current View to precisely position your filled region boundary. The offset tool (keyboard shortcut OF) allows you to create the desired line thickness—typically two feet for site plan applications provides appropriate visual weight without overwhelming other drawing elements.

This offset technique enables the use of solid black filled regions to create bold, architect-quality borders around building footprints. While not mandatory for all project types, this graphic treatment significantly enhances the professional appearance of site plans and campus plans, particularly for client presentations or design competition submissions. The visual impact justifies the additional effort for projects where graphic excellence directly influences project success.

A significant advantage of this layered approach is its reusability across related views. By selecting both the filled region and masking region simultaneously, you can copy these elements to your clipboard and paste them onto your campus plan, maintaining graphic consistency across your drawing set without duplicating the creation process. This efficiency becomes crucial when managing large drawing sets with multiple site-related views.

Before finalizing these graphics, always verify their appearance on actual drawing sheets, as screen representation can differ from plotted output. During this review process, ensure your crop regions are properly activated and sized to fit within your sheet layouts. For the campus plan, verify that the crop region boundaries align with your sheet format and don't inadvertently cut off critical site information.

For the site plan, consider hiding temporary elements like makeshift topographical surfaces that served their purpose during design development but aren't needed in final documentation. Use the keyboard shortcut EH (hide element in view) to clean up these working elements while preserving them for potential future reference.

Professional finishing touches elevate good drawings to exceptional ones. North arrows, while seemingly basic, provide essential orientation reference for anyone reading your drawings. If you've already added orientation indicators to your campus plan, ensure consistency across all site-related views. These details demonstrate thoroughness and attention to the complete user experience of your drawing set.

With your site graphics properly configured, you're positioned to tackle the final documentation phases: creating view templates for 3D presentations, implementing proper revision tracking across all sheets, and preparing optimized PDF outputs for various stakeholder groups. These remaining steps will transform your individual drawings into a cohesive, professional documentation package ready for client review and project advancement.