Creating Detail Callouts in Revit: Plan, Section, and Elevation Views

In this video, we're going to create three different detail callouts, the first being an enlarged plan view, the second being an enlarged section view, and then the third being an enlarged elevation view. So let's first make the plan view. But before we do that, make sure you have downloaded all of the files.

And we're going to be in the bim303-start.rvt file as the starting point. And then the first thing we want to do is Save As. And then you can save this locally.

And we're going to call this BIM 303 Lesson 1. OK, so the first thing we want to do is go to our project browser and click on the View Level 1 under Floor Plans. Next, let's zoom down into conference room 107. And we're going to make a callout at this jamb detail of the curtain wall here.

So let's zoom in a little bit more. And then we're going to go to the View tab and then find Callout. And that's within the Create panel.

And then if you click that Callout button, a drop-down menu will appear. And you can either create this callout with a rectangular shape, or you can sketch something that is an L shape or something different. But in this instance, we're just going to use Rectangle.

So click on that. And let's draw a rectangle around the jamb. And then select the callout and then adjust it so that our callout head is going to end up at the bottom right corner of our callout rectangle.

And then now, if we take a look at the project browser under Floor Plans, our new view is called Callout of Level 1. Here, if we double-click that, you can see it's an enlarged view of that portion of the model. And what we're going to want to do here is now rename this view. We can just simply right-click on Callout of Level 1, select Rename, and let's give this one the name Plan Detail—Window Jamb.

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And then select OK. And one thing to note here is as we go ahead, and let's go ahead and tile these views, one thing to note is the extent of this callout rectangle is directly related to the extent of your crop region in your detail view. If I drag this left end, note the extent of our crop region and our detail updated as well.

So as you're working in your larger scale views and adjusting this rectangle, just note that you are also affecting the extent of your detail view. Now let's create our enlarged section view. And what we're going to do is browse to the view Typical Wall Section 1 under Sections, Wall Sections.

So the project browser, we have sections that are related to the building section, sections that are related to the wall section, so expand that. And then we're going to go to Typical Wall Section 1, double-click that. Let's go ahead and close these other windows beyond.

And what we're going to do is create an enlarged view of the slab edge. So let's zoom down to the bottom of our section, go back to the View tab, and repeat the same steps as before. Callout, Rectangle.

Let's make a rectangle around the edge of our foundation. Click again to finish the command, select the callout, and then let's move the head up to the top here. And you'll notice again, the same thing occurs.

We now have a new view under Sections, Wall Section, called Callout of, and it always calls the view name by default Callout of whatever the parent view is, which in this case, it's Typical Wall Section 1. So let's right-click that, rename it. Let's give it the name Section Detail-Windowsill. Click OK, complete that.

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And then the next thing we're going to do, let's go ahead and make our enlarged elevation view. We'll jump to our South Elevation View under Elevations, Building Elevation. Click on South.

And what we're going to do here is create a callout of our curtain wall at the left side of this view. We'll do the same steps, select Callout. What we're going to do is just create a rectangle around the extents of this window.

So you click once, the top left, and then drag and then click again to finish the callout. Let's select the callout, and we'll drag our callout head to the top right corner. And you may notice there isn't a new view under Elevations, Building Elevation.

And what happened here is if we select our callout, you'll notice the type is actually Elevation Interior Elevation. So that sorted our view Callout of South under Interior Elevations, which is incorrect. So let's go ahead and select that Callout of South view, change its type to Building Elevation, and then let's go ahead and rename this view Enlarged Elevation Southwest Window. Click OK, and that completes the command.

And in our next video, we're going to take a look at some of our detail tools, the first being detail lines.