Using scope box to set a local block plan within a large Revit site model

By Dennis Collin

If you have been using Revit for some time, you may well be aware of the north orientation property of each plan view. These are Project North, which follows the main developed site orientation that will be presented on a sheet and ensures the right reading of annotations and symbols when plotting.

The True North setting refers to the actual true north of a national grid system of the country where the project arises. This setting is useful for presenting a master plan of a site development when it needs to refer to a larger mapping context using data derived from sources such as Google Earth and Ordnance Survey data. This is all well and good for many projects, however, consider a typical housing development which has several similar house types arranged over an estate development. What is sometimes required is a local plan of a unit for the purposes of setting out of services and related construction specific for that specific plot. When adding information and for actual plotting we require that this specific unit is at a horizontal aspect for easy editing, viewing and printing.

Revit only has the two norths, but frequently we will need an additional ‘local’ north for a block plan. This can be achieved using a scope box! Access the scope box command from the View tab and rotate the box to suit the angle of the plot. It is good practice to name the box, in this example I have used the plot number as a reference.

Once complete set the view property to refer to the named scoped box and the view will align and set its cropping extents to be the same as the named scope box!

If additional areas are required, create additional scope boxes and set duplicated views to their respective scope boxes. These views can then be placed onto sheets as required.