Custom View / Sheet Folders

One thing that I have seen both new and experienced Revit users struggle with is trying to keep the project browser in Revit organised. On small projects this may not be an issue however on larger multi-user projects the browser can soon become a handful to deal with.There are multiple approaches to this however I favour giving the users the ability to create their own folder system within the browser. This is something I encourage all my local Revit users to adopt and so far it seems to be being well received. 

The example below is only a sample project with a few views and sheets however the you can already see how the browser may become a long meandering list with associated view/sheets becoming disjointed.

In order to tackle this you will need to add a project parameter to both the Sheets and the Views objects as per below. Group this under Identity Data

Next step is to create yourself a custom Browser Organisation to utilise the new parameter. This can be done via the User Interface drop down under the View Tab. (Far right-hand side)

Simply create a new Views Browser Organisation and give it an appropriate name. I use By Folder.

The next dialogue box controls how the browser is to organise the views. Select Group by Family & Type and then by View/Sheet Folder. 

The next step is to do the same however this time for the Sheets. Create a new Sheet Browser Organisation, give it the name By Folder.

This time you only need to group by View/Sheet Folder.

To apply the new Browser Organisations you have just created simply right click on the root of the Views/Sheets and select properties. 

Change the type to By Folder and apply.

You should now see browser looking something like below. It appears the same as before however now all the Views and Sheets appear to be in a folder labelled ???. This is the default location for any view/folder which does not contain and data in the View/Sheet Folder parameter yet.

To start creating folders simply select (or multi-select) a view and go to its element properties. Under Identity Data you should see your new parameter. Simply type the name of the folder which you would like the view(s) filing under in this field. 

You should now see the sub folder in the browser has been created and the views moved from the ??? area.

You can run through the element properties of the views/sheets in the browser however I tend to find it easier to create a Drawing List & a View List via the schedule button. Add in the parameters you would like to see including the new View/Sheet Folder parameter and enter the folder names you would like the views/sheets to have. 

The end result is a Project Browser with custom sub folders as per the example below.

Once you get your head around this it becomes quite straight forward and provided you with a very flexible system for organising the browser. The Browser Organisation system within Revit is a very powerful and flexible tool however I find that its perhaps one of Revit's least utilized functions. Perhaps this is because it is an area which may users overlook or maybe they simply learn to get by with the out the box settings, I'm not sure. What I do know is that people like the ability to customise their browsers simply because we all tend to work in differing ways. Hopefully this system provides you with a simple and flexible solution to organising a Revit project's views and sheets.