Annotating and Tagging Floorplans

Hey guys, Ryan here. And in this video, we're gonna start to create annotations for our sheets. So we're going to be annotating our sheets. So let's go down to our sheets. So let's scroll down in the project browser and we'll expand the P and we'll start with this overall floor plan.

So we'll double click P101. And I'm gonna start adding annotations to this view. Now, sometimes you can just do your annotating right from your sheet. So if I double click into this view, I've now activated the view and I can start to create tags. And so when I say annotations, what I really mean is we're gonna be tagging our drawings or tagging our pipe, tagging our plumbing fixtures and adding notes to our drawings.

Those are all different types of annotations. So to add a pipe tag, let's go to annotate, tag by category, and then we can just simply hover into our pipe and click. And so the tag has been created on our pipe, so that looks good. I can hit escape twice. Now what we can also do is if we go back to annotate tag by category, if we click on this tags button and we make sure piping is selected right here, we can now scroll down to pipe placeholders, and you can see that we've made that this tag, this pipe tag rotate, this is going to be the default tag that Revit uses.

So you might need to change this when you first add your tag. So we'll click okay there. And once the tag has been created, we can simply create another one by going to annotate, tag by category, and we can put one right here. And you can see it automatically says at 4S because it picks up the size of the pipe, but it also picks up the system that it's using. And so if we go and hover into one of these pipes, you can see this is cold water.

And if we go up, you can see that's hot water and this is hot water return. So it automatically uses the system abbreviation for whatever pipe that we are tagging. We can also click on a tag and right click and say create similar, and that will create a similar type of tag. So we can do something like that. So that's looking pretty good. If we wanna tag a plumbing fixture, we can go tag by category again and just hover into a plumbing fixture. So in this case, I'm hovering into my floor drain and you can see we've tagged that and we can now move it. I can also use the TG as a shortcut on my keyboard to tag. So let's do that. And then we have this room tag that's been placed.

We can kind of move this over maybe to something like this. We can move the men's over here. There we go. And if I want to continue tagging other items, I can continue to do tag by category. Sometimes I'd like to tag all of the plumbing fixtures in my view.

And I would recommend doing that, and that way Revit automatically tags everything for you. So let's use tag all, and you'll see the tag all not tagged dialog box up here. And we can say all objects in current view, that's correct. And then if we go down to plumbing fixture tags, select this one, and then let's select the default one it's going to use. So whether we want it to be the opaque or the transparent, I'll go ahead and use this transparent one and click Okay.

And you can see we've now tagged all of our plumbing fixtures in our plan, and we can simply hover over them and select them and move them around. So maybe we want to put the water closet tag right here, and we can select this one and move this one over here, And we can just continue to move these tags to a location that looks good. So let's just do that. Let's move this wall clean out up here. Let's move this one here.

And the cool thing about Revit is it will automatically snap when you're aligned with another tag, which is nice. You can also highlight your tags like this and use the arrow keys and just nudge them around. So that's another way to do it. Now I'm kind of noticing I don't love the way this tag looks. I might want to use an arrow for this tag.

So if you click on the tag, we can also use the type selector. So if we click the dropdown, you can see we have different types of tags and we use opaque version, we can click on opaque. And the opaque version has, you know, a white background, so you can see it a little better. But what I really wanna do is I wanna show you guys how to use a leader. So if we click on any tag, we can add a leader by clicking on leader line here, or we can go up here and click on leader and we can decide to use the attached end.

So the attached end means it will just use the fixture as the endpoint. So we don't have any control of where this is pointing to. So if we move the tag around, you can see it will always point to that fixture. But if we change it to free end and we move the tag, we now have access to move this point anywhere we want. So if we wanna move it right here, we can also move this point right here, and you can see we have a little bit more control on how we want this to look.

So if we wanted it to be like, you know, something like this, like that, There we go. So that's another thing you can do is you can add leaders to your tags. And if you need to change what the leader arrowhead looks like, we can always go to edit type and leader arrowhead, we can change that by clicking a different kind of arrowhead. Some people like to use like that open dot, and if I hit apply here, you can see that it looks like a little dot. I don't love that, so I'm gonna keep the other one, so I'm gonna undo that, I'm gonna keep the arrow. All right, so this is looking good. We can also tag our water heater. So I'm gonna go tag by category and we're just gonna hover into the water heater. I'm gonna move it over here. That looks great.

And let's tag our recirc pump. So anytime there's a question mark in your tag, that means you need to update the type mark. To do that, you can click twice slowly into your tag and then we'll name this RCP for recirc pump, hit yes, and there we go. And so we've tagged our recirc pump. And if I want an arrow, remember if I click on the tag and then I add a leader, we can do something like this.

That looks good. And again, if we want to change the location of this arrowhead, we go to free end and we can now change that, something like this. So that looks good. We can move this floor sink and you'll notice that the backflow preventer didn't get tagged. That's because the backflow preventer was not a plumbing fixture, it's a pipe accessory. So we have to tag that separately. I'm gonna go to tag by category. And then again, we can move that out. And then if we need to change what it is, we can say RPZ and hit yes. There we go.

And if we wanna use an arrow, we can just move this over and then select the leader here. I want to use a free end, so I can move this to this location and then do something like this. There we go. So this is looking good. I might want to add some pipe tags. So I'm going to click on this tag, right click, create similar. Let's move one here. Let's move one here. And I'm just gonna kind of tag, I'm not gonna tag everything in this view because we have, this is the overall view, so we don't really need to tag everything. I might tag this vent.

So I'm gonna tag that. Now this is not the vent tag, so if you click on the tag, you can now click the dropdown and you can start typing in vent, and you can see we have a vent tag that rotates. So I'm gonna select this one, it's opaque, You can see now it has a V at the end. So that's how you tag your vents. So this is looking good. And let's just move this floor clean out over here like that. And let's move this tag for our sink. Let's maybe move it right here. And now we are finished tagging our plans. Now what we might also want to do is add notes to our drawing.

And so if we wanna add a text note, we can click the text box or button right here. I want to add it with a leader, so I'm going to click this little arrow and we're going to use note three thirty second. And then I'm going to click right here where I want to start this note and then click here. And then we're going to say this is sanitary to civil and click away and hit escape. And then I want to also create one for here and say domestic water to civil. So we could just copy this text box here or we could create another one by going up to annotate text. And then we'll click right here. And I'm going to call this domestic water to civil. And click. And if we want to move how big this text is, we can do that.

Can also move the line, make sure it's aligned correctly. And we can click on it and use our arrow keys to make it closer, all kinds of stuff like that. So this is looking pretty good and this was our overall plan. So let's go to our system plans and let's also do the same things. So let's click on level one drain waste vent and we'll double click onto it. And you can see that the piping looks a little different because it's double lined and it's in a fine level of detail. If we double click into this view, we are now inside the view and we can tag everything. So let's start tagging some piping. We'll click on tag by category and we'll just hover into our pipe. We'll click and you can see it's using this tag that's opaque.

So this is looking good and we're just tagging it. Now I might wanna tag this piece of pipe right here, but I don't love the way this looks. So I'm gonna click on the tag like this, and I might want to instead use a leader. So we can drag it out, click on leader. And right now we don't have any leader in and that's because this is the wrong tag. I wanna use a different type. So I'm gonna click on the tag and you can see this one says rotate. I want the one that says leader. So it's gonna be pipe tag and then say leader on it. So pipe tag leader, no suffix.

You can see that this one is correct. And then I want to have access to move this, so I'm going to go to free end and we'll just click right there. And that way, you know, it looks a little cleaner that we're, you know, pointing to our pipe that's four inches. So that looks good. And let's also tag our vet. So remember, we go to tag by category, hover into it. If we want to change this one to the vet, we can click on it, go to pipe tag, rotate vet. So this one right here, and then it changes it to V. So that looks good. And then let's make sure we got everything else.

Now we might wanna plump or tag our plumbing fixtures. So since we already tagged them in the other floor plan, we can actually click into that floor plan. And what I can do is I can select all the tags I've already tagged on this plan. If I wanna select all of them, I can click on one of the tags, I can right click and say, select all instances visible in view, and they all are now selected, so you can see all of them right here. They're tagged everywhere, and then we'll hold control and get this one as well.

And I'm gonna copy that to the clipboard. So let's go up here to copy to clipboard, and then let's go back into this floor plan, and we can simply now paste it aligned to the current view. And what that will do is it will paste all of those tags that we already moved into the same spot. I'm gonna go ahead and move this room tag over here. Let's move the men's over here. There we go. So that was a lot easier than having to retag all that stuff. We could do the same thing for the water plans. So if we double click into the domestic water plans and then double click into this view, I can do the same thing since we have it already copied to the clipboard. We can paste it aligned to the current view.

You can see all of those get pasted. Now it's saying that there were, when it copied some of those tags, they couldn't find a host. That's because there were some plumbing fixtures that only show on the drain waste that plan. So if we click in here, so you can see there's a floor clean out here. We don't have a floor clean out on this plan because we're only showing the water piping. So Revit's gonna notify you and just let you know, hey, it's not gonna be able to paste that tag because it doesn't have a host. Alright. So let's continue tagging. Let's go ahead and tag our water heater in our recert pump. So let's go to annotate, tag by category, and we can click our water heater.

Let's click our recirc pump. Remember, we had an arrow on it, so we're gonna click into that tag, add a leader, and we'll just move that to here, just like that. And we need the tag RRPZ, so just move that here. That's looking good. Now we might want to make sure we show the piping coming into the building.

So right now we have to change the view range. So to change the view range, we actually have to go into the view template. And right now the view range is on the view template. And so what I would recommend is when you start changing view range, you actually wanna uncheck this because default, it goes from level to level. So level being, you know, zero to the level above, but we wanna see below the floor.

So what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna, you know, deselect it from the template right here. I'm So gonna hit okay, and now I'm going to go to view, visibility graphics. Oh, sorry. I'm actually gonna go to my properties over here, and we're gonna edit the view range. And then we're going to edit the bottom now to be unlimited and click Okay.

And now you can see, we can now see our water piping in this view. So that looks good. Now, if I want to copy and paste that piece of text that we had from the other floor plan, let's go back to 101 and we can copy this so we can select it, copy it to the clipboard, and we can go back to 101 and we can paste it aligned to the current view. You can see that saves some time and it looks kind of nice. And then let's go ahead and tag all of our water piping.

So typically I'll just go up to annotate, tag by category, and we'll just start to hover into all these pipes. And we'll just tag, you know, the locations where we think it makes sense. So right here is a little crowded. Now I can move my piping, that's one thing I could do, or I could use the leader tags. So I'm gonna actually tag this two inch cold water right here, and then I'm gonna hit escape, and I'm gonna select it, and then we're going to select a different type of tag.

So I'm gonna use the rotate or the leader one, no suffix, and then we're gonna pull it out. And then I'm gonna add a leader and we can keep it on attached in, that looks fine. And then what we can do is we can move this like up to here. And then I'd like to make some copies of this tag. So I'm gonna click on it and say, copy to clipboard or copy. And then we can copy it basically from this pipe and just copy it down to about right there. Alright. But now I don't want it to reference this water pipe, this cold water. I want it to reference the next one, is that recirc or maybe I wanna use the hot water. So now if I click on my tag, I can go up to pick new host.

And now I can select a different pipe and you can see it changes because it's referencing a different host. We can also verify what host it's referencing by clicking on the tag and then saying select host, and you can see Revit will highlight the host of that tag. So that looks good, and now I wanna make one more, so I'm gonna select my tag, I'm gonna use the copy command, and we're just gonna hover into the pipe right here and go about to a point right there. And then I'm going to do the same thing, I'm going to select the tag, pick new host, and this time we'll pick the recirc, and there we go. So that's a pretty cool way to tag your pipes.

Now you can always use arrows, but you can also change these to loops. So if we like loops better, we can select our tag, go to edit type, and we can change the arrow field 15 to a loop. So maybe the loop one eighth and hit apply, and you can see that changes to loops. Gonna hit cancel here, but I'm gonna undo that because I like to, I actually like to use the arrows. Okay, so that's how you tag using the leader tags. So those look good. Now we also wanna create some more tags that fit in the pipe. So I'm gonna click on my tag right here. I'm gonna right click this time and say create similar and that way it uses the same tag that we just selected. And then we could tag like, we could tag our one inch cold water right here.

We can maybe tag this piece right here. We could tag this piece up here, you know, all of these. And sometimes it looks kind of cool when you do it a little staggered, so I'm just gonna select this and we're gonna do something like this. And if we wanna move these, we can select them using a window selection and we can just kind of drag them over and we can move them to the middle here, something like that. That looks cool. And let's go ahead and do the same thing we did up here. So I'm gonna select my hot water recirc tag and my cold water. So I'm gonna hold control and we're gonna copy it to this location. So I'm gonna hit the copy command and I'm gonna go from this point up to this point. There we go.

And you can see it automatically picked up the new pipe right here, but I'm going to move this down. So I'm going to click on it and just drag it down, something like that. And I think that looks pretty good. So that's another technique for using these types of different types of tags. And so everything's looking pretty good. I think we're good with this drawing and we're also good with our drain waste vent drawing. Everything's looking good there. Now, you guys need to add notes to your plan, you can do it. We probably need to add a note that it's gonna go civil right here. So let's go back to our overall.

Let's take this one. We're gonna copy it to the clipboard. We'll go back to the waste plan or sorry, the drain waste VAT plan. And then we'll double click into it. And then we'll go to modify, paste, Align to Current View. And we've just basically pasted that piece of text in. And you can add other notes if you need to to this. It just depends on what you want to do. All right. So that's how to create annotations for tagging of pipe and plumbing fixtures and piping accessories and all the things that you'll need to tag inside of Revit.