Sort by Submittal Package

Quite often we need to organize our plots for different submittal package sets (Schematic Design Presentation, Land Use Permit, Plan Check, Construction Admin, etc). Revit has the built-in ability to do this. Just goto File... Print... Selected views/sheets... Select... Here you can check off the sheets you want to plot and you can save those changes for different submittal packages. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about any annotation references that cross over between submittal packages.

We decided that we also wanted to be able to sort the sheets in our project browser (and our drawing lists) by Submittal Package. It's possible but it's not an easy thing to do.

First, go to Settings... Project Parameters... Add. Now type in the Name "Submit for SD"... select the Yes/No Parameter... and check the category Drawing Sheets.

Now goto Settings... Browser Organization... Sheets... New. Call your new Browser Tree "Submit for SD". Goto the Filter tab... Filter by Submit for SD... Equal To... Yes. Now exit the Browser Organizer (while saving changes), right click on Sheets (all) in your project browser, and click on Properties. You'll notice your new Browser Tree "Submit for SD" is in the Type drop down list. Select the "Submit for SD" option.

Now goto View... New.. Drawing List... and add ALL the parameters (including Submit for SD). Leave the name Drawing List. If you look at your new schedule you'll notice that under the column Submit for SD you can check which sheets you want to apply to your Schematic Design Submittal Package. If the check boxes are greyed out just select them one at a time to active them. You might also notice that as you check and uncheck different sheets that your list of sheets in the project browser changes too.

Now that we can sort our project browser by Submittal Package we have a new problem. The Drawing List on our coversheet shows ALL the drawings from ALL the different packages. We're going to need a different Drawing List for each submittal package. You'll probably want different Coversheets for each submittal package too so set up a coversheet for each of your submittal packages starting with an SD coversheet.

Goto View... New.. Drawing List... and add the parameters: Submit for SD, Sheet Number, and Sheet Name. Click on the Formatting tab and select Submit for SD. Make this parameter a Hidden Field. Click on the Filter Tab and Filter by Submit for SD... equals... YES. Select OK and rename this drawing list "Drawing List - SD". Now you can do the same for each of your submittal packages (LUP for Land Use Permit, ConDocs for construction documents, etc). Drag each of your new Drawing Lists into their respective coversheets.

Now if Autodesk would add the Print Set parameter to Drawing Lists fields then we could coordinate the sheet browser, drawing list, AND the Print Range settings.