In this Autodesk Revit tutorial I am going to show you how to use the Callout tool to generate close-up detailed views of the various parts of your design. If you’d like to watch the video version of this tutorial first, simply click in the box below
So what exactly is a Callout. To explain this, let’s take a relatively simple Revit Project. In the image below you can see that I have already created a section view through my model…..
Let’s zoom in on the junction between the external wall and the roof eaves, on the left hand side of the view….
Typically we would want to produce a detail at this location, in order to tell the Building Contractor exactly how these materials come together. This is a scenario where we would typically create a Callout View. So let’s do that now. Switch to the “View” menu (1) and choose “Callout” (2) from the “Create” panel…..
Creating a Callout is easy- it simply requires 2 clicks. These 2 clicks are used to define the opposite corners of the boundary of your Callout. So go ahead and click at location (1)- see the image below. And then move you cursor to location (2) and click again. This creates a rectangle around the area you are interested in. Notice the circular “Callout Reference Head” that is jutting out from the righthand side of the Callout boundary……
The Callout Reference Head (shown by the red arrow in the image below) is used to tell the viewer (of your final printed drawings) where to find this detail- i.e. which detail number it is and on what sheet it is located. These references will be filled in by Revit automatically once you put the views (i.e. the view with the Callout AND the Callout view itself) onto Sheets.
Once you have created the Callout boundary (as we did above) the Callout view is created and placed in the same View Group as the view in which you defined the boundary. So in our example we defined our Callout boundary in a Section View- so the Callout view itself is deposited in the “Sections” View Group. Revit automatically appends the text “-Callout…” onto the name of the view in which you defined it’s boundary…….
If you double-click on the name of the view, the Callout will open…..
Notice how the solid boundary around this view is in EXACTLY the same location as the Callout boundary you defined in section view. Go ahead and click on the solid boundary in this view….
With the boundary selected, you can now adjust it’s extents. Note that the inner solid blue boundary is a Model Crop Region and the dashed blue outer boundary is an Annotation Crop Regions. Annotation and Detail elements can exist in the area between these two boundaries.
Returning to the Section View in which we created the Callout boundary, go ahead and select the boundary by clicking on it…..
Notice that the Callout Reference Head is split into two halves- each one having a dashed line in it (2). The dashed lines will be replaced with the Detail and Sheet numbers once these views have been placed onto Sheets. Also note that the leader has a grip (2) halfway along it. This is used to create an “elbow” if you need to “crank” the Reference Head out of the way of your model elements.
Key Points
You typically document key junctions between elements in your design
Use Callouts to create distinct large-scale views of these junctions
Revit will complete the reference information automatically for you once your views are placed onto sheets