Evacuation Plans - Orientation symbol/Site plan

When creating an orientation symbol for sheets, the workflow for fire strategy drawings and evacuation plans differs slightly. In the fire strategy drawings, the orientation symbols are provided by the architect in the project, and often the cases are drawn in the title block.

Disclaimer: as with a lot of workflows in Revit, there are several ways to do the same thing. Each way always has pro's and con's on why just that workflow has been chosen. 

But when there is no orientation symbol from the architect to use, there are mainly two ways of creating it.

1. There is no orientation symbol anywhere, only the architect model. In this case , create a detail item and draw off the buildings manually. Create parameters for different levels, stairscases and/or buildings. 
2. There is already an old / DWG / PDF which includes orientation symbol, use these to create a detail item as an orientation symbol.

Follow the guide below for the second option on how to create an orientation symbol as a Detail item.

The reasoning behind choosing to create a detail item instead of generic annotation / directly in the titleblock are because when it's possible to scale the site to fit every scenario of evacuation plans, both as portrait and landscape where the texts and legends could be placed randomly.

1. First, start a new Detail Item family (in this guide Revit 2025 will be used).
   
   Location: C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RVT 20XX\Family Templates\English. (20XX is the Revit version.
2. Add the PDF / DWG to the family by going to Insert -> 
   
3. Once a DWG is imported, it can be kind of tricky finding it because DWG's usually are quite large. Can be recommended to use WBLOCK command in AutoCAD first to save the orientation symbol as a new block on the desktop.
   Once loaded move it to be placed close the origo.
   
4. Now start tracing off the silhouette of the orientation symbol with detail lines, and do not use the DWG/PDF. Repeat that again, do not, use the DWG/PDF. The idea of saving time and cheating will in the end cause more harm than benefits.
   
   Original with DWG
   
   Hidden DWG with temporary hide-in view
5. The text for each building, in the example above uses 01-08. The only family which will show pure Revit text when loaded into a project are Generic Annotation, so normal Revit text in the family will not be visible once it's loaded. To get around this we can create a DWG, with a text field inside in a layer named 1-1-1 (Naviate Bimfire names the layers after the colours that are used in RGB. Black is 0-0-0, but once it's loaded into Revit it would become white. By choosing a grayscale version of it, it looks "black".
   
   Create the layer 1-1-1, add a colour. Doesn't matter which one for now, because it will be controlled through Object Styles in the project. Move the text to the layer.
   
   The size of the text, Naviate Bimfire recommend something like 350. So thinking of a scale of 1-100 the text will be 3.5mm tall.
   
   Purge the DWG.
   
   
   Save the family, name the DWG with a unique name, would recommend the building number, so 1, 2, 3... etc. Change the numbering and "save as" for the next building numbering.
6. Import the DWG with the building numbering into the family, the units should be correct but if not, change the import units to mm.
   
   
   Repeat for each building
   
7. Delete the DWG / PDF that was imported to trace off, that is not necessary to keep it from now on.
8. Create two sets of parameters, one for the silhouette and one for a hatch for each building giving the end user / building owners maximum control.
   
   The naming of the parameters is not set in stone, as long as the end user understands what it does it achieves the goal. Add a Tooltip to clarify if necessary. By adding the numbering in the end enables to copy/paste the parameter several time and the naming will automatically be correct.
   
9. Do the same for Hatches now, duplicate the last silhouette boolean parameter and rename to Hatch_01.
   
   
   Set the hatches off by default.
   
10. Select the traced lines and numbering and connect it to the Silhouette parameter.
    
    Do this for all buildings.
11. For hatches, there are different hatch styles for each region / building owner. So here there is no right or wrong. In this example a diagonal transparent pattern will be used some others use a solid grey instead. Go to Create and Filled Region, duplicate one of the existing patterns and rename.
    
    Then go to foreground fill pattern and create / edit an existing pattern to be used.
    
12. Trace -one- Filled Region per building, and connect that Filled Region to the corresponding boolean parameter.
    
    Repeat for each building.
    Purge the family of everything, purge 3x to completely remove all unnecessary objects.
    
    Save the family and load it into the project.
13. In Revit, either use Naviate Bimfire prepared situation plan / site legend, or just create a new legend.
    
    
    
14. Place the newly created detail item in the legend.
    
    
    Adjust the scale of the legend until the entire building fit, or turn off some of the building per drawing.
    
    Rotate the north arrow to the correct angle. (Use an online map if there is nothing at all to help, doesn't need to be 100% correct).
15. If the text from the DWG (building numbers) are not looking black, now in Revit it's possible to change the colour based on the layer name. Go to Manage → Object Style.
    
    Adjust the line colour, line pattern etc.
16. Place an Assembly Point in the legend, and use the tag so the size of the symbol is 7mm/10mm on the drawing.
    
17. Now Select the Detail Item that was created and select the building which should be shown in the situation plan / site.
    
    If the hatch pattern already exists in the project with the same name, it's possible to overwrite the pattern directly from the project.