Revit View Templates: A Guide to Standardizing Sheet and Presentation Views

View templates, as described in Autodesk’s Revit 2021, 2022, and 2024 help documentation, can be used to manage visibility and graphics settings across project views in a repeatable way. This guide is for Revit users who want to bring plans, sections, elevations, presentation views, and coordination views under a shared visual standard. The interface examples in the documentation come from different versions, so use your installed Revit version as the reference for menu and feature details.

What problem does a view template solve?

A view template applies a group of visibility and graphics properties to a view in one operation. This helps ensure that multiple plans used for the same purpose—or several presentation views—look consistent. Template settings are managed at the project level; when a template is changed, views associated with it can also be updated.

Creating separate templates for different purposes within an office is a practical starting point. For example, you can create distinct templates for construction documentation, presentations, and coordination. Instead of setting up visibility and graphics from scratch in every view, you can select the appropriate template. Templates can also control other view properties, such as scale, shadows, or phase status. Check which properties are controlled by a template when editing it.

Create a template and apply it to an existing view

1. First, set up the desired visual style in a view. Adjusting its visibility and graphics settings for the intended purpose provides a solid starting point for the template.

2. On the ribbon, use View › View Templates › Create Template from Current View to create a template from the current view. Autodesk’s Revit 2021 documentation describes this command as a way to create a template based on the current view’s visibility and graphics settings.

3. To review or edit the project’s templates, open View › View Templates › Manage View Templates. You can also create new templates from this management dialog.

4. To assign a template to an existing view, use the View Template property in the Properties Palette. Alternatively, apply a template to the current view with View › View Templates › Apply Template Properties to Current View.

How you assign a view template affects what you can edit afterward. When properties controlled by the template are locked in the view, you need to edit the template, remove it from the view, or enable temporary view properties to change the view’s appearance. Autodesk’s Revit 2021 help documentation notes that a purple border appears around the view when temporary view properties are enabled. Once you have finished editing, turn off this mode using the same temporary view properties button to return to the template’s visibility settings.

Automatically assign templates to new views

Instead of choosing a template after creating each view, you can associate a template with a view type. Assign the view template in the Identity Data section of the view type. When you create a new view using that type, the template is applied automatically. This approach helps maintain standards in projects where views are created regularly for the same purpose.

In an example from Autodesk’s Revit 2024 help documentation, a view is duplicated in the Project Browser to create a new view type; Edit Type is opened from the Properties Palette, Duplicate is selected in the Type Properties dialog, and the new type is named. The relevant view template is then assigned. For new views created with a template dependency, the template settings control the view. An existing view may not automatically adopt the same settings when a template is assigned to its type, since it is not a new view; you may need to assign the template to that existing view separately.

View types can be used for different groups of views, such as plans, sections, and callouts. Separating types by purpose can also help organize the Project Browser. Before using a new type, check that the correct template and dependency preference are selected to reduce the need for individual fixes later.

Per-element edits and common mistakes

The Revit 2022 documentation explains that you can right-click an element in the view area and follow Override Graphics in View › By Element to change the visibility or graphics of an individual element. In the View-Specific Element Graphics dialog, you can edit options such as visibility, halftone, projection lines, surface patterns, surface transparency, cut lines, and cut patterns. Using Apply lets you see the result without closing the dialog, making it easier to compare settings.

Important distinction: Graphic overrides applied to individual elements are not stored in view templates. Therefore, do not assume that a change made to one element will carry over to other views using the same template. For repeatable standards, use settings controlled by the template; treat a custom edit to an element as specific to the relevant view.

Common mistakes:

• Trying to change a property directly in a view when it is controlled by the template. Edit or remove the template first, or use temporary view properties.

• Assuming existing views will update automatically when a template is assigned to a view type. Check the difference between a new view and one that was already created.

• Assuming per-element graphic overrides are included in the template. According to the Revit 2022 documentation, these edits are not stored in the template.

• Creating a template based only on how a sheet view looks, without checking which properties the template controls. Review the controlled properties before assigning it.

Impact on architectural and visualization workflows

Architecture and interior design teams can maintain a consistent appearance by defining separate templates for construction plans, presentation views, and coordination views in the same project. Adding standard templates to the project template and transferring them between projects with the Transfer Project Standards tool is described in Autodesk’s Revit 2021 documentation as a way to maintain consistency across an office.

This approach can reduce repetitive setup work, especially for teams that produce many views, but it does not eliminate the need for custom graphic edits in individual views. The sources make no claims about hardware or render performance. Licensing terms are not covered in these documents either. At the start of a project, teams should verify interface differences in their Revit version and check which properties the template controls; per-element overrides should be tracked separately.