Creating and Populating View Sheets

View sheets can be created and managed automatically using the Revit API.

Creating a Sheet

To start, we'll keep things simple and discuss adding a sheet to a file. To do that, we'll use the ViewSheet.Create() method, which takes two arguments:
  • The document we want to add our sheet to.
  • The ID of the title block we want the view sheet to use.
    doc = DocumentManager.Instance.CurrentDBDocument
    #Get the ID of the TitleBlock we want to create
    titleblocks = Fec(doc).OfCategory(Bic.OST_TitleBlocks).WhereElementIsElementType()
    for titleblock in titleblocks:
        name = titleblock.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.SYMBOL_NAME_PARAM).AsString()
        if name == "lorem_ipsum":
            target_titleblock_id = titleblock.Id 
            break 
    #Create a ViewSheet of the established target type
    TransactionManager.Instance.EnsureInTransaction(doc)
    new_sheet = ViewSheet.Create(doc, target_titleblock_id)
    TransactionManager.Instance.TransactionTaskDone()

Setting up a Sheet

Once we've created a sheet, we need to set up its parameters. As we discussed here, this involves getting the parameter, then using Set() to overwrite its parameter. (Make sure to pass the parameter a value of the expected type. "SHEET_NUMBER", for instance, despite its name, takes a string rather than an integer.) 
    plannummer_para = new_sheet.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.SHEET_NUMBER)
    planname_para = new_sheet.get_Parameter(BuiltInParameter.SHEET_NAME)
    
    TransactionManager.Instance.EnsureInTransaction(doc)
    plannummer_para.Set("000")
    planname_para.Set("lorem_ipsum")
    TransactionManager.Instance.TransactionTaskDone()

Populating a Sheet

Our sheet should now be set up, though it's looking a little empty. That's because we need to add a view. We'll use Viewport.Create(), which takes four arguments:
  • The document we want to add our sheet to.
  • The ID of the sheet we want to populate.
  • The ID of the view we want to add.
  • The desired position of the view on the sheet.
Please note that the origin of the sheet is the bottom right corner. The midpoint of an A4 sheet in landscape is therefore -148.5mm, 105mm. But because Revit works in decimal feet, we need to divide both those values by 304.8 to get the true value: -0.487, 0.344. 
    target_sheet_id = new_sheet.Id 
 
    #Get View ID
    views = Fec(doc).OfCategory(Bic.OST_Views).WhereElementIsNotElementType().ToElements()
    for view in views:
        name = view.Name
        if name == "lorem_ipsum":
            target_view = view
            target_view_id = view.Id
            break
 
    sheet_midpoint = XYZ(-0.487, 0.344, 0)
 
    TransactionManager.Instance.EnsureInTransaction(doc)
    add_viewport = Viewport.Create(doc, target_sheet_id, target_view_id, sheet_midpoint)
    TransactionManager.Instance.TransactionTaskDone()
You should now see the desired view in the centre of your sheet.

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