Ideate StyleManagerHow to...
  • Clean Up Your Title Block

    • Clean Up Your Title Block

    Ideate StyleManager is the perfect solution for cleaning your family content. If you only have time for one family, make it your title block.

    In this topic we’ll review how poorly managed family content can impact the project and demonstrate how to clean up your title block family with Ideate StyleManager.

    How Do Family Object Styles Impact the Project?

    Review Revit Object Style Setting

    Revit object styles control the color, line pattern, material and other graphic aspects of the model and annotative elements. Keeping the list of object styles accurate is an important part of BIM management. Follow these steps to review the object styles within a title block family file.

    Revit Object Styles

    1. In Revit use the File>Open>Family option to open the title block family called "A 8.5 x11 Vertical.rfa".
    2. On the Manage menu in Revit, select the Object Styles button to review the styles available in this family.
    3. Select the Medium Lines object style under the Title block category and notice that the Delete button is disabled. This is because this style is built-in to Revit. Select the Teal style and notice that this custom object style can be deleted. Do not delete, yet!

    What happens when the title block is brought into a project?

    The presence of unused styles within a family can impact your Revit projects. Follow these steps to understand how.

    1. Start a new Revit project based on any template.
    2. From the Settings panel on the Revit Manage tab, select the Object Styles button.
    3. On the Annotation tab, review which custom object styles are available under the Title block category. Notice that Teal is not there.
    4. Close the Object Styles dialog.
    5. Switch back to the open title block family and use the Load into Project button.
    6. Repeat steps #2-3, and now notice that the Teal object style is now listed on the Annotation tab.

    The family has brought in this object style, but...we do not know if this style is even in use within the title block family! Use UNDO to unload this family. It may not be clean - let's find out...

    Clean Up the Family

    Analyze the Risk of Deletion

    Before we can clean up a family file we will want to use Ideate StyleManager to analyze the risk of deletion.

    1. Make the title block family the active view (open the family).
    2. Launch Ideate StyleManager and select Object Styles from the ribbon.
    3. The (3) custom object styles will be listed.
    4. Pick the first style, then, while holding down the Shift key, select the last style. All three should now be selected.
    5. Select the Analyze button to understand how those styles are used in the family. Each style will display a "0" value, indicating that it is not in use in the family.

    Delete Unused Object Styles

    1. Having just completed the analyze process from the previous steps, the (3) styles should still be selected.
    2. Pick the Delete button to safely remove these object styles.

    Now you are free to save and load this title block family into a project without a risk of polluting that project with unnecessary object styles.

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