What Is Generic Annotations In Revit?

Firstly, let’s get familiar with Generic Annotations

Let’s take few moments to explain Generic Annotations to those who are not familiar with it.

A Generic Annotations symbol in Revit is primarily a block with characteristics from AutoCAD. In simple words, it is a simple symbol with a user-editable text field(s). The likable thing about it is that the text fields can accept any data information you want and you can also even schedule all the values in a “Note Block” schedule. For the BIM purists, Generic Annotations are NOT very “intelligent.” It is because the data does not get reported from the model like a standard tag. Instead of that, the data exists in the fields of the Generic Annotation object mainly. However, intelligent or not, they have their individual uses and, in some cases, can be simply what you require in your documentation purposes.

Few unfortunate terminologies hurdle to succeed when using them. However, they are:

To create a new Generic Annotation family, you need to use the Generic Annotation.rte family template. (go to Application menu>New>Annotation Symbol). Do not change the category.

Now to place a Generic Annotation family in your project, you need to use the Symbol tool. (Annotate tab > Symbol panel > Symbol tool).

Now, to schedule the values, you can input in the fields, and create a Note Block schedule. (View tab > Create panel > Schedules drop-down > Note Block).

Did you get it? The family is a Generic Annotation, the tool is Symbol, and the schedule is Note Block.

Generic Annotation

Symbol and Schedule Note Block

While creating the Generic Annotations, keep one thing in mind, if you want to hold the fields, then add a Label to any annotation family. When you add them, the list will seem empty. It occurs because we left the category set to Generic Annotations. That’s what we need.

Here you can also add custom parameters to the symbol. These will form the fields that we can edit. You can also click the Add Parameter icon, and configure the setting as you prefer, usually a Text parameter, so that you can type in whatever you want.

However, in some cases, you may wish over Number or Integer. Add it to the label. Thus, you can add as many as you want.

A fascinating tidbit is here.

In Generic Annotation, you can add many other additional parameters exceeding what you require to perform in the symbol. Therefore, you can add “hidden” or “Unknown” fields. Any parameters that you have added, but not included on the label will still be able to get values assigned to the project and more importantly, it will even appear in the Note Block schedule! When you click OK out of the dialog, you can also add any graphics like a circle or hexagon if you choose.

So far so good. However, nothing is new here. We need to do so for pretty sometimes in Revit.

Now the exciting part of Generic Annotation in Revit is creating a different label. To create, (Create tab > Text panel > Label button). You can also add the dimension parameter to the label. It primarily means that the symbol will be able to show you how large it is!

Hence, the dimension will be now both a Driving as well as a Reporting Parameter.

In Revit, Annotation families are valuable. They are view-specific, adjust to the scale of the view and can also embed in other families. All of the Revit tags, as well as the symbols, are annotation families. However, ONLY Generic annotation families (Symbols) can report to Note Block schedules. They are beneficial in those circumstances where an actual tag will not work, like specific types of finish annotation or other particular documentation.

To conclude, this was all about the Generic Annotations in Revit. Hope you find it helpful and knowledgeable.

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