How to change the scale of your Revit drawing?

ByCADbrief Staff

Short Answer

Yes — in Autodesk Revit, you can change the scale of your revit drawing by selecting the view and updating its view scale from the Properties palette, or through the Scale control on the view control Bar. This is the most common professional method for plans, sections, and elevations. Limitation: you cannot freely scale model geometry like in AutoCAD.

What You Need to Know Before

Warning: Changing a revit view scale affects annotation size, detail visibility, and what appears in the view, not the actual model size. A common failure is switching to a larger scale and finding tags, text, or detail items suddenly oversized or overlapping.

How to Change the Scale of Your Revit Drawing

  • Command: Properties

  • Shortcut: PP

  • Quick Steps:

    1. Open the plan, section, or elevation view, then select nothing and go to the Properties palette or use the View Control Bar at the bottom of the view.
    2. In Properties, find View Scale and choose the required scale, such as 1:100 or 1:50.
    3. Check related view settings such as Detail Level or Crop View if the result looks different than expected.

Variables & Settings

  • Key Setting: View Scale in the view’s Properties

  • Expert Setting: This controls the printed scale of that specific view only. It also affects annotation behavior and visible detail, so two duplicated views of the same model can display differently at different scales.

Why it Fails

  • Cause 1 (Geometry): The model is not actually being resized, so users expecting walls, doors, or families to physically scale will think the command failed.

  • Cause 2 (layers/Locks): The view may be controlled by a View Template, which can lock View Scale and prevent manual changes.

  • Cause 3 (Command/Logic): Perspective 3D views and certain view types do not use standard printable view scaling in the same way as orthographic views.

Quick Fix & Best Practice

  • Quick Fix: Remove or edit the assigned View Template if View Scale is grayed out, then change the scale from the Properties palette.
  • Manager’s Verdict: Use view scale changes for sheet output and documentation clarity, not for resizing the building model. For production work, duplicate views and assign different scales for different drawing purposes.

FAQ

Can I scale only part of a Revit drawing?
No, not like AutoCAD; Revit scales by view, not by stretching model geometry in a view.

Why is View Scale grayed out in Revit?
It is usually locked by a View Template assigned to that view.

Does changing view scale affect printing?
Yes, it directly affects the plotted scale of that specific view on the sheet.

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