Phases are a very powerful feature within Revit that allow you to represent the theoretical changes to your model at specific, sequential points in time. If you’re totally new to Phases, check out this article first and then come back here to learn more about the default Phase Filters.

Once you have your Phases set up and you have attributed differing phases to the elements in your model, Phase Filters allow you to view your model in a variety of ways depending on what you are trying to represent.

You can create your own custom Phase Filters- which we will cover in a separate Tutorial. In this article we are just going to cover the basic Phase Filters which are created by default in a new Revit Project File.

The easiest way to explain this is by a simple example. So let’s start with a blank Project File and set up our example:-

Creating the Phases

For this example, I am going to use just two phases, which I am going to call Existing and Proposed

Then I create two Views- the first one will be called Existing and it’s Phase will be set to Existing….

And the second View (created from a duplicate of the first one) will be called New and it’s Phase will be set to Proposed.

In the Existing View I’m going to create a very simple rectangular building. Wall types and dimensions are not important….

As you can see I have included two doors, three windows and an internal wall. This is our existing building.

Proceed to Part 2