The Four Step Revit Phasing Workflow for Renovations
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Key takeaways
- Model what exists today in the Existing phase before drawing anything new, so the model itself holds a record of the current building.
- Switch the view to New Construction and use Modify tab, Demolish to mark the walls that go, instead of deleting them.
- A new wall or door drawn in that view gets New Construction as its Phase Created automatically. No manual phase tagging step.
- Duplicate the same plan three times and set a different Phase Filter on each one to get an existing, a demolition and a new construction drawing from a single model.
- This is the full four step workflow from the video, promised for commenting BIM: one model, three drawings, nothing to keep in sync by hand.
Model the existing building, demolish inside Revit instead of deleting, and let new work pick up its own phase. Duplicate one plan three times and get three drawings that never fall out of sync.
Comment BIM and get this exact Revit phasing workflow
Three separate drawings for a renovation set, an existing conditions plan, a demolition plan and a new construction plan, usually mean three separate files that drift apart the moment someone edits one and forgets the other two. Revit's phasing tools fix that at the model level: one model, phased correctly, produces all three drawings on its own. This is the full four step workflow from the video, exactly as it goes.
Step 1: model the Existing phase before anything else
Before drawing a single new wall, set the view's Phase (Properties panel, under Phasing) to Existing, and model what the building actually has today: walls, doors, windows, the works. This step matters because every later phase measures against it. Skip it, or model it loosely, and the demolition and new construction drawings built on top of it inherit the same gaps.
Step 2: switch to New Construction and demolish what goes
Switch the same view's Phase to New Construction, then go to the Modify tab and select Demolish. Click the existing walls that come out in the renovation. Revit does not delete them, it marks them as demolished in the New Construction phase, which is what lets a demolition drawing show them later, clearly marked as removed, instead of just making them vanish from the model's history.
Step 3: new work gets New Construction as its Phase Created, automatically
Draw the new wall and its door while the view is still set to the New Construction phase. Revit assigns New Construction as each element's Phase Created property on its own, no separate tagging step, no properties panel detour to set it by hand. The phase a view is set to when something is drawn is the phase that new element belongs to from that point forward. Every element in Revit carries that Phase Created parameter, along with a Phase Demolished parameter for anything marked removed, as documented in EvolveLAB's overview of how Revit phasing works under the hood.
Step 4: duplicate the plan three times and let Phase Filters do the rest
Duplicate the same plan view three times, and change only the Phase Filter on each copy:
- One set to Show Previous Phase, which reads back to the Existing phase: the existing conditions drawing.
- One set to Show Previous + Demo: the demolition drawing, existing work plus what is marked demolished.
- One set to Show Previous + New: the new construction drawing, existing work plus what is new.
All three duplicates point at the same underlying model. Nothing about this step touches geometry, it only changes what each view chooses to display, the same default Phase Filter options EvolveLAB documents in detail.
One model, three drawings, nothing to keep in sync
That is the full payoff of phasing a renovation this way: one model, three drawings, and nothing to keep in sync by hand. Move a wall in the model and all three views update, because they were never three different sets of geometry to begin with, only three different filters on one. Commands that speed up the modeling itself, Array, Match Type Properties, Pin and Unpin, work the same way across every phase of the same model.
When a renovation set still needs an extra pair of hands
Phasing fixes how three drawings come out of one model. It does not fix a renovation pipeline that has outgrown the time one person has to phase it correctly between deadlines, which shows up as existing conditions plans modeled in a rush, or demolition markups done from memory instead of from the model. That is a staffing question, not a modeling one; see do you need a dedicated Revit hire or more overflow help for how to tell a recurring workload from a one off spike, and who staffs the Revit to render handoff at your firm for the same question on the step right after modeling.
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- Revit phasing
- BIM workflow
- renovation documentation
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions readers ask most about Revit phasing workflow for renovation projects.
How do you create a new phase in Revit for a renovation project?
Revit ships with Existing and New Construction phases already set up on most templates, under Manage tab, Phases. Set the view's Phase to Existing first and model only what the building actually has today, before adding anything new. The full sequence is in Step 1 above. Autodesk documents the underlying Phasing settings on the official Revit product page.
What does a demolition plan show in Revit, and how do you make one?
A demolition plan shows what is being removed, drawn against what stays. In Revit, you get there by switching the view's Phase to New Construction, going to the Modify tab, selecting Demolish, and clicking the walls that go. Revit marks them as demolished in that phase instead of deleting them, so they can still appear, marked as removed, on a demolition specific view. See Step 2 above for the exact tab and tool.
Does Revit assign a phase to new walls and doors automatically?
Yes. Any wall, door or other element you draw while the view's Phase is set to New Construction gets New Construction as its Phase Created property on its own, with no separate tagging step. That is covered in Step 3 above.
How do you show existing, demolition and new construction from one Revit model?
Duplicate the same plan view three times. Set the first to Phase Filter Show Previous Phase for an existing conditions drawing, the second to Show Previous + Demo for a demolition drawing, and the third to Show Previous + New for a new construction drawing. All three read from the same underlying model, so a change in the model shows up correctly on all three without redrawing anything. The walkthrough is in Step 4 above.
Why use Revit phasing instead of three separate CAD files for a renovation set?
Three separate files mean three places to update every time a wall moves, and they drift out of sync the moment one file gets edited and the others do not. One phased Revit model holds existing, demolition and new construction as views of the same geometry, so a change made once shows up correctly everywhere. See one model, three drawings, nothing to keep in sync for why that holds up on a real renovation set, and the full Revit shortcut sheet for commands that speed up the modeling itself.
What if a firm's renovation workload has outgrown what one person can phase correctly?
Phasing fixes how one model produces three drawings. It does not fix a renovation pipeline that has grown past what one person can carry between deadlines, which is a staffing question rather than a modeling question; see do you need a dedicated Revit hire or more overflow help for how to tell a recurring workload from a one off spike.
