Revit Design Adventures: Drawing Walls, Finally! 5

First Iteration
Drawing Walls, Finally!

So far we've spent about an hour setting up. Some of the things that we have setup so far...



Set Location
Project North
Phases
Levels, Grids and Reference Planes
Simple Material
Simple Wall, Floor styles ie. EW1 for Exterior Wall, IP1 for Interior Partition
A starter Sheet

Duplicate some views and append the phase to the name, for instance; 3D-Existing or Level1-Existing. Make sure you also change the Phase view property.

Now, in an Exisitng phase view we can draw our walls. Remember to always draw from Level to Level, like a cake. (mmmmm sweet, delicious, Revitcake)

Now the fun part..demolishing.

In the Phase 1 view, we now demolish the walls which are to be demolished using the 'demolish' tool. (I like saying 'demolish')

But what if only part of our walls are to be demolished? Use the 'Split' tool. You will end up with some funny intersections at times. This can be mitigated using the allow/disallow join tool.

In a Phase 1 view we can now draw the new walls.

Up to this point there has been a lot of 'wall' talk. We can add the windows, doors and openings to their proper Phase views. We can also demolish them! 

Next Post: Finishing the Shell with Roofs, Floors, Ceilings etc.

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Lego of the Day...

Revit OpEd: Project Galileo Coming Soon at Autodesk Labs

Revit OpEd: Project Galileo Coming Soon at Autodesk Labs: "The Autodesk Labs BLOG mentioned today that something called Project Galileo will be available soon. Here's the overview from their curren..."

Revit Shortcut List

RL:Reload Latest
MV:Move
CC:Copy
RO:Rotate
AR:Array
MM:Mirror

GP:Group
PP:Pin
UP:Unpin
CS:Create Similar
PR:Properties

ZZ: Zoom Window
ZE: Zoom Extents
ZP: Zoom Previous


VP:View Properties


VV:Visibility/Graphics
WA:Wall
DR:Door
WN: Window
CM: Component
RP:Ref Plane

DI:Dimension

TX:Drafting-Text
GR:Drafting-Grid
LL:Drafting-Level
DL:Detail Lines
MA:Match

AL:Align
SL:Split
TR:Trim
WT:Window-Tile

SI:Intersections
SE:Endpoints
SM:Midpoints
SC:Centers
SN:Nearest
SP:Perpendicular
ST:Tangents
SQ:Quadrants
SO":Snaps Off

CC:Copy

AEC|EDGE Revit Ezine

Check out the latest version of AEC|EDGE. It has some great Revit articles. My favourite was 'Lessons of BIM' by Laura Handler (bim(X) blog) and Courtney Pagani.

While you're at it, check out the editor's (Steve Stafford) blog Revit OpEd.

Pinned Levels MOVE!

When you 'Pin' something, it won't move right? Mostly.

If a Level is 'Pinned' you will not be able to use the move command or the move by dragging command. You will be able to change the height of the level by edited the Level-Head elevation text. No warning, Revit just moves the Level.

(Let me know if you have noticed this....)

As a workaround, you could draw a dimension to the Level and then lock it.

Revit Design Adventures: Kitchen Reno 4

First Iteration
Three Things you MUST Do Second
Now that we have Location, Project North and Phases set up let's get going on the next three things. We are just about ready to draw a wall, the suspense is killing us! Just take a few minutes and set up:

1. Levels, Grids and Reference Planes
2. Simple Material
3. Simple Wall, Floor etc styles.
(Or can be named System Families. For a Family naming explanation see this post)
Levels, Grids and Reference Planes
Always make the Levels first. Even if you're going to leave the levels as is you should be aware of their height. In the case of the kitchen reno project we simply changed Level 2 to be an even 10'-0" for now.

Next we make some Reference Planes defining left, right, front and back. Always name the Reference Planes. This is found under their properties. Start drawing your grid If you know what it is going to be.

Simple Material
Phil Read gave the inaugural address at the Ontario Revit Users Group. He showed us a lot of crazy stuff but one thing that stood out was the following tip. Make a generic white material and apply it to everything (walls, floors, window and door frames etc.) This can help us and the client to focus on the major design issues instead of floor colours.
Simple Wall, Floor etc stylesLet's avoid defining things too much when naming Families. Adding materials and sizes to names of styles in Revit ends up creating more work and inconsistencies.
Create an exterior wall type: EW-1, thickness is set to the overall wall thickness, material is 'white'.
Create an interior wall partition type: IP-1, thickness to overall wall thickness, material is white. Make a floor and roof in a similar fashion.

Now we can start drawing walls, right? Well, a couple of other things to do that will save us some time is setting up our outline Sheet Set and a View Template (which is blacked-out walls, floors, ceilings and roofs plus no floor surface patterns). Clean and simple. Once we do this, our building comes together in minutes. So far we've spent about an hour setting up and modeling the main part of the building.

Next post: Drawing Walls, Finally!
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Book of the day...

What are Revit Omniclass Codes?

Assigning OmniClass codes

OmniClass is a new classification system for the construction industry. The Autodesk Seek web site uses codes from OmniClass Table 23 to filter and identify shared content. A code consists of an OmniClass number and title.

If an OmniClass code is not already assigned to a family, you are prompted to assign one during the sharing process. However, you can continue to share with Autodesk Seek without defining one. All Revit families (except the System and Annotation families) have parameters for assigning an OmniClass code.

You can access the OmniClass Number and OmniClass Title parameters in the Family Category and Parameters dialog under Family Parameters. See Family Category and Parameters.

Taken from here.

What are Revit Uniformat Codes?

All model elements in Revit Architecture have Assembly Code and Assembly Description type properties based on the hierarchical list of Uniformat codes assigned by R.S. Means. You can add or change a Uniformat assembly code for a selected element type. The read-only Assembly Description property updates to match the assigned code.

Both the Assembly Code and Assembly Description fields are available for creating a schedule that groups components by Uniformat code.

This was taken from here.

Conditional Statements for Yes/No Visibility

Problem:
You have a light family which has two options, suspended or ceiling mount. So you make a Visibility Parameter for each objects, the suspension wires and the mounting bracket. Problem is you don't want to see both at the same time.

Solutions:
In the Formula field of one of the Yes/No (Visibility) parameters type the following:
not(suspension wires)

So to translate this; turn off the mounting bracket if the suspension wires are on.

Thanks to AUGI users...
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=79394

Revit Design Adventures: Kitchen Reno 3

First Iteration
Three Things you MUST Do First

So now we have the client sketches, their design ideas and address. They have let us know when they would like to start renovating. We have set some expectations as to what they will get from us and when. We are ready to start our model!

You really want to start drawing walls now! but first...
We need to set up the following:

Location
Project North
Phases

Why do we NEED to do this first? Simple answer is because it's a pain to do these things once the model is in place. Let's start with Location.

Location
This tool is found in the ribbon under Manage-Project Location-Location. Set the address as if you were searching for it in Google Maps. Setting the location will be useful for solar, shadow and energy calculations. If you are starting with an AutoCAD survey I would recommend you read this post I did a while back.
(http://revit.blogspot.com/2010/03/coordinates-base-points-surveys-linking.html)

Project North
This tool is found in the ribbon under Manage-Project Location-Position-Rotate True North. Make sure that you do this in a Site view with the Orientation set to True North (found in View Properties). In the Kitchen Reno project we have simply rotated the True North based upon an image from Google Maps.

Phases
Even if you think that you will never use Phases, set this up. The default phases are Existing and New Construction. The default current phase is New Construction. This can cause problems if you have modeled half of your existing building without knowing that it was put on a phase called 'New Construction'. Make a few phases, more than think you will need. Use simple names like Phase 1 or Phase 2. Fill out a brief description if needed. Get rid of the phase called New Construction, this will only confuse things. Above is a picture of the phases of this project.

In this building only Existing and Phase 1 are used. Things are both built and demolished in Phase 1. We will talk more about Phases in later posts...



Next Post:
Three Things you MUST do Second
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Revit Design Adventures: Kitchen Reno 2

In my last post I introduced a new series that I'm writing called 'Revit Design Adventures'. We are examining a kitchen renovation project. This will be done in Revit and we will make use of most of the Revit toolbox. There will be a number of iterations along the way. Let's start with the first iteration:


First Iteration
Managing Expectations

As we saw in the last post the client has provided us with some basic sketches as well as a verbal explanation of what they want.

But what does the client really want? There is no need to over complicate this question. The client wants a renovated kitchen that they love to be in. They want this to be done within a reasonable budget and time frame.

So are we simply providing floor plans, elevations and details for permit plans and construction documents? Yes, but what they really want from us is assurance of their expectations, as stated above. They may have made many of the major design decisions already, but will they like the results, can it be built and for how much? That’s why we are involved and why we use Revit.

3D views and renderings are always important at this stage, the client expects this. It's important that we don't define too much in the initial 3D views. We need to keep our design on-track by focusing on the overall size, layout and feel.

The initial images should very simple and clean. The first iteration of this project represents about three or four hours of time. This set included plans, sections, 3D views and a rendering which is pictured above. As it turns out, all we needed was the rendering. The client could see that the ceiling was too low and made them think that a sloped ceiling might look better.

In my next post we will continue to look at the first iteration and what are the first things that need to be done before you start modeling.

Next Post:
Three Things you MUST Do First
Previous Post 

 

Revit Design Adventures: Revit Workflow 1

This is the first post in a series entitled 'Revit Design Adventures'. In this series we will examine Revit based upon the project workflow. Learning about tools and features is necessary at a fundamental level. But how do these tools and features work in the context and workflow of a project? We won't be answering 'how' as much as when and why do I use certain Revit functions.

The first project we will examine is a small kitchen renovation complete with renderings and permit plans. Small projects have small budgets and small timeframes. Even a small renovation project offers us the opportunity to examine Phasing, In-Place Families, Custom Component Familes, In-Place Masses and most of the other Revit tools. So, let's get started with the sketches provided by the client...

Eventually, we will end up with the result at the start of the post. But first, in order to get there we will be embarking on a design adventure...stay tuned.
Next Post in Series.

Revit Server - David Light

This is (yet another) repost of a very good explanation of the Revit Server technology...

http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com/2010/09/revit-2011-subscription-advantage-pack.html