1.

Introduction to Revit Architecture

June 11, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 7 Comments This post is the first of Revit for beginners tutorial series. If you want to learn Revit, I hope this tutorial will be useful. And I hope will be easy to follow. My English is poor, but I hope understandable :D I will use metric for unit, common unit I use. So lets get started. I will explain what is Revit first. Revit in a BIM application. Building Information Modeling. Its beyond 3D modeling for visualization. You are creating a virtual building, with all its properties. Just like you build a real building, but in real world, its in your workstation.

Because you are building a real building (virtually, of course) you can extract any data from it. Plan, elevations, sections, schedule is some of common data you can use. Its also easy to create color fill, 3D perspective, rendering, detailed drawing, and limited walkthrough animation. BIM also enable you to communicate your model to other applications, such as structural analysis, green building analysis, heat load calculation, etc. Revit architecture is built for architect. So architect can work with conventional way: by creating building plan.

You can draw as you draw a plan. But you are actually building a 3D model. So youll have your plan and sections instantly. Sure, there are some 3D works to do to complete the building. But its quite easy.

Other data you can collect from your model is your building schedule. You can create a report wall length, number of doors and windows, and other schedule easily. Ive customized this schedule below to my language. It is customizable to your language too!

And because you are actually creating it in 3D, visualization is easy to make. Just place your camera, tweak it a little bit, then youll have a nice perspective!

Im not an architect. So dont judge the design. But I hope my tutorial will be useful. Next, you will learn about Revit interface.

2. Revit Architecture User Interface

June 14, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 3 Comments

This is the second of Revit tutorial series on CAD Notes. If you new to Revit, you might want to see the first tutorial: introduction to Revit Architecture. I believe that first thing you should getting familiar with, when learning Revit is the interface. Sure, all Windows compliant software might look and taste the same. But some specific tools only available in Revit. Plus it has a specific workflow. Revit just change the interface since 2010. So I decided to use it, not 2009 or older. If you use older version, you might have to refer to manual or help file. But besides the ribbon bar, its not that different ;) First time you started Revit, you will see a startup page like this. No, it doesnt open a file at startup. So click new under project category to start a new project.

Here is how she looks like.

Lets explore the interface elements one-by-one.

1. Ribbon Bar

You might already familiar with ribbon interface. Microsoft Office 2007 use it. AutoCAD use it since ACAD 2009. And now, looks like all Autodesk 2010 products use it.

Ribbon has several tabs. Each tabs contains specific tools. Home tab contain most used tools in RAC. So if you want to place a wall, find wall tool in ribbon.
2. Contextual Bar

This is also something new. Each time you activate a tool or select an object, ribbon will show contextual tab. This tab contains options related to that object. Like this example, you can change the wall type in element section, or you can draw an arc wall by defining it in

draw section.

3. Option Bar

Option bar only appear when you activate a tool. Option bar allows you to define how you want an object to be placed. In this example, the wall height, wall location line, wall offset, and radius (for arch walls).

I feel a little bit annoyed wondering why does this bar still exist. I wonder why dont Autodesk just put it all together in contextual bar?
4. Project Browser

Project browser is the most important feature to access your project. You can access all of the views, families, groups, and Revit links using this browser. If you want to see or modify floor plan for level 2, just double click it in the browser. The current view will be highlighted in the browser.

5. Drawing Area

Drawing area is where you can interact with your model. You can add, view, and select then modify your model here.

6. Navigation Bar

Navigation bar is also become a standard in all Autodesk products interface. Navigation bar contains navigation tools such as zoom, steering wheel, and view cube.

7. View Control

View control provides you tools for changing the drawing scale, detail level, and model graphic style (hidden, shaded, etc)

8. Status Bar

Status bar is where Revit will tell you what to do. If you activate door tool, the status bar will display: Click on Wall to place Door (Space bar to flip the instance left/right) Pay attention to status bar, especially if you new to Revit. And also when you are playing with a new tool. It will guide you so you wont get lost!
9. Contextual Menu/Shortcut Menu

I prefer to use contextual menu, but in the help file, they name it shortcut menu. So lets just use it. You can access this menu by click your right mouse button. Get familiar with the interface. You dont have to remember all of them now. But when you need to access your view or access a tool, you should know which part of the interface you should be looking for.

3.Understanding Views and View Navigation

June 17, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments Lets continue the Revit Architecture tutorial series. We have learned about Revit user interface. The next thing you will learn is about understanding Revit views. How to access it, and how to navigate through it. I have prepared a little tutorial file for you to use. Download this file, extract it. Then open it with your RAC 2010. If you use older version, you can try to open a sample file provided.

You will see similar view as above. We will model the same building in these tutorial series. But first, lets explore the views and get familiar with the navigation tools. Double click 1st floor under floor plans category. It will open the view. If you have problem with using double click, just right click above 1st floor, the choose open from shortcut menu.

Now try to open the 2nd floor, bird eye elevations, and perspectives. Each view represents the model. Every changes on the model will be updated instantly on each views. We will get to this later. Now, open 2nd floor plan again. On navigation bar, below magnifier icon, click the down arrow. Choose zoom in region.

We are going to magnify the stair to fit our view. Click once a little bit outside of the building at the back, then click again below the stair. Use image below as reference.

Now scroll your mouse to front and back. You can also use scroll button to zoom in and out. Hold down your middle button, you should see your pointer changed to 4 arrows like this.

Move your mouse. You can use it to pan your drawing. What if I dont have 3 button mouse? Well, you should consider of buying one :) But yes, you still can use 2 button mouse. Click steering wheel on navigation bar to activate it. Or press [shift] + W.

With steering wheel, you can pan and zoom. Just move your pointer above pan, hold your left button, then move your mouse. Or hold it when your pointer above zoom.

Try to get familiar with these tools.

Zoom to a wall until you can see the brick pattern. From your view control bar, click the detail level button. Choose coarse. You should see the pattern is hidden now.

Now change the drawing scale from 1:100 to 1:200. Now you should see the annotations look larger. Revit will automatically arrange the annotation size for you. Just define the right scale, and may be you need to tidy it a little bit. Open the standard 3d view {3D}. In 3D views, you will see the view cube. Click the front face in the view cube to see the building from front. Try to click other faces and arrows you see.

What else? Double click on the project browser, exterior views under 3D Views category. Click on shadow and choose shadows off.

Try to change the model graphic style to shading with edges, wireframe, and shading.

Try to get familiar with them. Next we will discuss about levels then placing walls.

4. Defining Levels
June 17, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 8 Comments Lets get started. You already get familiar with Revit Architecture interface, views, and navigating views in Revit. Now, we will learn how to create a simple 2 story house with Revit as you saw before. We will create it from scratch. We will create it in metric unit. Create a new project. Use Revit menu file>new>project. Dont use new project from startup page. We are going to create a new project in metric. Using startup page will use your default template without further question. I will ensure that all of us using the same template. Using the Revit menu will show you this dialog.

Click browse and choose template DefaultMetric.rte. For imperial users: You might not find it on your computer if your installation is set to imperial measurement. However, you can find metric files in your installation media. Revit template as a default, has two levels. We will add one more level, then rename the level. In the Project Browser, Open north view.

You will see two levels, level 1 and level 2. Revit default template only provide these two. We will add another one.

Activate level from ribbon. Its on home tab, datum section. There are two modes of drawing in Revit. You can draw lines (by default) or you can pick lines. Change the drawing mode to pick lines.

Change the offset value in the option bar to 4000. Make sure that make plan view is checked.

Move your pointer on level 2 reference line.

Make sure you see dashed blue line, then click your mouse. Level 3 will be added. Now we will rename the levels. Click modify on ribbon bar. Zoom until you see level 1 label clearly. Click the label, wait until you see the label become editable, then rename it to 1st Floor. Hit [enter] after you finish renaming. You will see a warning box Would you like to rename corresponding views? Click yes. You will see in project browser, all view named level 1 changed to 1st Floor. Includes floor plan and ceiling plan. Rename level 2 to 2nd Floor, and level 3 to Roof. In the next tutorial, we will place the wall. Save your file. *You can also change the level elevation by editing the level value.

5. Placing Exterior Walls

June 19, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 2 Comments We have created new levels in our Revit project. Now we are going to place walls. Lets start from exterior walls. If you are new to this site, you can see the Revit tutorial contents list here. Open 1st Floor View. Double click 1st Floor under floor plan views, in project browser. You will see an empty floor plan with 4 elevation views marks.

On the ribbon, home tab, activate wall tool. On the contextual bar, make sure your wall type is generic 200 mm.

On option bar, change height to roof level. And make sure chain option is checked.

Start inside the 4 elevation marks. Start about in the middle of them. Click your mouse, move your pointer to the left. You will see a temporary dimension. This dimension called listening dimension.

Move until you see listening dimension show value 3500, then click your mouse. Now move your pointer up, until you see dashed blue line. Now you should see tool tip say vertical and extension or you could check it on your status bar. Type 7500 then press [enter]. Typing it is easier and faster!

Continue to right. Type 3500 then [enter]. Down, type 500 then [enter]. Right once again, 3500 [enter]. Now your plan will look like this.

Press [esc] once to finish at this point. Wall tool should be still active. Change wall height on option bar to 2nd Floor. Add more walls with height up to 2nd floor as you see below.

Now add more walls with height up to roof below.

Lets take a look what we have done. Click 3D at quick launch bar on upper left, above the ribbon.

You will see your model like this. Exciting right?

Now open 1st floor plan again. Add more wall with height to the roof like below.

Move your pointer to 2nd wall from north. Move it to the right. Pay attention that temporary

dimension snap to wall face. We dont want this. We want it snap to wall centerlines.

We will change Revit option a little bit. Open manage tab on Revit ribbon bar. Click settings>temporary dimension. Change temporary dimension measure from, in walls group to centerlines.

Now we can add more walls. Move your pointer above the previous wall again, until you see temporary dimension from left wall. Type 2500 [enter]. Create vertical wall up, 2000mm. Horizontal wall left 500mm. Then finally up until snap to northest wall.

Check your model in 3D view. Remember that we havent change the wall height? It created to the roof, instead of only to 2nd Floor ouch! Dont worry, we will change it. Open the 1st Floor plan. Select the 3 walls. You can hold [ctrl] and pick them one by one, or drag a rectangle from right to left.

Click element properties>instance properties from ribbon bar. A dialog box will be opened. Find top constraint parameter, change it to Up to Level: 2nd Floor. Review your model in 3D view. In designing with Revit, you dont have to follow this workflow. You can edit the levels later, after you walls are placed. Or you can create all interior and exterior walls, then modifying it properties later. There are a lot of options! Next we are going to finish our walls.

6. Finishing Your Walls

June 22, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments In previous Revit tutorial, youve been introduced about placing exterior wall. Now, we will place the remaining wall. If you are new to Revit, you may want to check our Revit tutorial from the beginning. Theres no difference between placing exterior or interior wall. Only the walls properties might be different. And its easier to place interior wall after your building shell is defined. Now lets continue our design. Activate your wall tool. Use the same wall type as before . And change the wall height to unconnected. And change the height value to 3000. Finish your 1st Floor level walls as below. Dont mind about the exact position yet. We will correct this later.

Now we will fine-tune our wall position. Click modify tool from Revit ribbon bar. Pick interior wall left most, 2nd from bottom of your model. You will see temporary dimension appears. If you see the temporary dimension doesnt refer to bottom most wall, move the grip by clicking and dragging it.

Click on the dimension value, change it to 5000.

Now see wall on its right. These two walls should be aligned. Activate align tool. Its on Revit ribbon bar, modify tab, edit section.

Pick the wall face youve moved as reference, then click the wall on its right. Not that difficult, right? :)

Now, arrange all the wall to match this image. Dont worry about the dimension. I only put it for your reference. You dont have to place them right now.

Now lets move to 2nd floor. You should see several walls have been placed. This floor share some walls with 1st floor. The others, shown in halftone (gray). It means there is no wall in that location yet. It shows the 1st floor wall for your references.

Finish this 2nd floor plan. Place exterior walls with height up to roof level, and interior walls with height unconnected, 3000 mm. Use this image below for your reference.

How are you doing so far?

7. Placing Doors and Windows

June 29, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments

In the previous tutorial, you have placed walls in Revit model. Now, we will placing doors and windows to our Revit model. You will be introduced to instance parameters, so you can have your own family type. Doors and windows are Revit hosted components. It means you can only place them hosted to other component: wall. No walls, then no doors, no windows.
Placing your doors Understanding Door Placement

Lets continue our Revit model. Open your 1st floor plan. We will place them at location shown below.

Activate door tool from ribbon bar, home TAB. Select M_Single-Flush:08642134 as family type from type selector. Click change element type to choose other family type.

Deactivate tag on placement from option bar. We dont want the doors automatically tagged. We will place them later. Move your mouse pointer around, away from walls. You will see your mouse pointer like this when its not find any walls, it cant find its host. Now move your pointer to location shown before.

Now you can place your door. If the placement orientation not match image above, press [space] to flip the door. Click your mouse to place it.

Now place all the remaining doors. Choose appropriate size if necessary. Very easy, right? I dont think youll find difficulties in placing them :)

Creating New Door Type

Now activate modify, pick one of the door. You will see temporary dimension to modify the placement. And also, flip symbol to modify the orientation. Try to click that flip symbol to flip the door. Similar to placing walls, sometimes its easier to place your door first, and fine tune its placement later. Now select one door, any door that you want to change its size.

From contextual ribbon, select element properties>type properties.

Click duplicate on the dialog box that opened. Type 7002100 mm when Revit ask for the type name. Click OK. You just created a new type. Now, you have to change the dimension properties. Change the door height to 2100 and width to 700 in dimensions section.

Click OK to close the dialog box. See that the size of your door has changed. You also can see in contextual tab, its using your new door type. Now we will load another door family. Activate door tool. From contextual tab, model section, click load family.

In the opened dialog box, choose M_Double-Glass 1.rfa and M_Overhead-Rolling.rfa. You can pick multiple files by holding [crtl] and pick the file. Place them at these locations.

Now, open your 2nd floor plan and place all these doors.

Lets review our doors in our model. Open your 3D view by clicking the 3D View button.

Placing Windows

There is no difference between placing doors and windows. We will complete our model by placing these two types of window: M_Fixed: 06101830 mm and M_Fixed: 0915x1830mm. Feel free to use any other types of windows. Here is my 1st floor windows.

And here is my 2nd floor windows.

Lets check our 3D model now.

In next exercise, we will explore more about wall properties.

8. Understanding Wall Structure

July 7, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments

Weve been placing wall in our Revit model. So far, we use generic type. It only has one layer, so you might not notice that you can actually define exterior and interior wall. Activate modify tool. Select one of your wall.

You should see arrow symbol to flip your wall. The arrows are supposed to be on the exterior side of your walls. You see some arrow in your model lies in the interior side? Click the arrow to correct them. Save your file now. We will experiment by changing wall types, to understand more about walls. Open your 3D view. With modify tool active, select your whole model.

We only want to select walls, so we will filter out other kind of objects. Click filter in your ribbon.

From filter dialog box, deactivate doors and windows. Click OK.

Now the only type of object we have in selection set now, are walls. From element category, in your ribbon, click change element type. Select: Basic Wall:Exterior Brick on Mtl. Stud. If you see some error warnings, just ignore them for now.

Now see image below. I didnt correctly define exterior side for some walls. You can see that some walls are not showing brick pattern. If you cant see the brick pattern, try to zoom in.

Open your plan view. You should see your wall pattern looks like this.

If you cant see the patterns, change your detail level to fine.

In Revit, you are actually creating walls. Virtually, of course. But its not just lines. Your walls have properties and structure that you can define. More about this later. In the next exercise, we will define our own type of wall. Try to experiment with other type of walls. Include curtain wall. After you finish playing with walls, close your project file, but dont save it.

9. Creating Your Own Wall Type

July 12, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 4 Comments

Lets continue our tutorial. You have tried several wall types in the previous Revit tutorial. You might find out that even Revit has many types of walls, you need to define your own types. This is what we are going to do now, creating our own wall types!
Type vs Instance Properties

First thing first. We will discuss the difference between instance and type properties before creating your own types. Whats an instance? Every objects in your model is an instance. Some of them might use a same type. If you change a type properties, such as thickness, then every instance using it will use the new property. But if you change instance property of a wall, it will not affect the others that use the same type. For example, if you change a wall height. It wont affect other walls property. Try to open type properties dialog and instance properties dialog and compare them.

Creating a New Wall Type

Next, we will create a standard type of wall. This is the common type used in Indonesia, and I believe in Malaysia too. Activate wall tool. Click element properties, then select type properties. We dont want to mess the original properties, so we will create a duplicate for this wall type. Click duplicate on type properties dialog box.

When Revit ask you for this type name, enter Brick wall 150mm then click OK. Now we will edit this type structure properties. Click edit button next to structure. Its under construction parameter.

You will see next dialog box: edit assembly. Right now, theres only one layer on this wall type. Change the layer thickness value to 110.
Adding More Layers

Click insert twice to add 2 more layers. Change the 1st layer you added, its function to Finish 1 [4] and the 2nd layer function to Finish [5]. Then change both thickness to 20. Arrange the layers as you seen below. Select layer you want to move, then click up or down button. Layers on top of core boundary will lie on the exterior side. And layers on the bottom of it on the interior side.

You have finish adding new layers, now we will define their materials. Click <By Category> in material column for Structure [1]. Click button to open materials dialog box.

Select default material, then click duplicate. Give this material name: brick wall structure.

Defining Pattern and Materials

Now, lets change how this material will appear in our model. Change the cut pattern to Brickwork.

Click OK to close this dialog. Now do the same step above to define new materials for our wall finish. Define interior finish and exterior finish material. For this two materials, activate use render appearance for shading. You dont need to define pattern for this two. But you will need to define how they would look like when you render the model. Click render appearance tab.

Click replace button to select render material you wanted. There are a bunch of materials you can use, without having to define it by yourself! Remember: two materials definition. One for exterior side, and the other for interior side.

Select all your wall, change their type to our new wall type definition. Review your model in plan views. You might want to activate thin lines to see your model clearer. Its on view tab of your ribbon.

Next, we are going to cover other type of Revit object. We will create floor.

10. Creating Floors

July 20, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 5 Comments

If you are following this Revit tutorial series from beginning, youve already known about defining level, placing walls, placing doors/windows, define your own door type, and wall type. Now its time to define floors in your Revit model. Creating floors is a bit different than placing walls and doors. We have to use sketch to define this type of building component. Do you notice that I use create word for floors and place for wall and doors/windows? But dont worry, its not difficult!

Creating sketch
Open your previous Revit file. Open your 1st floor plan view. We will add floor on this level. Activate floor tool from your ribbon. Its on home tab, build section.

Now you should see your plan become half toned. It means you can only see it and use it as reference for your floor sketch. Sketch? Yes, you have to define the boundary by sketching it.

See your contextual ribbon tab, now it says: create floor boundary. And you will see sketching tools such as lines, rectangle, circle, etc.

The default mode for this tool is pick wall. We will get to this later, now change your draw mode to line.

Draw your boundary as below. Should be easy. Just snap to the points and use appropriate size for offset value. Make sure you are creating a closed polygon. You cant create the extrusion if its not closed.

After youve done, click finish.

Explore your Revit model in 3D view. Now lets move to 2nd floor plan.
Attaching walls to floors

Open your 2nd floor plan view, and activate wall tool. Now, lets do it a bit different. Make sure the draw mode is pick wall Check your option bar. Make sure the extend into wall (core) is active. This option will tell Revit to find the wall core and snap to it. Pick these walls below. Select on the exterior side of these walls.

Change your drawing mode from pick walls to line. Add these lines to finish your our boundary sketch.

Now examine your sketch. This is not a closed polygon. Lines created by picking walls might extend at wall intersection. Lets fix this. Activate trim from your ribbon.

Pick lines to trim or extend your lines. After you finish, then click finish. You will see some dialog box asking your confirmation.

First, Revit will ask if you want your walls to attach this floor bottom? If you select yes, then every time you change the level height, your walls height will also be adjusted. We want this, so click yes.

Next, Revit will ask if you want to join geometry and cut overlapping volume. We also want this, so click yes. After finish, lets review the effect of selecting yes in those confirmation dialog. We will create a section view to this. Open view tab in your ribbon. Click section.

Place your section line at this position. Make sure you have your balcony and interior floor get cut.

Right click at the section line, then select Go to View. Change your detail level to fine.

Wall is attached to floor

Wall core is cut

The image on the left is wall below the balcony. It is lowered and attached to the floor bottom. On the right, we can see the wall core is cut where it met our floor. Try to change your level height and see what will happen to these walls.

Create a void
Lets modify our 2nd floor. We will add some space for our stair later. Open your 2nd floor plan. Activate modify tool, then select your floor. Place your pointer above your floor edge, wait for a while until you see the tooltip shown. If you see the tooltip saying Floor Generic something, click your mouse. If you dont press [tab] until you see it in your tooltip. Click edit boundary in your contextual tab of your ribbon bar.

Youll be back to sketch environment. Edit your boundary to this. This will create an opening/void for our stair.

Click finish after youve done. Not that difficult right? We will create another building component. See next tutorial: creating roofs in Revit model.

11. Creating Roof

July 27, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 1 Comment

Lets go further with our Revit tutorial. In the last tutorial, we learn about creating floor. Now we are going to create roofs. There are 3 ways to make this building component. By footprints, extrusion, and by face. In this tutorial, we will discuss about creating it by footprints. In your Revit project, open your floor plan view: roof. We will create two roofs at this level. First, a slab surrounding our building as concrete gutter, and a sloped roof. (I hope I use the right term, not really familiar writing this in English).

Creating slab

Using footprint method is similar with creating floor. We will have to sketch it. You can access this tool from your ribbon, build group. Clicking this will bring you to sketch mode.

What we will do is exactly the same with what we were doing when creating floor. You can either using pick walls or by drawing lines. To create this slab, deactivate define slope.

Click properties button at your ribbon. Change your family type to Generic 125 mm.

Draw your sketch as below. At this example, I create the left and right line by picking walls, and finish the rest by using line sketch with 500mm offset. You can change the offset value on option bar, then snap to your walls.

Dont worry about the exact size. You can change the values as you feel appropriate. Remember: make sure its a closed polygon.

Now, change the offset value to 800, and create another polygon inside the first one.

After you finish, click finish. When Revit ask your confirmation to attach your walls to this roof, select no. Review your model in 3D view if necessary.
Creating Sloped Roof

Next, we will add a sloped roof at this level. Open your roofs level plan. Activate roof by footprint tool. This time, make sure define slope option is active. Click properties, change Base Offset from Level value to 200. This will create your roof 200 mm above the level.

Now, use the line mode for drawing your sketch. Change offset value in the option bar to 200. Create your sketch by snapping to the slab you created before.

Click finish roof, and review your model in 3D view. Very easy, right? Lets do some modifications. Open your roof plan view, then select your sloped roof. Click edit footprint from your Revit ribbon.

Make sure modify tool active. Hold [ctrl] key then click these lines below.

Turn off define slope in your option bar. You will see the slope symbol disappear from those edges. Now select two edges at the north (bottom) youve just modified. Hold [ctrl] for add objects to your selection set, then click your edges. Activate move tool from ribbon.

Click any where on your screen, move your pointer down. Type 300 then [enter]. This will add offset to these edges. Do the same with the other edge you modified. Move it to south for 300 mm. Click finish. Lets review our model in 3D view.

You can see there are gaps between your walls and roof shown by the arrows. Lets fix this. Select wall below the arrow, then click attach in your ribbon, modify wall group.

Select your sloped roof. Do this step for every wall below edges that weve modified. If you want to add pattern, you can read this tip: Add pattern to your roof. In the next tutorial, we will create roof slab edges.

12. Creating Roof Edges Profile

August 4, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 1 Comment In the previous tutorial, we learn about creating roof in Revit model. We created a sloped roof, and a roof slab below it. We are going to use the roof slab as a gutter. So in this tutorial, we will close it edges using roof fascia. We will learn how to create two profile family, and use them to define our fascia. Create a new family. You can create it by accessing Revit menu> New> Family. When Revit ask you for a template, select Metric Profile-Hosted.rft. You will see an empty drawing area, with crossed dashed lines in the middle. This defines your insertion point, where your roof edge will be recognize by this family.

Activate lines from create tab in your ribbon. Draw this profile below.

After you finish, save this profile. Give a relevant name such as roof slab edge profile. Now, open your training file. Load the profile we created before. You can load it by accessing Revit Menu> Open > Family. Weve just load the profile, but havent define where it should be used. Now we need to tell Revit to use it in a fascia family. Activate roof > fascia.

Revit will open contextual tab in your ribbon. Select element properties> type properties. Click duplicate to create a new type. Give it name Roof Slab Edge. Now in the parameter, construction section, change the existing profile to your profile.

Close this dialog box. Now, make sure the active fascia type is Roof Slab Edge. Change it if necessary.

We have through the hard part, now we will do the fun part: placing the fascia. Placing fascia is very easy, just click on the roof edges.

Click on every edge shown below. Its fun, right? ;)

Now, activate modify tools (do you realize you can activate it by pressing [esc] several times depends on which tool is active). Select the sloped roof, then click hide element from view control bar. Its the one with sun glasses icon.

You could see the void edges are still opened. Can you define your own profile, then close

these edges?

We have done with the roof. Next, we will create a staircase.

13. Creating Staircase

August 10, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 1 Comment We completed our Revit model exterior by creating roof. Now we start working on the interior by creating staircase. If you always create stairs by drafting it in AutoCAD, you will love stair tool in Revit! Revit create stairs automatically, it will also calculate how many risers you should create to the next level. Its pretty easy! We have created 2 story house. So, we need to add a stair to connect this two levels. Open your 1st floor level plan. We will start here. First of all, lets put some references for our staircase so it will be easier to define our staircase run. Activate Ref Plane from your ribbon bar.

Place your plane as below. You remember how to place objects in Revit right? It similar way with placing exterior walls here and interior walls here.

Now, lets do the magic. Activate stair tool. This also bring us to sketch mode, just like floor and roof tool.

By default, the active draw mode is run. We can also define it by drawing boundary and riser. More about this later. For now, just make sure run is the active mode.

Now we have to define the points for this stair run. Click consecutively on point 1,2,3 then 4 as below.

When defining the stair run, you will see a preview of your future stair. It will also mention how many more riser you should create. It should be 0 remaining at point (4).

Now that we finish defining our stair run, click finish stairs.

Review your design. Open your 2nd Floor level plan. You should see the 2nd story floor connected to our stair is not correct yet. Lets edit it. You do remember how to do it right? Review how to do it here.

Lets review it by placing a camera. Open your 1st floor plan. Open your view tab on your ribbon. Click the small arrow below 3D View, then click camera.

Now place your camera: first click define camera location, and second point define camera target.

You might see that not all of your staircase shown. Select your camera view boundary, then click and drag the view grip. Arrange until you see your staircase as you want to.

Try to select your railing, and change the railing type!

14. Creating Railings

August 18, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments We have created staircase in our Revit model. But its not finished yet. There are some open area we have to close by adding railings. On the balcony at the front and back of the building, and on the void next to our stair. We will finish this in this session. As this is a tutorial series, if you want to follow this tutorial, it might be better if you follow this tutorial from the beginning. Illustration: stock.xchng Open your 2nd floor plan, and place a camera so you can see your stair. You should see your void is wide open. Lets place railings here so no body will fall from the 2nd story.

Open your 2nd floor plan again. As we can see, our stair is already have railings. We will edit the existing railing and add segments to the path. Activate your modify tool. Select the railing as shown below. Press [tab] several times if you have difficulties in selecting it. When its highlighted, click it to select.

Now from your ribbon, activate edit path.

Finish this path like below. Two thing to consider: 1. Make sure your path is a continuous line. Revit wont allow if this line has gaps. 2. The stair railing has different segment with the void railing. Dont lengthen the path. Add a new segment. (You might want to try it to see the difference)

After you finish, click Finish from your ribbon bar.

Weve just edit an existing path. Now we will create a new one on the balcony, lets start from the front. Activate railing tool.

Make sure chain check box is active, and change the offset value to 75. Snap to your walls and draw the path as below:

Change the type by accessing properties. Change it to 900mm Pipe. Click finish.

Create railing for the back side balcony, then you are finish in this tutorial.

15. Creating Ceiling in Revit Model

August 25, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 8 Comments We learned how to create railings in Revit model. Now we will work on different view type in this tutorial. If youve noticed, in Revit Views we have several views groups. Until now, the floor plans are the most views we use. But under floor plans there is another plan view group: ceiling plans. We use this view in this tutorial. We covered how to access Revit views in view navigation tutorial here.

You are already familiar with the concept of ceiling plans arent you? Imagine we are actually inside a room. When you see below, you will see the floor plan. And if you see above you, you will see the ceiling plan. There are some objects you only see in this plans. And so the other way: some ceiling hosted objects cant be seen on your floor plan. Now open your 2nd floor ceiling plan.

You will see our roof fascia appear in this view. It was placed above 2nd floor, so we can see it. But we dont need roof fascia appear in this plan. Select the roof fascia. Now hide it by click hide>elements from your contextual ribbon.

Hiding this roof fascia will hide it not only for viewing. But will also disappear when you plot it. Now activate ceiling tool.

Move your pointer to your plan. You should see now Revit is trying to find rooms and highlight it. Move your pointer where you want to be place it. Click your mouse.

Place ceilings to all rooms in 2nd floor. After you finish, make a section to review our model.

Now lets move to 1st floor ceiling plan. 1st floor requires more work. We have a void and a stair. We are going to define ceiling in this area by sketching it. First, place ceilings in every room in this plan, except for patterned area below.

After you finish, activate place ceiling. Find sketch tool on your ribbon.

Sketching here is just the same with creating floor. Sketch it as closed polygon, and click finish. Thats it :) Create sketch for like below.

And after you finish with that railing, continue finishing 1st floor ceiling by creating another one like below.

Next, we will discuss about creating ceiling edges, to close the gap between 2nd floor slab and 1st floor ceiling.

16. Creating Floor Edge Slab and Custom Component

September 9, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 2 Comments We have created ceiling in our Revit model. Now lets take a look to our void in stair area. There is a gap between floor at 2nd story and 1st floor ceiling. In the real world, of course this is not right. We have to close it. There are several ways to do that, depends on your

actual design. In this tutorial, we will add floor slab edge. But since the gap is too big, it cant close all the gap. we are going to close the rest of it by creating custom ceiling component. First thing first. We need to define whats our floor slab edge look like. We are going to define it by creating a family. From Revit menu, select new>family. Find Metric Profile-Hosted.rfa, and use it as template. Lets create a profile like this. You can use your own shape and size if you like.

After you finish with this profile, save it. Give it a unique name so you can easily find it later. Open the project that weve created. Load the profile to that project.You can do it from ribbon>insert tab>load family. Now we are going to define a floor slab edge. Open 2nd floor plan, then activate floor slab edge tool.

From contextual tab, activate element properties>type properties. Click duplicate button. Give it a new name. For this type, change the profile to your defined profile.

Click OK. Now click on your floor edges at the void. You will see slab edges added. See this image below as your guide.

Who said 3D is difficult? :) But its not done yet. We still have gap from ceiling to our floor slab edges.

We are going to close it with custom component, a ceiling edge (I really dont know what its name but I hope you know what I mean).

Lets open 2nd floor plan again. make sure you have a section that cut the void. If you dont have one yet, create it. From ribbon>home tab select component>model in-place.

Revit will ask you, what is this family category? Select ceiling, and click OK. Give it name ceiling edge then click OK. We are going to create a solid sweep. Activate it from your ribbon.

There are two components you have to create to define a sweep: path and profile. Lets create path first. Click sketch path from your ribbon. Create a path at your floor edge. You will see a dashed line with red point on it. Thats where you are going to draw your profile. If the dashed line is not in front of your section, drag it until you can see it on your section view.

Click finish path. By default, contextual tab will open modify profile. Click edit profile on that tab. Revit will

ask you a question: which view do you want to use to draw your profile? Select your section view, click open view. Now, draw your ceiling edge profile. draw a closed profile, similar too this. If this one looks too ugly for you, create it as you like, as long as it close all the gap.

Shouldnt sweep profile and sweep path coincident? Apparently not. My path doesnt coincident with my profile, and it still works :) Click finish profile. Click finish sweep. Then click finish model. Thats the object hierarchy. Inside your model, you have a sweep. Sweep is created from a profile (and path). Your need to click finish several times to end this. Now take a look to our floor slab edge and ceiling edge.

17. Introduction to Revit Components

September 21, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments

We have finished with modeling our building. We created walls, floors, roof, staircase, railings, and ceiling. We can consider it finished, but we will add some objects from library to complete it. Nothing is hard about Revit components. At the first time, I didnt intend to write about this and just let you explore about this by yourself. But I feel this tutorial will be

incomplete if we dont cover this topic. Any objects than is not part of your building model is a component. It can be furniture, lights, plants, entourage, etc.
Component Tool

You can place any components by using component button in home tab.

But you may use site component or parking component in massing & site tab> model site. All of them will place the same component.

The differences are,

1. Using component button will enable you to place any object available in your Revit project file as generic component. While Site Component only allows you to place site objects such as plants and parking component. When you have many types of objects, filtering them by using different tool will be helpful. 2. Placing your object as site component will automatically set your site topography as its host. We are going to discuss about site later. Find and Load Families

Placing component should be very easy. Just activate the component tool, select what component you want in type selector, and click on your model to place it. Simple. You might want to load family if you need object thats not available in your Revit project.

Revit has some default families come with the installation. You can also find a lot of Revit families on the internet. You can try search your component using Autodesk seek. And of course, you can create your own.
Placing Component

As I mention before, placing component is peace of cake. As easy as 1,2,3 : activate your tool, select your component, then place it! However, there are several things you should know. Some of Revit families are hosted components. Lighting fixtures can be placed on ceiling or wall. Site components can be hosted to your site topography. But the others can be placed anywhere. You can place furniture without finding its host. But you only can place wall based lights on walls. And you have to open your ceiling plan to place your ceiling based lights.

For your exercise, place furniture, lighting fixtures, and site components to your Revit model. Shouldnt be hard :) Next, we will start to annotate our views. We will start with dimensions.

18. Revit Annotations: Dimension

October 5, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments

We have done with modeling our building for now. After we placed Revit components, now we can produce descent drawings. Well, we havent learn about curtain wall and site/topography which I plan to write later. But lets have fun for a while. We are going to discuss about the other modeling technique in Revit later, not in this tutorial series. Now we are going to annotate our Revit model. Annotation is a very important component in your design. Doesnt matter if you model it in 3D, you will still need to plot it to 2D drawing. And you need to provide information with annotations. There are many types of annotations in Revit, like dimensions, tags, building elevation symbols, sections symbols, etc. Some annotations added automatically when you created a view. Now lets discuss about dimensions.
Arranging Elevation View Symbols

First, lets arrange our elevation views symbols. Open your 1st floor plan. Select west and east view in your drawing. Delete it. We wont need it since our model only have two faces: from front (south) and back (north). Now select south elevation. We are going to move it closer to our model. If we dont do this, we will have a lot of empty space when placing this model to sheets. Elevation view symbol consists 2 (or more) elements. To make sure we select all of them, drag your window selection from right to left. This will select all objects that touch our window selection.

Activate move from your ribbon

Move it up closer to our model. Do the same with north elevation view. Why using move? Why not just drag them? Sure you can move objects by dragging it. But using move will restrict the movement to vertical (or horizontal). Not freely as using drag.

Adding Dimensions

Adding dimension is very easy. Open your annotation tab. Activate aligned dimension.

By default, the options to place dimension are by wall centerline and individual reference. Lets just use it. Move your pointer to a wall, you should see the centerline is highlighted. Select walls as shown below, consecutively from 1 to 4.

After selecting those 4 walls, move your pointer down. You should see your dimension now. Click where you want to place it. Add one more dimension to show the distance from wall 1 to 4.

Peace of cake!

Now with linear dimension still active, change in your option bar pick:Entire Walls. Click option button on its right.

Activate intersecting walls, then click OK. Select wall no 1 (on previous dimensioning). See what happen. We dont need to select dimension individually anymore! Now you can finish your entire dimension right?
Turning Underlay Off

Open your 2nd floor plan. You might see your first floor plan here in grayscale (opaque). Its on by default, make us easier to use level underneath it as reference. But we dont need it anymore. Open you view tab in ribbon, activate View Properties. Or you can press VP consecutively. Find underlay parameter, and change the value to none.

Now, add all dimension you need. Very easy, right?

Just in case you need other type of dimension, you can see it in dimension group.

19.

Working with Door and Window Tags

Tags is also annotation. This time, we are going to create a view with less details to show door and windows tag. To do this, we need to create additional view.

October 12, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 1 Comment

Revit doesnt allow us to put a view to sheets more than once. So if we have different representations, we need to create several views. Open your training file. On your project browser, right click on 1st floor in floor plans group. Select duplicate view>duplicate. Revit will create a duplicate named Copy of 1st Floor. The active view is also changed to this new view. Right click on the view name, select rename from context menu. Give it name something like 1st floor door schedule. Pay attention that we dont copy dimensions to this view. If you also need the dimensions, you should choose duplicate with detailing. But we dont need them right now. Now lets tweak the visibility a bit. Open view tab on your Revit ribbon. Click visibility/graphics in graphics tools group.

Uncheck under visibility column for these following items:

casework entourage furniture furniture systems planting

Now check halftone column for these items:

floors railings stairs

Still in visibility/graphics dialog, click the annotation categories tab. Uncheck visibility for sections and elevations. Click OK to apply changes.

Open your original 1st floor plan, and compare to this one. This is how you represent different views for your model. Either in plans, elevations, sections, etc. Now lets add tags. You can manually add tags one-by-one by using tag by category.

But instead of selecting objects one-by-one, lets just tag all our doors and windows. Activate Tag All. First, lets check if we already have our tag families loaded. Click tag group title to expand this panel. Select Loaded Tags.

Check if door tag and window tag are already loaded. If its not loaded yet, click load on the right side of this dialog. You can find those tag families in annotations>architectural folder. Click OK to close the dialog. Click Tag All. Hold [ctrl] and click on door tags & windows tags. Make sure both of them are highlighted. At the bottom of this dialog, leader section, check on create option. Use length 10 mm. Left the orientation to horizontal. Click OK. Your tags may obstruct each other. You can fine tune tags placement by turning off the leader or change the other options on option bar.

You can also click and drag your to new position.

And of course, you can arrange the tag leader!

Here is the finished door and windows schedule plan.

In next Revit tutorial, we will work with room and room legend.

20. Defining Room and Room Legend

October 18, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments

Room is one type of information you can add to your Revit model. Thats why we call it building information modeling (BIM). Its not just lines and text. It can hold a lot of information in your building model. This time we will define rooms in our design, and create a room schedule. Lets open again your project file. Open 1st floor plan view.
Defining Rooms

Activate room tool from ribbon> home tab> room & area panel. Move your pointer to your floor plan. you will see its highlight your rooms. Revit will automatically recognize your rooms separated by walls. Define rooms for rooms as you see below. Simply move your pointer inside a room, and click your mouse. Revit will place the tag automatically. If you

dont like it, uncheck the tag on placement option on option bar.

Room Separation Line

Theres one room left. We dont want the living room defined as one large room from front through the back. And we want to exclude the stair area from living room. But Revit cant recognize them as separate room because we dont place wall there. We can separate them by placing room separation line.

This will activate sketch tool. Simply draw lines that separate the rooms. Snap the line to existing wall, and draw it to the next wall. Feel free to define your own room. After you finish, try to activate room tool again. Place the room definition when you feel its correct. Pretty easy, right?

Renaming Rooms

By default, Revit will name your rooms by Room, and tag it sequentially from the 1st room you define. This is not correct of course. Who wants to have all rooms named by Room? We can rename it by clicking the room tag to select it. Then click again on room name (or tag number) to rename it. After youve done, hit [enter].

So what if I dont place room tag? How can I rename the room? Easy, select the room (not room tag, you might need to press TAB to cycle between objects). Click on element properties from ribbon, contextual tab.

You can change the room name, room number, and other data available.
Room Legend

Lets try to place room legend. But first, right click on your 1st floor plan name on project browser. From context menu, select duplicate view>duplicate with detailing. Rename duplicate with something like 1st floor legend view. Its already active by default. Activate legend tool on your ribbon, room & area panel. You will see the legend on your pointer. Find a place where you feel appropriate, click to place it there.

Revit will ask you which scheme do you want. Change the color scheme to Name, click OK.

You will see your floor plan become like this.

Do you want to try this tool to your 2nd floor plan?

21. Creating Schedule from Revit Model

October 26, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments Creating schedule from your Revit model basically is just the same. Once you are finished with your Revit model, you can count any data from your model. It can be door/window schedule, where you can show how many doors/windows. Or it can be wall schedule, to show wall length, wall area, or wall volume. You can also showing rooms area in your design. Almost everything! In this tutorial, we will create a door schedule. You can try to create different types later. Theyre all just the same steps! If you havent open your Revit model, open it now. Schedule basically is also a view. So you can find the tool in View tab, create panel.

Click on schedules, you will see several tools related to create schedules. Lets just select schedule/uantities. A dialog box will open. There are many categories you can select in this dialog. Select door from category. Click OK.

On the next dialog, Revit will ask you which fields you want to include. Add these fields:

Level Family type Count Cost

You may add several more if you wanted to. You can add them by selecting them then click Add >. You can arrange their order by clicking move up/move down.

You can finish here. Click OK. We will arrange it further. Before we continue further, input the door cost. You can change it directly by clicking and typing in the table cells. Revit will ask you a confirmation, whether you want to change all cost for the same family and type. Click OK.

Now you will see your schedule like this.

Every door instance is reported here. Our schedule hasnt group and sum the same item yet. We will fix this. Right click on your table, select view properties. Revit will open a dialog box. Find sorting/grouping under Other category, and click edit button right next to it.

Lets sort our table. Select sort by Level for the first category. Check blank line option for this category. And then for 2nd category, select then by family and type. Uncheck Itemize every instance to deactivate it. Dont click OK. We havent finished yet!

Now lets move to formatting tab. Select count field. Then check calculate totals to activate it. Why not, we want to see total number of our doors! Do the same for cost. Our schedule should show the total cost, isnt it?

Click OK. You should see the final result now grouped nicely like this.

Try to play more with available settings. You can also try to create different types of schedule like walls or rooms.

22. Placing Views to Sheet

November 2, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 4 Comments

We are getting to the end of this tutorial. We have created our Revit model. We have the plan views, elevation views, section views, schedules, and you might already experiment with perspective views. This is the basic information we can present in a sheet. I consider the basic tutorial ends here. There are more, but we will discuss them separately. I will post them under Revit tips, not in tutorial anymore. Now, we will prepare our views, and placing them to a sheet. Then, we will plot it.
Preparing your Views

Lets make a check list. There are 3 things you need to consider before placing your view to a sheet. Open your 1st floor plan.
1. Check your view name. This view name will be used as your view title. 2. Check your view scale, change the scale if necessary. We use 1:100 at the moment. But if you want to use other scale, change it now. 3. Check your annotations. If you changed your scale, you might see the annotation dont appear properly. Either too close to each other, or too far. 4. Check your view crop region. Checking your Crop Region

You can show/hide your crop region by clicking the button under your views.

Click and drag the crop region control until you get what you want. This is similar to arrange your viewport in AutoCAD. Make the crop region close enough to your model.

Do it for every view you want to place on sheet.

Placing Views on Sheet

Before we place views on our sheet, we need to create a sheet. You can create new sheet from view tab, sheet composition panel.

Revit will open a dialog box, asking you to select a title block. By default, you will only see one title block: A1 Metric (or A1 maybe, if you use imperial). Select it, and click OK. Revit will automatically open the new sheet, and the view button in sheet composition panel become available. Click it, select your view. Lets place 1st Floor Plan. Click add view to sheet, and click your pointer at your desired location. Easy right? But its not fun. People always like to show some magic, especially when you are doing a presentation. You can also click and drag a view name to your sheet from project browser! Place every view you want. Plans, 3D, schedules, etc!

Creating Revit model might be a bit hard to learn. But placing views is easy :) Now pay attention to your section and elevation symbol. Revit will automatically renumber the reference and sheet number! Now we are start talking about BIM. Change your sheet number, and see that this reference number will be also updated!

Printing Your Sheets

You can plot them using the same tool as any other Windows application: the print button or [ctrl] + P.

There are some options in print dialog box, but I think they are not really different with other applications. Play around with them, use dwf or pdf as output, so you wont waste paper, until you are certain you are going to plot it.

23. Vertical Compound Wall

November 30, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 5 Comments We have defined the wall structure horizontally. Now we are going to make another wall type that define how is the wall defined vertically. Activate wall tool. We are going to make some modification to wall type we created in this tutorial. We are going to make a different type of wall for them. With those walls selected, click element properties > type properties. Lets create another duplicate for the brick wall type. Click duplicate and give the type name: vertical compound brick wall. Click edit button next to structure parameter. These steps are exactly the same like what we

did before. But this time, we are going to work by looking at the section view, not floor plan. Change the view from floor plan to section. Its at the bottom of this dialog box.

You will see the preview become like this. You can zoom and pan the preview just like in your model. Use scroll button to zoom and mid button to pan the view. Alternatively, you can use the steering wheel by clicking the magnifier button at the left bottom of this dialog. Zoom until you see the wall layers and the wall bottom.

In the right bottom of this dialog, the modify vertical structure tools are now active. Click split region.

In the preview dialog box, move your pointer until you see the tool tip showing layer 1: exterior finish. You should split it 1000mm from the wall base.

Click to split it. You can select the split line and adjust the height by activating modify tool. You can press [tab] several times to cycle between overlapping objects.

Now on the wall layers list, click the exterior finish to select it. Click insert to add one more layer. With the new layer selected, click assign layers in modify vertical structure group. What are we going to do is to assign the new layer to the bottom part of the exterior layer. Click the bottom layer.

You should see the color is now different. Now change the layer function to finish 1 [4] and the material to a new material. Use one of an existing stone rendering material. Dont forget to make a duplicate first.

Now we have defined different materials for exterior finish. See this animation how to split your wall exterior.

24. Placing Curtain Wall

December 7, 2009 By Edwin Prakoso 9 Comments

Curtain wall in Revit basically is a wall. It just use a different family type. Revit Architecture already has 3 curtain wall types. You can find them in type selector, after activating wall tool.

The curtain wall type is a curtain wall with single panel. We need to define the grids and the mullions after placement. Exterior glazing and Storefront are predefined styles: they already have grids at a specified distance. Storefront even already has the mullions.

Using Exterior Glazing and Storefront

Lets try using the curtain wall. First, create walls like below using any type of generic wall. Create it with unconnected height, 8000mm.

Open modify tab on your ribbon. Activate split tool.

Make sure the delete inner segment in option bar is not active. Split the walls 1500mm from each side.

Open the standard 3D view. Click the 3D view button in Revit quick launch bar. Select a wall segment in the middle and change the type to Exterior Glazing. Select another segment in the middle and change it to Storefront.

Now, lets select the Storefront curtain wall. Activate modify tool, then move your pointer to the curtain wall. Make sure you see the tool tip saying Walls: curtain wall: storefront

before you click it. We can select 4 elements in curtain wall:

1. 2. 3. 4. Mullions Curtain wall grids Curtain wall panel The whole curtain wall itself.

Make sure we are selecting the whole curtain wall. Press [tab] to cycle between objects if you find any difficulties selecting it. From contextual ribbon, click element properties>type properties.

We can define the grid spacing and mullion type in this dialog. You can change the vertical/horizontal pattern and change the mullion type. Try to change the parameters and see what happen. You can see the parameters in all curtain wall types. Not just for Exterior Glazing and Storefront.
Defining Grids

You can combine defining grids using grid pattern and manually place grids. But lets try placing grids manually. Change another wall with curtain wall type. Open a elevation view so you can see the curtain wall face. You can place horizontal grids by clicking on the vertical edge, and vertical grids by clicking the horizontal edge. Try to create some grids like below, or something else that you like.

Select the vertical grid at the middle. Click add/remove segments from your ribbon.

Click the bottom most segment to remove it. Do the same to the horizontal grid until you see the grids like this.

Changing a Panel with Door

We dont place a door in curtain wall like placing a door in a regular wall. We have to change a curtain wall panel with a door panel. Lets load a door panel from Revit library. Move to Insert tab in Revit ribbon, and click load family. In doors folder, find M_Curtain Wall-Store Front-Dbl.rfa and click open. Activate modify tool, and select the mid-bottom panel. Press [tab] several times until you can select the panel, then click your mouse. From contextual ribbon tab, click change element and select M_Curtain Wall-Store Front-Dbl

from drop down list. Your panel will be replaced like this.

Placing Mullion

Placing mullion is easy. Just activate the mullion tool and select the mullion type from type selector. You may also want to try tools in placement panel.

After you satisfied with all the settings, click on the grids you want. We will start to learn creating our own type of mullions later.
Changing the Panel Materials

The last thing we are going to do is changing the material of curtain wall panel. Select the panels that covers 1st and 2nd floor.

If you find some difficulties selecting them, try using filter like we did here. Click element properties>type properties from your ribbon. Click the button next to material parameter. Select glass material, then click duplicate.

Change the material to something less transparent. I use Glass Dark Bronze Frosted. We usually do this to cover the floor slab. We dont want people see the slab, do we?

Managing Design Option in Revit

April 28, 2010 By Edwin Prakoso 4 Comments

One thing that you will always have during design: to have design alternatives or design options. Every project owner and every designer will want to see some alternatives. How the building will looks like in plan, section, and 3D model. So how we do that in Revit? Do we have to save our design to another file and modify the changes? No we dont! Revit has a feature exactly for this purpose: Design Options. You can find design option on Revit ribbon, manage tab, design options panel.

Preparing Your Model

Let us create a very simple floor plan first. A simple floor plan like this will do. I use something like this. The size of the plan is not critical. You may also use your own model if you like.

Now imagine we cant decide how the entrance would look like. We are going to create two alternatives for the entrance. You may want to add more for practicing later.
Activating and Preparing Design Option

Before you use the design options, you will see all the buttons grayed and disabled. Except for design option button. Click the design option button, and you will see a dialog box opened. On the right hand side of the dialog, you will see 3 groups of buttons. The first one is to choose which option you want to edit. You need to define option set first. The second group manage option set. Option set is used to manage which area you want to have the options. You can manage the options for entrance area, options for reception area, option for pantry area in separate option set.

You can create new option set, rename it, accept it as primary, or delete the option set. Click new button in option set group. You will see option set 1 and option 1 (primary) as a child in the option tree. Select option set 1 from the tree, then click rename button in option set group. Rename it to building entrance. And then select option 1 (primary), click rename button in option group. Rename it to stacked entrance. Add new option and rename it to arched entrance.

Now we have one option set, and in that option set we have two options. Select the primary option, then click edit selected in edit group. Close the dialog. Now you will see the plan grayed out and you cant select the elements in the drawing. This is because the active set now is the stacked entrance option.
Optional: Moving Building Elements to Option Sets

One thing that you may have in mind now, what if you want the existing elements are in one of my design option? You need to move it to your option. Imagine that the options are transparent paper you will overlay on your main model. If you want option 1, then you place transparent paper 1. You can then add more elements on that paper. But you cant change the main model. To move your existing elements to an option, you need to switch to main model first. You can do this by selecting from drop down list in design option panel. Select main model from the list. While you are in main model, you can select the existing building elements. Select the elements you want to move. Revit will open contextual tab, you need to activate the manage tab again. Yes, its quite annoying. Then click add to set.

Choose to which option sets you want the element exist. Now you can continue working on each option set.
Creating Options

Add more walls and add door like this. You may add more building elements as necessary.

Now we have finished the first design option. Let us work on the second option. You can change the active option by using drop down menu in design option panel.

Now you will see the entrance door disappear, just like youve never worked there before! Create another design for the entrance.

Now you have two design options for the entrance. Apologies for the design, I believe you can create more attractive design than me :) Dont forget to review the design in other views. Try to see the 3d view, sections, and schedules. You can add more option sets for different areas for your design. And have several options for that particular area.

Finalizing Your Design

After you have done with the presentation and choose an option that you will use, open design option dialog. Choose the option, and click make primary. Primary option will always appear even if you are not using design option anymore. Then click finish editing in edit group to end using design option.

Using Design Phase in Your Revit Project

June 9, 2010 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments

In a building design, you might need to create multi-phase design. It can be existing and new construction phase for renovation projects. Or it can be you need to create some temporary construction that you will need to demolish later. Or the project itself require us to build it in multiple phases.
Understanding How Design Phase Works

Let us open a project. You can use any project or simply create a new one. Just place a wall and select it. In instance properties, you will see phasing category. There are two parameters here: phase created and phase demolished.

By default, Revit has two phases: existing and new construction. New construction will be used as default, your newly created building elements will be in this phase. If you are working on renovation project or building expansion project, you can change the element phase to previous phase: existing. If there are any building elements you need to demolish, you can define when the element should be demolished.

Let us try a simple case, we want to demolish the wall (1) for building extension. I changed the phase created to existing, and change the phase demolished to none. To close the existing area, I created a temporary wall (2). This wall is created during building extension project, and also will be demolished in this phase. So I change the phase created to new construction, and phase demolished to new construction as well. See how they are represented differently.

Let us see another sample. This door below is created on new construction, while the wall created in existing. Revit will automatically tell us the wall need to be demolished to place the door. The wall in the door location is not removed like usual, but shown in dashed lines.

Managing Phases

We can rename, add, remove and arrange the phases sequence in phasing dialog box. You can access it from Revit ribbon, manage tab, phasing panel. Click phases button.

There are three tabs in this dialog box. In project phases, you can manage the phases.
Phase Filters

In phase filters tab, you can manage how to show your objects. For example, show demo + new filter will only show all objects that demolished and objects that are created in new phases.

You can use the filters in properties palette (or in view properties dialog box for pre-2011).

Try to play with this filter. And dont forget, schedules are views too. So you can separate how many walls need to be demolished, and how many walls need to be built, separate from existing walls! Isnt that cool?
Graphic Overrides

The last tab controls how your object should be shown. You might want to create more phases, and want to control each phases graphical representation. You can manage them here.

Design Collaboration in Revit: Preparing Worksets

July 26, 2010 By Edwin Prakoso 4 Comments

When you start to work on a large project, you probably start to think about design collaboration. You need several users work simultaneously on a project. And not having the others wait while you work. You can use Revit link, which is pretty similar with AutoCAD XREF. But Revit link works best if you have several building on your site, and link them in a master plan. But when you work on one building, using worksets is more appropriate.
The Worksets Concept

As you know, Revit work on a single project file. In any applications, you cannot open the same file if someone already open that file. You can only open it on other computer as read only, and you cant save any changes that you make to the same file. The idea of using worksets is dividing the project file to several worksets, and put all of the worksets in a central file. The central file is saved in a shared location (commonly a shared folder in a server) and each user can create a copy of that central file in their local hard drive. Each of the users will only open the workset that is assigned to them.

Since each user using local copy of the master file, they can work individually with the same project file and save the changes they make. But they are limited to work only on workset(s) they open. After theyve done, they can save the project, and update the central file. Other users can see the changes after they update their workset with the central file. Confused? You probably will. To get the concept more clearly, we are going to do a little exercise.
Simulating Multiple Users

If you have several computers with Revit installed, you can open Revit in each computer before you start using them. If you only have one computer, you can simulate them in one machine, using multiple account. I hope your computer is powerful enough to do this. Create two more accounts from Windows control panel and give each of them password. The accounts must be password protected. Now you should have 3 Windows accounts. Refer to Windows help how you can do it if you have problem. Open Revit normally. This session will act as you, the user name you use to login. Let us open another Revit instance. Right click on Revit icon (hold [shift] then right click in Windows 7) choose run as different user. You will see a dialog box open. Type the user and password. Wait until this Revit instance is finish loading. Open another instance with the last account. Now you have three Revit instances running as three different users. If you see a warning, simply ignore it. It will not affect this tutorial.
Defining Worksets

Now let us create a very simple project in the first user window. I simply create a box that I will use as the building shell. Now lets pretend we have finished our shell design. Now we are going to create several worksets. Open collaborate tab on your ribbon. Click worksets in worksets panel.

You are going to see a warning that you are enabling worksharing. Because we do want to enable it, so you dont need to worry. Create your new workset name as shell. Then click OK.

You will see worksets dialog box opened. I use Mike as the file creator, so you see Mikes name here. Click new and create two more worksets.

Give them name level 1 interior and level 2 interior.

Now we are going to save it to central file. First time you save it, then it will be the central file. Pick a place in a shared folder or somewhere all your users can access it. Remember, if you are simulating this on one machine, do not save it in my documents folder! Your path will be hard to find by the other users. Place it somewhere in C or D drive. Something like c:\exercise. Now we have the central file. Next, we have to release the ownership of the other worksets. Click relinquish all mine in collaborate tab, synchronize panel.

Opening Worksets

Now let us open the worksets. What we did by clicking relinquish all mine is changing the editable setting to no. Now in your computer (or your account) change it to yes. You should see your name in owner column now.

Now move to other computer and change the editable properties to yes. You will see the workset that already edited by other user appear here. You cant edit it when other are working on it. Open other workset. Before you start to work on your workset, change the active workset to your workset. And activate gray inactive workset graphics to easily distinguish your workset.

Close workset dialog box. Do it in the last computer too. Now we have 3 people on 3 computers, working on the same project.
Working on Workset

Now work on your model. Lets say my buddy Greg has develop level 1 interior. After he has done, he need to submit his updated design to the central file. He need to click synchronize with central to submit the changes.

Now the central file has been updated. But the other users still dont see the changes. After the synchronization finished, the other users have to click reload latest to see the changes. Will there be a pop up or a message mentioning something has changed? Unfortunately no. There is a plugin that does that, but you need to download it. And its only available for subscription customer. Find the Revit extension named worksharing monitor. I believe now you get the idea how design collaboration works in Revit. We will discuss a bit more about workset later.

Using shared parameters for Revit schedule

January 18, 2011 By Edwin Prakoso 0 Comments

We have discussed how we can report single door width from a double door family using custom field. However, the technique using conditional IF may not suitable for many condition. Many times the condition is not met in our project. The better technique is using shared parameter in Revit family, then report it in schedule. We can use it in families and projects.

Creating Shared Parameters

Lets open a double door family. You can choose any door available with Revit installation. As we can see, it shows width value: Door opening width.

All default families have equal door width. So lets just use it. Go to manage tab, click shared parameters.
1. In edit shared parameters, we need to create a shared parameter file first. Click create button, then give the file a name. Save it. 2. Now we have new group button enabled. Click it and create a group named width. You can also use group name like dimension or other name. 3. Click new button under parameter group. 4. Give the shared parameter name, and set the type as length.

Click OK until all dialog boxes are closed. Now we have a shared parameter.

Using Shared Parameters in Library

Click family types from ribbon.

In family types dialog box, under parameter category, add. In opened properties dialog box, choose shared parameter. Click select button to choose the Door Width we created before. Click OK to add it to our family.
Defining Formula

Back to family types dialog box, find door width. In formula column, change the value to Width/2. Remember, parameter name in Revit is case sensitive.

Now save the library, upload it to your project and use it. After you have done, try to create door schedule. Now you should be able to report Door Width value we created before.

Other usage
There are many possibilities to use shared parameters. In this example, we simply use it do define door width. Its very simple because we simply divide the double door width by 2. In other case, you can create unequal door width (door 1 width, door 2 width, and total opening). You can create notes. And many other uses. For further reading, you can read this article in AEC magazine and this one from Revit OpEd. And dont forget to check our e-book: Revit family tutorial. The e-book will guide you the basic of creating Revit families, included with animation. Now after you see this example, do you have any thought how you would use it?

Using Custom Label in Revit Sheets

March 9, 2011 By Edwin Prakoso 14 Comments

We have a tutorial how to create a Revit title block family from your DWG file. In that tutorial there is a discussion on how we can have custom labels on our sheets. Lets get started. Open your title block family. If you created one from this Revit tutorial, you can use it.

Creating shared parameters

If you havent created a shared parameter file, refer to this tutorial. Go to manage tab on your ribbon. Click shared parameters in settings panel.

It will open a dialog box.

1. Click new under groups. Type title block info then click OK. We will put every shared parameters related to title block here. 2. Now lets create a parameter. Click new button under parameters group.

Name what custom information you want to show on your sheet. Here I want to show consultant information. Dont forget to change the type to text.

Click OK. Repeat the steps above if you still have more custom information. After you finished, click OK to close the dialog box.

Add custom label to Revit sheet

Now lets place the label to our sheet. Go to home tab. Click label in text panel.

Click where you want to place the label. This will open a dialog box. Click add new parameter (shown by arrow below).

Another dialog box opened. Click select.

Choose your shared parameter then click OK. Click OK again until you see edit label (above dialog) the only dialog box opened. Now you should see its in this dialog and selected. Click add parameter to label to use it. Click OK. Now we can see the label is updated. If you have more labels you need in this sheet , repeat the steps above until youre done. Save the title block. Create a new project and load the template.

Adding parameter to Revit project

Now we are finished with the title block. Our next task is to use it in our project. You may want to create it in empty project file, so you can save it as a template. This will allow you to have them loaded every time you start your project. With Revit project active, go to manage tab on your ribbon. Click project parameters.

In opened dialog box, click add. Another dialog box opened.

1. Choose shared parameters then click select. Choose your shared parameter. 2. Now you should see the data change. 3. Check project information in categories.

We are finished now. Click OK.

Changing label values

We are done. We already have the parameters in our project, and labels in sheet to show them. Try to create a sheet using the family you customized before. The label is still empty, but dont be sad. We havent fill the project information yet. You do remember we put the parameter in project information category, arent you? Click project information in manage tab.

Now you should see the custom parameters! Try to change the value and check your title block now.

They are now showing your custom Revit project information. What kind of custom information you need to add in your title block? Can you add them using this method?

Creating Parts in Revit Architecture 2012

November 3, 2011 By Edwin Prakoso 3 Comments

Parts and assemblies are Revit 2012 new features. First time I heard about these terms, I thought theyre similar to parts and assemblies in MCAD application like Inventor. But apparently no. Part in Revit and part in Inventor are different concept. In Revit, you can divide element into smaller parts. Snipped from help file: Parts can be generated from elements with layered structures, such as: Walls (excluding stacked walls and curtain walls) Floors (excluding shape-edited floors) Roofs (excluding those with ridge lines) Ceilings Structural slab foundations The idea of dividing into parts is for scheduling and tagging purpose. So we can deliver schedule report in more details, and also flexibility to work with smaller parts. Lets try to create parts from a wall.

Creating Revit parts

We can create parts from an element by selecting it and click create parts from contextual ribbon.

In this example,I use basic wall. It has several layers.

I select it and click create parts, then each layer will become a part. If you move your pointer above the wall, you will see they are separate parts.

If you dont see the parts, check your properties palette. When you have nothing in selection set, it should show you view properties. Check if parts visibility value is show parts.

You should be aware that if you set it to show original , you will not be able to select part in this view.

Dividing Parts
Still need to divide them to smaller parts? After you create parts, you can split it further. Select your part and click divide parts.

Remember, you have to select part, not the original element. Selecting wall in parallel elevation view can be difficult, so it might be easier if you open multiple views if you have high resolution. After you activate it, you might need to set work plane to work with this part. You can just pick part faces as a plane.

Now all we need is to divide the part into smaller parts. Draw lines as necessary to divide it.

After you finish with the sketch, click finish edit mode.

You should see your wall is divided to smaller parts.

We will continue working with parts in the next article. We will work with tags.

Applying material, scheduling and tagging Revit parts

November 8, 2011 By Edwin Prakoso 2 Comments

So we learned how to create Revit parts. What are the benefits of parts anyway? Dividing your element to smaller parts allows you to create detailed appearance of your element. You can have different materials in a wall layer. You can modify part size by dragging the grips. Not limited to its appearance, you can report parts in your schedule. You can also tag them as separate elements, not as the whole original element.

Applying materials
Applying material is the same with applying it to original element. Choose your part(s) and change your material in properties palette. You must uncheck material by original to allow this override.

This is what I have done to my wall.

And yes, we can render it too. Dont forget to change part visibility to show parts! If you choose to set your view to show original, it will render the original element.

Creating schedule
You can create parts schedule by selecting parts in category. The process is exactly the same as creating other schedules in Revit.

You may want to try changing parts size and see how the schedule is dynamically updated. You can drag shape handles to change part size. To enable shape handle, you need to select the part and check show shape handles in properties palette.

Tagging parts
You can tag parts using tag by category.

Activate the tool, then click on your part. If you havent loaded part tag, you will see this warning.

Click yes to load tag. You can find part tag in annotations folder. Remember, M prefix is for metric families. If youre using imperial families, you will see part_tag.rfa.

Place your tags to your parts. You may see question marks like this. Why was that?

Just like other Revit tags, you need to define the element mark that shows the tag value. Select the part and fill mark value in properties palette.

Do you think you can use it?

Do you think Revit parts can be useful in your work? Have you use it, or how do you plan to use it? Share with us here!