Where have I been ?

It’s been over a moth since I posted something new on my blog. But the reason is the amount of Revit training and events we have been taking care of! At the beginning of the month I flew to Orlando to train a second group of professionals on Revit Architecture at one of our Multi-discipline large accounts. I have also been locally bringing up to speed and working very closely with a Construction / Architecture firm in West Palm beach, and lastly yesterday we were the host of a delicious Latin lunch during Autodesk’s Road Tour at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Our clients are so happy with our trainings sessions that keep scheduling more groups for us to train.
Let the pictures speak for themselves:

This is the Orlando group during a break. They didn’t want to leave their chair and wanted to keep on learning Revit !

These are some pictures of our Latin Lunch, we even had Salsa dancers in the room to spice things up. It was a pleasure for all of us, AEs, to answer questions and to show new features of the 2009 Autodesk products to all our customers attending the event. Keep posted for my next blog on Mental Ray rendering in Revit and 3dsmax Design.

If you were there, drop us a line and let us know if you had a nice time!
crullier@bellsouth.net or crullier@bellsouth.net

A Window Wall System - Scratching the Surface

Recently I came across an implementation task to provide a process to build a Window Wall System is Revit, once again I'm sure many of your will benefit from this post so read ahead. What I have to start off is an elevation of two bays that are 20'-00" in span. So let's beginning breaking this down.



What I am showing you in this elevation is the complete system in addition to two very important datums objects; reference planes. To successfully assemble this system we will create two reference planes at predetermined heights based on our system design which we will use to anchor the bottom of our beam and windows too.

So to start I'm going to assume that we have columns evenly spaces every 20'-00" and that we have the first run of window already installed on the bottom level. So on elevation if our modules are 7'-6" high, I am going to create two reference planes. One of them will sit right on top of the already in place windows (7'-6") and will make sure that I name it so that I can use it as a drawing plane in the future. To do so, I will select the reference plane, pull up its Element Properties and insert a distinctive name (in this case MID BEAM - WWS) into the instance parameter Name.



Once the plane in named it should like this when selected. Keep in mind the name will once show when the Ref. Plane is selected. Let's repeat the process now for a second Ref. Plane, We will use this plane to draw our second row of windows resting on the beam, therefore I will create this Ref. Plane 10" from the previous one which is the height of my beam. I will call this Ref. Plane TOB - WWS.



One this is all in place we can now go to a floor plan, I chose Level 1. Since we already have the bottom window section and the default view range has a cut plane of 4'-00", we will now move the cut place so that we can see above the beam we are about place and the windows for the upper windows. To do this we will pull up the view property window and click on VIEW RANGE.

Since we want to move the cut plane up and in a way eliminate what is bellow us we will make the following changes to the Primary Range: I have changed the Cut plane from 4' to 8' (remember the the bottom of the beam is at 7'-6") - I also mentioned I was not interested in seeing the objects close the ground so I change the Bottom Offset to 6' from its default of 0'-00" This means you have a view of Level 1 between 6' and 8'.



This more or less how your view should look:



At this point we need to select the first Ref. Plane we created to that we can lay our beam on top of it. In order to to that we need to click the Plane button located on the upper tool bar, this button will then bring up a context dialog for us to choose the Ref. Plane.





Make sure you select the Name option and from the pull down you select MID BEAM - WWS which is the name of our first Ref. Plane. From this point on any object inserted into the view will be aligned on top of this Ref. Plane. From the Structural tool panel we are going to plane a Beam between the columns, what is most important about this part of the exercise is to set the beam properties for Z Direction Justification to Bottom. You can do this before or after you place the beam. Other parameters to look at include Start and End Justification, set these to zero.

Now that we have the beam in place as show above, we can select the second Ref. Place by clicking on the Plane button on the top most tool bar and going through the same procedure. However this time when you extend the drop down menu make sure you select the Ref. Plane TOB - WWS and use this plane to insert the second row of windows.

What is a Drafting View?

I recently received an e-mail in which a user wanted to know what was the usage for a Revit drafting View. So make things easy I have clipped my reply bellow..

A Drafting View:

"...It is a view that can be used for any purpose such as detailing. It does NOT have any relationship to a specific portion of the model, unless you link using a CALLOUT.In this view you can draw 2D objects, insert detailing components which are 2D;Basically anything that is found under the DRAFTING toolbar. You can also use a drafting view to import an existing AUTOCAD drawings such as DOOR JAMB detail for example, and make it part of your Revit document..."

By the way, the Drafting View Command is found under the VIEW tab.

Hand Railings Explained ! - Finally

Hello again !

Well we all know that usually the railings that are in the default template are not always the ones we need, nor they look the way we want them to look. So I've put together a short explanation to help you around the cumbersome task of modifiying a railing type.

In order to change a railing type we need to access its type parameters, we can either do this while we are in sketch mode drawing our railing (under "railing propeties") or we can select the object properties once the railing has been created and go from there.

Once I acces the element properties and the go into the "Type Properties", you will notice that there are two buttons that will call separate dialog boxes for "Rail Structure" and "Baluster Placement". The Railing Structure Dialog blox allows you to specify a profile family to be extruted along the horizontal length of the railing. What is neat about this dialog is that it allows you to insert as many "railing" components as you need using different profiles and different elevations.

So once you have the horizontal members the way you want them, then you can exit this dialog box and go onto the next one which is the "Baluster Placement". In the Baluster Placement dialog, you will find a similar aproach to describe the vertical members, begining and ending post. However, rather than using extruded profiles, this dialog actually uses 3D geometry famlies categorized as "baluster" (these are built or modeled using the Baluster.rtf family template.) Therefore keep in mind that you need to load the appropriate familes you need for your railing before you enter this dialog box (oops!)

On the upper portion under the heading of "Main Pattern" you can load many different common balusters that will appear within a period of repetition and space them accordingly. The bottom part labeled "Posts" Allows you to select different post for Starting, Corner, and Ending conditions. This gives you great flexibily to use different post for corners and ends.

By using different starting and ending posts you can also recreate stair railing used for ADA with different extensions at the start and end. :) Until next time.
CR.

We are almost up ! - Why, When, How?

So here I am!

I want to take this brief moment to thank you for coming to my blog. In case you are wondering what this is all about, let me tell you. I have created this blog to share tips and tricks I have learned or picked up along as well as to show you certain hidden functions of Revit Architecture and thus helping you make the most out of your Reviting !

I plan to keep this blog alive by updating it once a month at least with formal tips, links and resources you can use to better your workflow! In return however I would appreciate you feedback on my postings and of course know that as always you can contact me via e-mail or at my office Digital Drafting Systems. I hope to hear from you.

Your Revit-geek friend,

CR