Revit Advanced Modeling Tutorial. Advanced Autodesk Revit Modeling Techniques Using Complex Geometry: Walls, Floors, Roofs, and Beams. Revit Architecture Advanced Modeling.
This class will cover advanced modeling techniques in Autodesk Revit software by using unconventional modeling elements to “guide” the creation of complex geometry. This is done by using everyday commands and elements within the project environment to create complex walls, floors, roofs, and beams that support and follow the contours of complex forms from curved undulating roofs and site topography to extremely complex organic animal shapes.
Major topics are:
– Apply the intersection method to model complex geometry
– Apply new techniques of modeling complex geometry to any form including organic, free-form shapes
– Create complex walls, floors, roofs, and beams that follow the shape of any roof surface
– Create walls that exactly follow the contours of any site topography
#CADTutorials #CADCAMTutorials #RevitTutorials
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Okay we’re gonna get started hello my name is Marcelo Scambler II I’m a structural engineer I work for John Martin Associates in downtown Los Angeles and today I’m gonna be talking about advanced Autodesk Revit modeling techniques using complex geometry so I’m sure everyone here has a reason while
They’re here we got a lot of material to cover we’re gonna fly right through it I’m gonna do all live demos and we’re gonna have about an hour and a half of live demos so I’m sure something’s gonna go wrong along the way but we’ll work through it I’m just going the only
Reason I have the PowerPoint is to show you what we’re gonna go over really quick and then some of the work I’ve done in the past all right and since this is such a large audience maybe we’ll hold questions till the end I will stay here because there’s a break
After and I’d be happy to answer any questions if you have a burning question then go ahead and raise your hand and if it doesn’t take a long time to answer all I’ll go ahead and answer on the spot or defer it till later that sound good to everyone all right excellent let’s
Get started well I already talked about this is what we’re gonna talk about today these are all the learning objectives basically what we’re gonna do today is we’re going I’m gonna give you a series of complex shapes and we’re going to use some methods that I’ve created to build elements with that are
Available to you in the project environment in Revit to actually show it can you can lay them on these surfaces and they can follow those surfaces exactly and these are all general methods so you can apply them to anything you want I have a more structural bias so we’re gonna use a lot
Of structural beams for these examples but certainly you comply them to anything you want right that’s the basis of the class we won’t be talking about how to actually model surface forms necessarily so this is what we’re gonna do in the class ready we’re first going
To show I’m going to show you we’re gonna give you a surface a roof surface like this and I’m gonna show you how to actually play structural beams on this roof surface beams that actually are curved in only one direction that’s the first one we’re gonna do and I’m going
From from a level of complexity from easy to difficult so I’m just going to introduce the principles here on how to do it and we’re gonna get progressively more complex shapes and elements then we’re gonna talk about how to actually place use that same methodology and how you
Actually place the the profiles of walls to the underside of these roofs okay just a curve one wall that’s planar then I’m going to show you how to create a beam in two directions curving in two directions that will actually follow the contour of these roofs surfaces okay
That’s what we do next then I’m gonna actually I threw this in last minute but uh there certainly I have a methodology for it how to actually make a spiral inside of Revit because you don’t have a spiral tool and you’re in your draw toolbox right
You have spline but you don’t have a spiral so the method that I’m going to that we’re going to use to place this beam is actually the same principle that’s gonna actually be able to build this spiral I should say helix not spiral okay it’s technically a helix
Then anyone work with psyche topography anybody okay when I came up with it with the roof everyone said well yeah that’s great but I work with psych topography is there any way you can take a wall and shape it to a psych topography and I said absolutely I tried this method that
We’re gonna go over and it didn’t work so I had to modify that method and I’m gonna show you how to do this and just for kicks I tried to model in the site tool editor I went a big learning curve but anyway I was able to model something
Complex so that is a human head alright so you can do it and all you rev it light users you can do this inside you have these modeling tools available to you and all these files that I have are going to be available to you after the
Class so you can play with them right and then if you thought that was complex enough we’re gonna take a Revit cow and we’re gonna be able to place I’ll use those principles and place a floor with in the Revit cow everyone’s wondering what the Revit cow is right I’ll show
You in a minute what the Revit cow is but we’re gonna use principles in place a floor on the Revit cow and the classes walls beams rooms and floors so this is our floor it really it’s more profiles of floors and walls and then we’re gonna take the
Principle we had with the beams and we’re gonna place them on the Revit cow and make some ribs on the right a cow now everyone’s probably asking why are you gonna show me how to build floors and beams on a cow this is why one it’s
Awesome and fun and two if you can build a floor edge that follows the contour of a cow and a beam that follows the contour of a cow you’d be able to build any element to fuddle follow any contour anytime in the future so after this class what I’d like
Everyone to do on Monday is one tell them now you know how to lay elements on two cows they’re gonna be confused and wonder what conference you went to you also when your clients come up with certain shapes and forms all you have to do is say I’m ready hit me with your
Best shot because I can do it so that’s the idea right and then what I’m gonna do is I’m also going to show you how to actually scale a family inside of Revit this is a I actually figured out some methods a couple months ago and I
Thought I’d bring it into the class so before we actually this is a cow that’s to full scale so what we’ll do is we’ll scale it up first times 10 and make it into a building size then we’ll lay the floor on it which would make more sense
Right and well I’ll show you how to actually scale that okay that’s what we’re gonna do everyone ready okay first I do want to take a step back and I want to show you some of the stuff I’ve done in the past just so everyone kind of
Knows where I’m coming from and all these methods that I’ve used today I’ve actually used them to model some of this stuff I’ve done in the past and if no one has seen my work before I try to take Revit and push it to its extreme
Limits all the way out there and so this is some of the stuff I’ve come up with and it’s really got the developers attention and the some modifications have happened accordingly so here’s the Revit cow you’ll get to know and love this one but it’s also
Available for you to play with after the class I actually built a compete of construction equipment there’s fully parametric the tail hander should be called a Revit telehandler built a 747 jumbo jet and when the massing tools first came out if anyone was in my lab
Yesterday got a chance to play with this we actually laid some floors into it and and and built the engine and placing some landing gear was great next was I built a sedan the Revit car is modeled after I wouldI I also did a truck has
Anyone seen this one okay yeah this one was my pride and joy this one got the developers attention boy I didn’t it wasn’t really my intention I was trying to push brother to its limits but once this hit the ground that chrome got a hold of it and he he dissected it and
Spread it everywhere and Carl bast the CEO Saudis and he said you can do that in Revit and he said yes so if you can get the CEO to rev it to say that can be done in Revit with the question mark and you convince him that it can and you’ve
Really done something great so many people ask me why did I model the elephant in Revit I don’t really answer that question but it’s really inspired a lot of people to look at Revit in a new light and realize things that they’ve come and done in the in the past so the
Revit elephant and maybe if we have time we’ll open up the model later okay after break the Revit pumpkin you know what I’m gonna do I’m gonna give this available for download too because if the cow for all you people who may be vegetarians are sensitive using a cow
I’ll give you the Revit pumpkin to play with as well all right I threw this in here because I don’t only work with complex in organic shapes I do do some practical work and apply these methods that I have onto projects this is actually the LAX terminal international
Terminal expansion at LAX that I’ve worked on but these curved roofs we actually use the same method I use the same methodology to build all that geometry at my company the Revit lifts this is fully parametric another one this is the last family I built a few
Months ago the Revit user this is this is a Revit model I was the only one crazy enough to pose for it so you may see a little bit of likeness in there but I wanted to see how well a human could be modelled inside a Revit
And that’s what you get and it’s a little disturbing but anyway you get the idea right it’s I will not give you this one but it’s definitely on the level of complexity it’s probably a 15 and the elephants probably a 5m Bradley so that’s how difficult it is but anyway
The whole point here is that there’s modeling inside of Revit tools inside of Revit in the project environment and the mass family environment and the adaptive component environment where you can model anything you want inside of Revit all right so that’s that’s really the point here and you got to look beyond
Just the functionality from the project environment and realize that Revit much more powerful than just what’s what’s on the surface all right okay so from now on we’re gonna switch over and do all live demos fortunately I’m gonna be up on the podium here hopefully I can move
Around a little bit but let’s go ahead and start with that first exercise and what I’d like to do is what’s really important here is not necessarily the details on how to do everything but it’s really the thought process and the attitude that you have when you start to
Encounter these complex shapes that’s what’s really important and I’m gonna go through and have some positive messages as we go along that’ll hopefully inspire you so let’s get started how we do it on time okay good all right can everyone see my pointer here my cursor all right
Firstly I can’t really see those screens very well see if I get a pointer on there that’s a little hard all right okay let’s get started another thing I’m gonna say is that what we’re going to be showing you today is not functionality that’s modeling techniques it’s necessarily on the surface there are
More or less workarounds that’s what they are so when I when I came to model complex geometry elements onto curved roof surfaces and and other surfaces complex surfaces there’s no real tools on the surface of Revit to let you do it so these are all workarounds okay just
Just so everyone knows that all right so I’m gonna talk about the the limitation and then the workaround for each one of these all right so has anyone ever so what our first exercise is we’re gonna lay a structural beam on this floor on this roof excuse me along grid c1 that would
Actually follow that contour okay structural beam this is technically a mass surface I’ll just it’s made up of four splines so just everyone knows that I’m not going to show you how to model that but if you haven’t done any any modeling in the in the mass family
Environment or the in the in place family in place modeling environment then I encourage you to do that right away so let’s get started how we gonna place a beam along this surface this is what we’re gonna do so we go to what would you do go to level one what cut a
Section right this is what you get and when I was doing this I would activate a beam and I’d come to the pit come pick command right and I’d come over here and I try to pick that line and I just get would I’d pick all day and it would just
Drive me nuts because that’s the line I want to place my beam on but I can’t touch it it’s this low-hanging fruit that I can’t grab it’s like a design option as you can see it but it’s locked in you kid you can’t get it I just
Frustrated me so much what I was doing what I was doing before was I was coming to my spline tool right and I was coming here and I was clicking along here all right to build my beam has anyone done this or come come on anyone need a supplying tool all
Right after this class as graduates of this class you will never have to use that spline tool again all right all right let’s look at this for a moment what is that line that’s my work line but that line is also the intersection of my grid sea and the surf bottom of
That surface so all I need to do is find the intersection of those two planes right the intersection of two planes makes a line so when I figured that I was like I got it wait a minute Revit doesn’t give you the intersection of two
Surfaces so I know 3ds max did it and I was like why don’t you do it Revit it drove me nuts and back then when I was doing these with the spline tool I used to get mad at Autodesk I used to say why but now I don’t the
Reason I’m so sick well the reason I am able to model this kind of stuff is because I changed my attitude I said okay you won’t let me do that I’ll find a way around it and that’s what this is so what I like to think of these things
Now are gifts from from Autodesk does anyone here from Autodesk nobody Wow where oh come on now I pick on you when during the class where are you no okay I will find you okay I changed my attitude because I said fine you’re not gonna let me find the intersection of that but
Your sibling program can I’m gonna find a way to do it and then I was thinking about it and I thought oh you know what the pick command is able to pick edges so why don’t I just make an edge and that was the birth of the intersection
Method and I’m gonna show you the intersection method hopefully this goes viral share it spread it all over the internet because this is how you’re going to be modeling all this complex geometry now through what I’ve coined the intersection method and it’s extremely simple all right all you do is
This and Alex I’ll explain why I’m doing this but I’m gonna use a wall at the moment a wall by face okay and then I’m placing it on this particular mass surface you can do that by the way it’s in the handout if you didn’t know that wall you
Can do by face you can also do a roof by face I’ll explain why I did not do a roof by face I’m placing a wall on this roof surface I’ll explain that in a moment okay but anyway I just placed this wall on there alright then let me
Get rid of my mass there you go here mass I mean isolate hide this okay then all I do is take a wall another wall and I place it at the face of this grid right and I thought okay now I got something I’m getting somewhere
Right if I if I make a roux if I make a wall on the surface and then I build another wall do you see that line that’s in between them at that interface isn’t that the line we want so I want to make that an edge so I can pick it well the
Developers did something wonderful for us that’s one of those gifts they gave us and it is a special man command called join you can join two solids together inside of Revit why am I using walls solids because walls of solids because they’re available to me in the
Project environment but you can use a mass surface a mass solid to mask solids hey you can join two solids together that’s the point so I’m gonna pick my wall that’s always the cutting surface solid and now I picked pick the vertical wall it’s my cutting the cutting element
And then I’m gonna pick my roof and then I’m gonna isolate it see look what I got yeah I have something I’ve got something right and then let me go back anyway by the way everyone knows what this point is right what this is I’m gonna set this
Here set pick plain does everyone see what that is that plane what is that plane that’s grade C right because that’s where we drew the face of that wall I’m gonna pick that that’s gonna be my work plane for my beam that I place down and then I pick a beam
And I come over here I picked that line and I cross my fingers oh and look something magical just happened look did you see what happened it just placed that beam along that edge all right everyone get that so we don’t need that functionality for intersection
We have we can use elements inside of Revit the walls join them you get the edge to pick it you’ve got your beam all right so apply this to anything else I get when I show this methods of people they come back and they say I use it on
Curbs I use it on sidewalks I use it on on Rails and so on and so forth so you don’t use a structural beam but that’s the that’s the probably the simplest form of the intersection method okay everyone clear with that pretty simple right yeah and when I talk to autodesk
About this they’re like oh yeah we knew you could do it we don’t know how you could do it but we knew you could do it so that’s what this was all right very good so thank you all right intersection method are very good and another thing I want everyone to take
Away here is that I did not come to this realization until I opened my mind up to all the tools inside of Revit when I was originally doing that I was using the spline tool and I was using reference planes and reference lines to try to draw everything but you don’t have to
Rabbits a huge program with hundreds of functionality in it so why not use walls to guide your geometry this is what I call guide entities so if you want to think about it these are really more or less sacrificial walls or walls that you just want to use in either throw away or
Hide so that’s gonna be the buzzword we’re gonna be using sacrificial elements I call them but you don’t necessarily have to delete them you hide them and do whatever you want with them but their net their real purpose in life is to just guide your geometry why not
All right ok so let’s move on let me let me do this let me hide this now so really you can use this functionality that has any pic function in it so walls floors roofs mostly anything with a profile right or a system family so we’re just I’m just
Going to show you really quick that you can do it with walls let’s see if this works so we’re gonna do edit profile and I’m going to pick see now that we have that edge I’m gonna go ahead and pick it should should hit it see you here there we go
You see that this is the profile of the wall right let’s see here maybe I’ll just redraw it oops you got to get that edge forget to get that edge and then we’ll clean it up but everyone knows what I’m trying to do right I’m just trying to make that wall profile
Follow the underside of that particular that particular roof surface where’s my trim there we go let’s delete all this other stuff this is the old stuff right there we go see see what I’m looking at by the way if you ever want make sure cross your fingers
Oh oh oh that’s okay that’s okay it unjoined it but isolate you see that that’s also a wall do you see how it follows the underside of that of that surface now I know what you’re probably thinking why don’t you just attach the wall to the underside of that surface
Right well you’re only allowed to join the underside of walls or attach the underside of walls to Russe and that wasn’t a roof right so it was a it was a wall that we placed by face if I did a roof by face you could do that
But I wanted to illustrate that you can use this method in a general sense this doesn’t you can attach this profile or you can make that profile the wall follow anything all right one more thing with the reason why I use the wall is I still have my Beeman here see here I
Does everyone see that beam you see how though you see how the work line hit that underside of that wall there is my pointer everyone see that well the beauty of a wall is such that you could control the vertical placement of your beam so what if this beam you
Wanted it lower what would you and you had insulation and little hat channels or whatever what would you do what anybody what you could do the offset height of the of the of the pick command on the pick command you can see also height but anyone else what else could
You do what change the thickness of the wall right use that wall to your advantage so change the thickness of that wall what would you make it I don’t know 12 inches 8 inches 100 millimeters whatever right and then pick it and it’ll set that beam isn’t that beautiful they’re
Using this wall as to help guide this geometry all right so from now on when you get models from your client and you see that pick command on there and you see that spline going through there just don’t don’t laugh at them call them up
And tell them you have a faster way of doing it that’s what you say a faster way not a better way all right though everyone clear with how to melee a beam in one direction while we use the wall and and one more thing with the wall a
Wall has a a wall has a better offset than a roof by face okay it just it’s better that’s all I’m gonna say about it that’s why I like to use walls instead of roofs by face another thing is the roof by face is not as robust as a wall
By face when we get to the cow the roof by face doesn’t actually will not actually host onto the the wall of the cow family only the wall who will Autodesk was very interested in that oh my goodness all right so everyone clear with that
All right let’s move on so I showed you how to use beams in one direction why don’t we do it in two directions how do you do it in two directions the limitation of the structural beam command and some of the other ones in using a pick tool is that you can only
Pick in one plane in one in one plane or in one direction if you want to actually have a curve then you have to use a in-place mass and so that’s how we’re gonna actually place the next beam all right so let’s do that so this is what
We’re gonna do we’re going to we’re gonna edit we’re gonna edit this particular roof surface and we’re going to that’s isolate it so we’re now in the mass family at her did everyone see me I did I did Isis excuse me I did edit in place this
Is the surface of our of our of our roof it’s actually a solid and I’ll explain why I made it a solid but it certainly could work as a surface why don’t we place a shape on here a curved shape so let’s see here why don’t we do this
Where’s that oh there it is so I’m just gonna place something like some kind of shape I really wanted to make this the au logo but I don’t have time to build the a and the U but just pretend the use there this is the ape alright and then I’m going to actually
Build a profile see this has to be bigger okay I have to build a profile pic that alright cuz I’m gonna actually make a solid so if you haven’t used the mast family tools before in place mast family tools this is a chance for you to
See it in action you can build ace you can build a profile a closed profile inside of Revit click create form and it will extrude it in the plane at which that was built alright you see that so does everyone know what I’m gonna do
With this now I want to be able to place an element we’ll just do a circular tube shape here along the intersection of that particular shape let’s call it a logo let’s let me set the stage you got a project and a very big client
And this is their roof and they want to see the logo on top of it alright so you’re actually building it for them and you’re going to present it to them later and I’ll set the stage for that but what is the next thing we need to do in order
To get a edge that we can work with we’re gonna join alright so all we and we can join two cells together right so all we have to do is hit join we’re gonna pick this one which would be our cutting one and then we’re going to pick
This how did you see what happened and then in the fet and the in-place mass family editor i can’t hide this because it’s joined it’s just the way it works inside the family editor but anyway do you see that edge we now have an edge right okay but we can’t use the pick
Command because the pick command only works in one plane but there’s something better and it’s awesome we can use spline through points okay and we could come along here and pick and pick and pick right and and try to follow that edge all the way around
But there’s a better way to do it it’s the most underrated functionality of the spline through points tool it’s called follow surface everyone see this follow surface all right all you have to do is place two points of the spline through points here two points and then whoops
And then all it will do is it will follow that surface or that edge that’s called follow surface so you don’t have to necessarily click the edges because the developers gave this ability to remain to set this relative so I’m just going to say one that will
Place it that one and what would I make this in order to run all the way to the other side zero yeah zero all right I don’t have to try to kill myself and pick it there it is let me isolate this oh I get it isolate oh look at that
That’s curve is money right we nailed it again does use the intersection method Struzan all right two solids joined we’ve got it spline through points follow surface laid the points down anywhere one zero and you’re almost done let’s let’s extrude something on here all right so I’m just gonna place a
Reference point I think I have to set the plane on this I’m just going to draw a circle and I’m just gonna sweep it just so we can see something I’m gonna change these two reference lines because it is a little more stable for some reason and there we go right there let
Me do this I’m going to make this not visible there we go and I’m going to shade this see that look how that just nailed the surface right on didn’t it you see that so that logos sitting right on that surface and it’s following it okay and that the coolest thing in the
Whole world all right you remember that stage that stage we set for you now let’s say you’re at the clients from office and you’re that you’re the Revit technician user expert you’re with your CEO and he’s the one giving or she’s giving the one presentation look what we
Got here this is awesome and the client says you know what that’s excellent but I really want that moved over about five feet and then your CEO says okay we’ll go back to the office and we’ll come back in a week and we’ll do a new presentation and everything like that
And you are smart enough you quietly are working in the background and you say oh no I know that since this is all parametric and I picked the edge and it’s always following that edge I know that if I take this and I move it over
Whatever it needs to be then that will automatically update anywhere it goes and that awesome so so you raise your hand you say oh wait wait look look what I got and you’re te o says oh yes look what we got and they say we he says we
Look what we got we moved it for you how do you like it and then so you’re packing up your computer and you’re ready to leave and you see your CEO talking to the client you don’t know what they’re talking about maybe the next golf game and then they got a big
Smile on their face and they put they they figure to put their arm around you and say the client just said they loved what we did we’re a competent firm we can realize their design vision on the spot and you’re like oh yes here comes my big promotion because my big
Promotion any and they say that’ll do and you’re like oh but it’s the first step towards you getting somewhere in your firm advancing using these techniques to move forward right and what’s gonna happen next time that CEO needs to go to a meeting they’re gonna say say bring that person because they
Know what they’re doing alright so that’s another positive message I want to give everyone is that no one taught me how to do this no one sat down with me and said this are the massing tools this is how it works I had a big journal and I took notes
Someone’s trying to get a hold of that Journal somewhere here yeah and I learned it myself and I did not wait for someone to train me I did not blame my company and say why aren’t you putting up money to make me better I took it upon myself and
I did it and I did not wait okay so that’s another thing these tools are out there it’s a program you can’t hurt it try if it doesn’t work start again all right show me what you’re doing that the community becomes better when you share this stuff all right
Does everyone cool with that everyone want to see now how to build a spiral all right let’s do a little spiral same principle now boy spirals were a challenge for me okay I’m trying to figure out where to start here that’s let’s do another in place mass okay here we go
In place mass so let’s make a circle five feet and let’s open it up okay I’m just opening up circle this is functionality you have in the mass family editor I’m going to build a solid and I’ll show you why I’m doing this in a moment all right so I’m closing it
Again remember closed closed closed profiles will extrude like this I’m gonna lock this down now on approach now for a spiral you don’t have that five keep saying spiral with the helix one that would everyone know what a helix is right it’s just basically a straight line that’s wrapped around a
Cylinder if it was a or a comb that’s all it is right this drove me nuts because in Revit I was like how do you how do you make something do that inside of Revit it’s just it doesn’t happen and then I was thinking about it I was like
You know what you’re thinking about this all wrong start fresh start with what you know and the basics think about what the developers have developed for you and I thought I opened my eyes and said the answer is so simple it’s right in front of me all I did was lock this profile
Grab the edge and well we’ll pull it up to 7 feet so that it matches the level that’s all I did I happen to grab the edge of one of these one time and I said wait a minute if you grab the edge of a lock profile that’s a circle open circle
And you pull it up what do you have what’s that edge isn’t thatis so isn’t that a helix so I said oh that’s it so then all I need to do is just keep building them now in Revit you do have to do it in pieces it doesn’t like you
To actually overlap them even in plan so just if you don’t like it just deal with it but that’s really that’s really the message here but isn’t it isn’t this the simplest thing in the world let me isolate this let me just drag this one
Now you can I don’t have time but you can certainly set these all with parameters right with with with height and and and and radius couldn’t you but now that you have this all you have to do is copy this over and over again right and you’re thinking well yeah
That’s okay that’s okay but it’s still not a it’s still not a helix right well what did I just show you didn’t I just show you how we have an edge once you have an edge you’re set right so I just showed you spline follow surface all you
Have to do is then take your spline follow surface place that on there one two all right and then set this to zero set that to oh I guess that’s what is that going to one yeah going to one and just walk your way up it right it’s that
Easy and then you can I’m not going to go through the whole thing but you get the idea right isn’t this cool so look what you got now isn’t this isn’t this a true helix that then follows that actual that actually follows the shape of that cylinder that
You can then make parametric that’s how you do that’s how you can do helix inside of Revit okay it’s that simple all right I don’t know what you use it for is anyone ever used the had a desire to use this yeah oh well a spiral staircase you certainly can though and
Next time you see a developer make sure you hug them because you do have a you do have the ability to do a spiral staircase inside of Revit 2013 that will overlap itself so if you want you could actually build a spiral staircase and then activate the in-place mass editor
And then pick the edge of your rail if you want to do that go for it alright all you need is an edge right so that’s it okay so that’s how you do a helix okay let’s see here where are we how we doing oh we’re doing awesome on time hmm either
Okay well since we’re doing so good on time were there any other questions on this before I move on no yes no you cannot no you can’t look quite okay the question was since we built this solid semicircular piece and then we we pulled it up to make it a semi I
Don’t know if there’s a word for that semi hillock peel it can you then join the two pieces together to make a solid the answers I’ve tried it over and over again and I can’t do it but I would encourage you to try it and if you do it
Then post it on your blog or tell Autodesk because everyone would love to know that in fact that’s everyone’s challenge how about that make a helix that is continuous all the way up but it’s got to be true right it’s got to follow the actual surface that answer
Your question or any anything else yes oh that that’s a little bit more weighted question to talk to me after but it answer was scheduling acid if you’re doing with an in-place mask you do have the ability to set categories but well you come with me we’ll address
That later I do have to mention when you are doing something that is very complex that’s starting to get out of just one plane you have to start using in-place masses and go away from using native elements walls beams curbs you know whatever it may be rails and so you do lose some
Functionality inside of Revit so that logo that was the a if that was a structural beam that may not represent itself correctly and planned for documentation so on so on but you you do lose some functionality that is not inside your native elements but it’s certainly in my opinion something that
Is worth it if you can make something complex and and follow these surfaces all right so let’s get let’s move on to site typography so one ready all right so how many I know I took a poll but while I set this up how many people have actually
Built a topo surface inside of Revit oh come on oh nice that is awesome okay how many people have built something like this all right so sit so what I like to do in this class if you’re not a revenues er you don’t get much out of this class because
You have to really respect what I’m doing right if you’re if you come from 3ds max and I go through all these methods and show you how to find an intersection of a line you fall asleep alright because you got that functionality but you’re all revving
Users so you understand though this is a big workaround right so I’m glad I’m glad to hear that and you also all toposurface modelers so that’s awesome so I feel your pain and now up until about two months ago I never actually touched the site topo
Tools in terms of modeling a surface and I thought I better just give it a try and why did I go through an emotional roller coaster but I thought you know what I’ve got to put my bad attitude aside and take a new look at it and what can I do inside of
Revit to do a topo tool do a topo surface that would be cool for the class and I thought ah I will do a human head laying on its side so that’s what we got here I’ll give this to everybody after the class you can pick apart and dissect
It if you want to ask me how I did it I’d love to tell you but it was whoo boy it was it was fun let’s put it that way now let me ask the next question how many people have wait let me I got to
Set you up for this let’s see here let me get my crop box set up yeah what we’re going to do is we’re going to place a wall along grid let’s see here a long grid beat and that wall will follow the topography of this head alright and
Plus when you get back to the office on Monday you can say I know how to shape a wall on top of a human head everyone will be like what yeah that’s right so let’s go here we go but yeah now site topo tool huh let me here’s a section I
Got a section here where we’re gonna cut it well oh oh look at that didn’t show up okay I don’t want to bother why it didn’t but here so the idea is you want to be able to place a wall such that it follows this particular contour right and when I
First looked at this someone asked me like four months ago now maybe it was eight months ago hey can you place a wall on a subset of folks like topography and I said absolutely psych topography the solid walls are solid I’ll just join them and I’ll use
My intersection method oh and I was so excited I was actually driving when I got the call and I got home I looked sighted on the computer and I put the wall in and I picked the wall and I tried well-serviced it and it wouldn’t
Work and I was like oh I took the wind out of my sails and I was like oh no why although desk I said no no I got to think about this in a positive light right what do I know something very important about a type-o surface and and
People have to get over it a topo surface is not a continuous smooth curve right as you can see it’s made up of little little tiny straight segments right isn’t it okay that’s the first thing I realized I said okay that’s a good limitation well is there any way to
Extract those little lines and I thought ooh there’s got to be a way but I got to first be able to cut this with a solid all right one thing at a time one day at a time or so so believe me this is a conversation I’m having and
I’m writing this down in my journal okay so okay and I never worked with site tools before I have to be honest as a structural engineer the civil or the architect gives it to us so we just we just link it it and don’t look at it too
Much unless we’ve got a retaining wall against it so it was a big challenge and I thought oh you know what I realized I gotta go I got a I realized something where’s my here’s my say tools a building pad cuts a topo surface doesn’t it why don’t I use that as my
Sacrificial element I thought okay well one thing at a time right one thing at a time I’m able to cut it now right so then but I still can’t pick that edge right but I move forward all right what do I do next oh well I realized
Something too I thought oh I was just clicking her and by the way I give you a lot of history of how I came up with these methods because I want you to be able to realize that you can do this too I’m going through this thought process
That you can go through a to when you deal with these problems in your everyday lives okay so I thought oh you know what what is this I picked this I said I said what is this I said oh when a building pad cuts a topo surface you get this kind of
Element that is just made of before faces that is the edge of that cut topo surface based on the proof of the plan of that building pad and it’s not okay well now I need to get that edge how do I get that edge I thought I can’t get
That edge and this bothered me for a week and then I was driving home one day I do a lot of my thinking line drive home driving the home again today and my I I was like oh I got it and I ran home
I got to my computer I drove home I got to my computer I was so excited I said I know what to do the developers they do developers gave us the ability to what you export ooh where’s that thing I didn’t see it just keep going to see what happens
Huh I didn’t see that it’s a little disturbing but okay here we go so I sent that out as a DWG right follow me here I know I hope this works out a big lead up I let’s see here i I’m the in place maths editor I know I
Can import but the one I just did yeah origin to origin oh did send it in oh it did look you see it hello it’s acting a little funny anyway you see that I sent it out as a DWG brought it back in well
I know that you can pick the edge of a DWG as long as it has straight segments so that was the big oh that’s it so everyone follow me here place a wall here building pad let’s isolate that element export in place mass send that DWG back into the in place mass finish
Your in place mass build a wall along that building pad edge see if I can nail it oh I didn’t let me do it again I could use a pick command maybe I should building wall cake right dad see here he said I got to get
My wall I set a wall in there somewhere here it is here’s my wall alright here’s my wall right everyone with me so far edit profile pic do you know what’s in there that you don’t really see is that DWG imported right ah watch this I hope it works
Ooh see that ah let’s not do that let’s let’s let’s delete this profile just so we’re safer Donovan you’ll be laughing lines because it’s quite a few of them in there there it is you see that a little bit boom cross fingers Oh what just happened something something
Beautiful something beautiful do you see what just happened we use the DWG sent it out and we use the pick command and look what it did it made that edge all the way around there isn’t that awesome so then all we need to do is close it up
Hey let’s close it up I’m gonna you know I’m gonna do I’m gonna actually copy this because maybe you want maybe you want the bottom and the top of your wall to follow the contour so let’s just do like that huh maybe okay let me close it
Out I got to get these things just right see look at that edge and one more apologize for the live demos they take a little while one in these situations okay one more here we go let’s see here and – okay we’re closing I could have
Drawn the line and done fill it but I didn’t all right and then you cross your fingers oh look at that what’s going on oh it’s getting cut right so what’s happening with the sight box oh I see hey turn that off here we go check that out isolate element you got a
Wall that will follow at this the surf toposurface and guess what I didn’t think this was a very big deal because I was you know I said well it’s just a modification of the intersection method isn’t it I showed this to Autodesk and the person who’s been doing tech support
For a long time in Revit said to me just what I’ve been telling everyone before I saw you do that I told I’m tech support I told my users you can’t do that in Revit so when you could do something like this and get a tech support from Autodesk to change
Their way based on what you’ve done you’ve done something great and so please share this with everybody you now have the ability to follow us total surface with a wall using the intersection method okay I’m planning to teach a class next year because this everyone’s asking me about all this
We’re gonna be able to do curbs and roads and sidewalks and such right no third-party programs right just the intersection method so but if you want to you can use this method to to do that but you can do curbs anything you want all right
So next time so when you need to build a wall from now on on your site toposurface do not use the spline tool click click click click click right you’ve got this in your back pocket to hit that contour right on alright okay cool any questions about that pretty simple
Right yes the curving wall is another modification and we’ll I’ll be going over that next year but yeah yeah so it’s a a little more complicated but certainly you use a certain you use the basis of this foundation to to do that yes can you add a footing Wow
You know what I should say it now anytime I come up with a new method not the first thing maybe the third thing at us out of someone’s mouth is Marcelo that’s great but so that’s awesome I don’t know I’m gonna study that now you’ve got my mind occupied for my next
Commute and I will report to you next year on that and I love those because it gives me a new hurdle a new speed bump to good over if you happen to come across it email me and we’ll we’ll send it out to everybody yes okay good you
Okay talk to that gentleman or we’ll come up here later and we’ll try it out by the way after this class there’s a break I’ll be hanging out here anyone has a question I want to see these models or go over it I’d be happy to do
That I’m not gonna go anywhere until I answer everyone’s questions so let’s hold off let’s move to the next section are we doing on time Oh perfect got a half hour left let’s move on to the Revit cow yes it sounds like you have a burning question what is it yes sir I’m
Sorry I’m sorry okay what about the total surface a ton can you do a tunnel through the toposurface ah another challenge okay I’ll tell you what anyone who has a challenge please write it down put it up here I’d love to figure it out we can go all day about
Challenges but thank you very much I’ve got another thing to deal with is that another challenge okay yes no no wait wait hold on foresight topo are we talking about site topo we’re talking about an in-place component following what contour okay that’s kind of a that questions a little
More in-depth but the question is can you an in-place component can you pick 3d edge right okay let’s let’s go over that after the class cuz that’s gonna take a little while but I I don’t know the answer to that but let’s try it okay anything else let’s move on
Alright this anyone’s gonna fall out of their seat okay everyone want to see the Revit cow all right here we go all right I better save that so everyone can have it all right if you have one more time for one more question as this loads anything else yes
Mmm a very good question the question was what if the client wants to move the wall do you have to do the process all over again and the answer is yes you do you have to do it all over again unfortunately there are limitations to these methods but yes that’s possible
Now if you wanted to build that topo surface out of a mass right and then you move the wall well you know the answer to that right because you got the pad on the back last time when you were in the meeting cuz you know how to do it
So yes the site topo tools at this the site topo tools have limitations let’s just put it that way how we doing here okay very good let’s see here what’s next all right let’s do the rabbit cow let me see here whoa here we go the rabid cow well let
Me get a little history of the Reta cow I did the elephant Autodesk approached me and said we know you did an elephant we want to test our wall by face tools can you build us a cow and I said absolutely I’ll build you a cow that’s
What this came up to so Autodesk has seen this and it’s all shrouded and secret what they do but anyway they’ve certainly have been interested by it so I love to use this an example for everything we do because it’s a lot of fun you can relate to a cow and I
Apologize for all you vegetarians you get the pumpkin at the end if you want to play with that we’re gonna do the cow all right mm-hmm this is what we’re gonna do a little added bonus does anyone saw the handout I’m gonna actually show you how to scale this family all right
Has anyone tried to scale a family inside of rabbit anybody yeah oh okay good so you know when you select by the way I got to sit for the first time the public has actually seen the profiles of that cow this has been shrouded in a
Secret but if you want to see how that thing is made up it’s made up of those hundred and twelve profiles right and about 1,500 points so anyway you get get a little glimpse of it right there all right everyone knows I know if you don’t
Know I want you to appreciate it here’s the scale right the scale function in revit if I were to pick this cow oh it’s great out someone came up to me and said someone mr. J’s Alan from LA also the president of our la reverie user group
Which I’m a board member of said you know what uh what’s in the way he said you know what I like your cow I want to make it the logo of our organization but I want it bigger I want to scale it and I said oh well I didn’t really thought
About scaling a family in Revit why would your sink to sink a toilet sat oi ‘let a cow is a cow but I certainly understand why you would need you right probably a bit of an oversight inside of Revit not an everyday thing but but you may have a need if you want
To turn a cow into something lifes building size but look what happens architectural column right look what happens it’s grayed out right you can’t do it you can’t just say I’m gonna scale this so it’s a little more there’s a bit more of a workaround to scale a family
In Revit because it’s not inherently there so this was when Jay came up with this it was a big challenge for me I thought wow how do i scale a family in Revit and I I thought about it a little maybe a year and a half it was about a
Year and a half ago and I didn’t pick it up into about four months ago when someone started asking me about scaling again and I thought I better look into this and since then I’ve come up with for scaling methods which I’ll be teaching next year but everyone gets a glimpse of
The first one there’s four methods that I’ve come up with and depending on the family and what you want to do you use one of those methods okay for this particular case we’re going to use one of them it’s called scale by host now look at
That scale this is what made me realize I could scale this and scale it quick look at this scale it says that you were able to scale a family what are you able to scale anyone everyone seen us down before look it says you can scale lines walls
Images GW G’s D what is that DX F DX F imports reference planes blah blah and I thought oh a DWG ah GW geez aren’t so dirty anymore because you saw how well they performed with the topo surface right I thought hmm well it’s kind of
Faceted I can’t really do much with it and I thought about it again they are missing something here images DWG comma SAT and SAT can be scaled as well an SAT is another file format if anyone wants to know the difference between SAT a DWG just google it but
Typically it does smooth surfaces so I thought oh let’s try this SAT the whole point of the cow was to place walls onto it that’s the whole point of the cow it had no other function in this world under to be a geometry rig to place walls okay exactly to everybody that’s
Its whole purpose in life host walls nothing else not to be parametric not for its head to move around and dance like the elephant does the elephant’s head moves in the trunk moves maybe we’ll get to see that later all right so I just want to be that make sure that’s
Clear to everybody but I thought okay I’ll turn this into an SAT what do I do i isolate it I export it SAT Hey okay it looks good I’ll just put you on there uh temporary leave off sure I’m gonna just delete that so everyone can
See that it’s that we’re not gonna get mixed up which is which turn this to SAT and then we’re gonna do let’s see here there it is right we’ll do origin to origin SAT oh look at this and that the revit cow right there’s something inside
Of here – what is what is no longer grayed out the scale command right all right just bear with me here let’s go ahead and load this into our project we have a project open well let’s not load it there let’s let’s open let’s open one that already has the
Wall in it let me see here let me see here just bear with me I’m gonna get rid of this I’m gonna get rid of this just because it’s uh it’s got that in there all right let’s load this in to our project oh look at that work playing oh Let’s see let’s load this in they go in see here be generic bottle adaptive huh well I came in funny did it oh look at that huh all right let’s see Oh probably cuz I placed it let me do it one more time am I on level one now let me tell me
Place it on level one hey that’s why oh that’s better okay then let’s go here two to three of you there it is right yeah all right looks the same done it but it’s an SAT well the developers gave us this ability to do be able to host walls on to SATs
How awesome is that see look at that and so instead of using the mass rig I’m using the SAT rig to do this so just bear with me while I do this real quick just got to get the cow back on its feet yeah we won’t do the tail oh did I get
It I think I did the same side didn’t I wall host there I get it see I got it all right so these are the let me see let me sleep the walls make sure I got it Wells I sleep oh there it is there there’s a Revit Cal that’s how it starts
Out right that’s the Revit cow the walls that’s what everyone is normally seen but instead I use the SAT to do it right okay now here’s our model right check this out this is the awesome thing about a SAT oh let’s let’s unpin it that’s unpin it just so we’re sure
What’s really awesome about a SAT is that you’re able to use the scale command and you’re able to do it relative so what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna do times 10 so let’s just bring it out a foot and then we’re gonna bring it out to 10 feet right that would should
Scale it 10 times did everyone see that that scaled all right let’s go back here to our to our project environment is this our project environment yeah let’s go ahead and I want to copy this over so you can see see here copy so that’s just a copy of the walls right
Now I’m going to load this SAT back in that we have just scaled over right and the walls will update oh wait a minute okay update by face okay everyone cross your fingers did you see what we did we scaled that SAT up ten times we’re saying update Oh what
Just happened did it get bigger that ten times fine that’s how you scale with a Revit cow in under four minutes all right so you see this is just one unique method it’s called scaled by host what the host is what the SAT okay that’s simple that’s the cow that we’re gonna
Use now to lay the floor on right everyone want to see how to lay a floor into a cow all right now mr. J’s Alan are you happy she’s all right okay here we go so oh we’re in metric oh nice excuse me we should be we’re gonna be
Using hmm I do want to use English units here let me just let me just switch these really quick how we ended up there okay so this is at three feet so I’m gonna I want to copy one up to 30 feet then there we go all right so this is
Level three this is where we’re gonna lay the cow in right level three so let’s see here you I’m gonna create another one plan view floor plan level three I’m just making a level three here there it is alright now what do we do we can use the
Same print you see this is the what it what is this edge everyone see with this edges that’s the cow cut at level three so all we need to use is the same principle use the intersection method and we’ll place a floor that will follow the contour of that the inside of that
Cow so this is how we do it what we do is go to level three place down our sacrificial what don’t say cow sacrificial cows sacrificial floor sacrificial floor right okay here we go and we say finish no okay this is uh alright let’s let’s make that a little thicker I don’t know
Why it’s so thin gee well that’s really thin well that’s really thin here we go okay and then we’ll go to our 3d view ah look at that see now could someone please tell me what we do next huh what we do next join trim join yeah join
Okay join pick join join wall-to-wall isn’t this a wall okay so here we go look what we got see that edge it’s hard to see see that edge right okay let’s go back to our level three activate the structural well it could use an architectural floor either one picked over here let’s go
Back to 3d view pick everyone see that boom all right oh that’s getting exciting don’t get too excited we haven’t closed it yet let’s see here let’s see here we go we got to close it a little huh I guess a cow having a hard time picking that edge hold on a minute
Let me see seems to be a little touchy when it’s ten times bigger than it should be there it is all right oh and it gave me some error on inaccuracies but if you’re doing geometry that’s dealing with a cow and you get an error that says inaccurate there’s you get inaccuracies
Just ignore it all right okay here we go now this is where you cross your fingers oh oh I didn’t close it did I oh boy oh look at that what a mess oh I think I got it by the way oh there it is everyone see that okay so I’m
Going to delete my sacrificial wall I’m going to hide my element I’m gonna spin this around for everyone and you can see that we just laid the floor inside the rivet cow all right so how cool is that that’s how you do it all right you just use the intersection
Method just curly up now hopefully you’re not going to be putting floors into cows anytime soon on a real project where you’re charging time but this method is excellent for when you get a cladding consultant that’s just out of control and they give you a model with wavy curves edges or even even
Edges that are more rectilinear but they’re all over the place right all you do is what just place the sacrificial floor on there join them slice it pick those edges with your pick tool and you’ve got that you got it right up against that edge all right so you can
Use this for from complex to very simple methods all right and you know what how are we doing on time oh good okay so you know what we’ll do hmm let’s place a door let’s place a door in here let’s see what happens here
Where’s my door oh we got a load of door family okay let me learn door family and then we’ll jump to the etiquette is that a good one a good one see what happens oh look at that ah okay how about a window Oh window now it might look a little funny because
This floor is way up high let me see where’s our windows family here we go I hope that one all right we having fun yet okay how’s that everyone getting this all right there we go so you can you can make these things larger than life and the
Reason is is because we use that scale method right to bring this up and now you can actually make a building that looks like a cow by using these tools all right so they’re the the walls since the walls are hosted on that SAT they are true walls so you can actually place
Host elements on there that’ll cut boys out of them and you know what’s really cool is now if you don’t like the way that window looks and you want something to actually wrap that surface but be like what if you have like a skylight right and you wanted to just instead of
Cutting it like a window would do on a plane right check this out I’m by the way I just occurred to me this just occurred to me you could do this let’s talk about the door look you see how you don’t like the way the door cuts this
What if this was a skylight right what tools do you have in your arsenal now to actually make a form that would cover that right all you would have to do is activate your in place mass right you just have to activate your in place mass and then you would just have to
Activate your what spline through points and follow surface wouldn’t you wouldn’t you just have to do that now and then you can you can place this on that particular element why is this my points must be turned off oh that’s interesting huh my points are turned off hmm that one
Let me just what’s that uh no it’s not even hide not point there it’s on view categories see that what would that need to be one I’m not gonna go through the rest of this but you see how you can do that excuse me how you
Can do that then you would make this value C zero right and look see that and then all you you know what we better just do it let’s just keep going let’s see weighed this on the top we’re gonna do this on the top let’s see if
This works okay that should say okay good those points are at the same spot all right we’re gonna close this whole thing out and see if this works not do modeling but you know why we’re doing this because we’re smart now we know that when you get an edge anything is possible
So mission one on intersection method is to get your edge and once you get an edge then you you’re able to realize a lot of complex geometry and another thing is do you notice how this is we’re working with the void this is actually a void that was cut yeah
Oh I don’t like that it didn’t give me that warning on all the others but let’s see let’s give it a try we got all four here let me isolate this huh okay oh that’s it you’re steamed look at that what happened I look funny it did it do it
Huh no it made it straight didn’t it hmm well all right okay let’s try that one more time let’s not get all that that’s let’s let’s try that one more time let me get let me get let me get rid of these two let’s do it now Oh huh look at that hmm
Those must not be hosted correctly okay well anyway you get the idea that that once you get an edge you can you can follow the surface and do you notice that we’re working with uh we’re working with the void right now we’re not actually working with solids and when I
When I realized that it hit me I was like you know what when we’re using the join command we’re not doing anything special we’re just joining a solid and a solid but we’ve been doing joins all the time they’ve just been Auto doing it for us
Which is whenever we build a void when we cut something it’s automatically joining this void to the solid or the void to the surface so now what you can do if you have a void is you can just work with a surface because you can’t you can’t join a solid and a solid
Within Revit you can always only join a solid and a solid within Revit if you have a roof surface that is only a surface and is not a solid and you want to get your edge just cut it with a void right remember that logo that a instead
Of picking form solid do form void and you get your edge again right it’s really the same thing it’s one in the same thing so I’m gonna look into that a little bit more find out why that’s not doing that but anyway you can see that
You get a lot of geometry that you can that you can realize all right I’m gonna leave it right there and I’m gonna take any questions because we got what we got five minutes left all right I think all I’ll end it there but I’ll let’s see can we open the floor to
Questions any questions yes two horns oh that’s a I’ll answer that in then in a moment if you’re asking about the elephant anything about the methods yes yeah oh that’s a topo surface question I’ll talk about that later let me do this I will officially end it
There and you can go ahead and leave but I will stay and answer any of your questions okay
