When placing components on the face of a wall in Revit, the same component may move differently when the wall base offset changes. This can cause frustration to the user by not understanding why it is happening. No one wants to see their component change elevation when they don’t expect it.
Walls can have the bottom offset either up (positive dimension) or down (negative dimension) to raise or lower the base of the wall. While the majority of the time the wall will be at the floor level, there are many times when the wall needs to be above the floor. A couple of examples are a wall that sets on a concrete curb, or a wall which serves as a soffit. The Base Offset parameter for the wall is modified in the Properties palette when the wall is highlighted.
The above illustration shows the Base Offset parameter to 1′-0″ above the First Floor level.
The illustration below shows 2 section views of the same component type placed on an exterior wall in 2 different locations. The lower component (shaded solid) was placed on the exterior face of the wall (the default method). The upper component was placed on the wall and then had the Edit Work Plane command utilized to pick the plane of the next layer of the wall. (In this situation, the exterior layer was siding and the next inner layer was sheathing.) This would place the component a bit recessed into the wall (on the sheathing in this illustration).
In the above illustration, the section on the left is when the components were placed on a wall with a 1′-0″ Base Offset setting.
The section on the right is after the same wall had the Base Offset parameter changed to 1′-6″. Notice that the upper component had the elevation change and the component was physically moved higher. The lower component remained at the same elevation.
Summary
- When a component is placed on a wall on the wall’s face, the elevation of the component does not change when the wall’s Base Offset changes.
- When a component has the work plane changed to an inner layer of the wall, the elevation of the component will change when the wall’s Base Offset changes. (IMPORTANT)
Applying Technology to Architecture 