Revit Slab Depression

It is common to have depressed areas of a concrete floor slab of a building and you want to be able to represent this accurately in a Revit model.  This may be in the middle area of a large floor slab as a containment area or the edge of a floor slab under an overhead door.  Either way, a portion of the floor is lower than the surrounding floor.

Note this article is for a completely depressed area and not one where the edges are the same level and then sloping, as if to a drain.  In those situations, the Shape Editing tools can be used on the floor. 

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Easy Revit Cabinet Crown Molding

Placing crown molding at the top of cabinetry is very common in residential design and can be easy to do in Revit.  Ideally, I would like to use a sweep with a crown molding profile, but Revit utilizes sweeps only for walls when not in the family editor.  The trick to making this an easy process for the user is to create a specialty wall that has the desired sweep profile built into it.  This allows you draw the “wall” to follow the front edge of the cabinetry at the desired elevation for the crown molding.

The following image shows the resultant crown molding.

Opening with Varying Widths Throughout Revit Wall

It is common to have openings in walls that are not of a consistent width all the way through the wall.  An example of this is when a door is recessed into a brick wall and the brick opening is wider than the stud/masonry wall opening or the door.  The following illustration shows a door opening in a stud and brick wall with the brick opening wider to allow brickmould casing around the door.

Revit doors and windows, by default, have an opening that goes straight through the wall with a completely rectangular opening.  If you just use the default Door.rft or Window.rft with the default opening to create your doors and window families, you will not see the above jogged offset opening.

The secret to getting the walls to cut as you desire is to NOT use the Opening Cut that is in the family template, but use Voids instead.

Component Elevation Changes with Wall Base Offset

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.

Revit Section Bubble Placed In Text

I get asked about how to place a detail bubble or a section bubble amongst text notes where the actual leader for the bubble is not desired.  The user still wants to have the information within the bubble to auto-update, so the bubble needs to be an actual callout. This is a very common situation,   The following image is an example of a typical situation.

Revit Section Markers Discipline Visibility

When and how Revit section markers display on plan views can be a bit confusing when you are working with multiple disciplines.  With more disciplines involved with a model, the more noticeable and confusing the issue becomes.  This is due to the fact that section markers are discipline-specific and cannot be displayed on all the different disciplines of plan views.

Revit is designed so that section markers will not show in other discplines’ views and this is based upon the Discipline parameter of a view.  Revit has 6 different Disciplines available for selection for a view.  They are:

• Architectural
• Structural
• Mechanical
• Electrical
• Plumbing
• Coordination

 

My Favorite Revit 2019 New Features

Most Revit users have heard that Autodesk has released the 2019 versions of its various software packages.  Autodesk has included a lot of nice enhancements with this release and delivered on many of the user wish list items.  While there are still many improvements to be made to Revit, I am pleased with enhancements in this release.

Automatic Updating Electrical Symbol Legend in Revit

Electrical symbol legends are a critical part of electrical design documents and everyone wants to have a Symbols List which automatically updates to show the actual electrical symbols that are placed in a project.  That way, the only symbols that are on the list are ones that are actually placed in the model and the list does not include many unused symbols.  It is actually possible to do this.  When an electrical item gets added to the model, the symbol gets added to the symbol list.

Pricing Transition with Autodesk Software

It is that time of year that my Autodesk subscription is up for renewal, so it makes me think about the latest pricing system that Autodesk has been implementing lately.

I had been on the “Subscription” plan for years, but that name was changed to be called the “Maintenance” plan in 2016.  The new “Subscription” program is entirely different than the old subscription program even though it has the same name.  Yes, that can be confusing.

Align Revit Elevations with Angled Walls

When designing buildings, we all know that we often get walls that are non-orthogonal and at various angles to the sheet.  With those walls, we often want to get an elevation that is parallel to a particular wall.  It is actually easy to do.

Revit Piping System Labels

When adding piping system to a Revit model, it is desirable to label piping systems with their system type so that you see text on the piping line.  Some examples of this are HW for Hot Water, CW for Cold Water, and S for Sanitary Waste.

In AutoCAD, piping systems are typically shown by drawing a line with a specific line type that displays the desired text.  This works fine since the lines themselves contain no data and are just symbolic.  Revit does not allow line types with text in the line like is allowed in AutoCAD.  However, Revit makes it super easy to label piping systems with the appropriate text.  I believe that the net result is the same, if not better.

Schedule Organization Improvements in Revit 2018.1

For a long time, I have wished that there were better ways to organize schedules in Revit’s Project Browser, especially in project files with dozens of schedules.  The recently released 2018.1 version of Revit does just that and allows me various ways to organize my schedules in a Revit project file.  Different disciplines and different companies have varying quantities of schedules, so some users will appreciate this new feature more than users.

The following image shows grouping the schedules based upon working schedules and schedules that will be placed on sheets.  This particular option is created by having 2 different View Templates for schedules – one for working schedules and one for schedules on sheets.  Schedules are then grouped by View Templates.