Revit Window Sill Height Location

When placing a window in Revit, the sill height will be shown in its properties and can be modified as required. The sill height is typically at the bottom (sill) of the actual window. However, it is possible that the sill height is not at the actual sill of the window if the window has a unique situation for a sill condition.

An example of this possible situation is the following window, which has a brick sill shown under the window. Depending on how the window family is created, the Sill Height parameter specified in the window’s properties may be to the top of the brick sill/bottom of window or at the bottom of the brick sill.

Advertisement

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.

Masking Regions in Revit Projects

There are times working within Revit that Masking Regions are needed in order to hide/cover model information within a project file.  There can be various reasons for this, so I won’t discuss the “why” you would do it.  You will recognize the need when you confront it.  However, when working with Masking Regions, it is always good to know the guidelines and rules for how they work.

Following is an illustration of a Masking Region covering part of a simple model.

Instance Length Parameter with Grips

I was recently asked about instance parameter grips for a Revit family that was placed in a Revit project file.  The family had an instance parameter in it for a dimension and the user was expecting to see grip arrows so that they could manually adjust the size by dragging the grips.  The arrow grips did not exist and the user was curious why that was the case.

The answer to the user’s question is actually very simple.  When creating a dimension that will be referencing an instance parameter, it is important to dimension between two Reference Planes for the grip arrows to appear.

Flexible 3-Point Arc in Revit Family

Occasionally, you need to create an arc in a Revit family and you know 3 points of the arc, but not necessarily the radius, and you need it to be flexible.  It is common for windows with a radius top to have this situation.  You know the chord length (width of the window) and the distance from the top of the straight sides to the top of the window arc, but not the radius of the arc.  Revit requires you to specify the radius and center point of the arc to allow it to be flexible, so it is important to determine that information.

Residential Door Tag in Revit

Specifying information concerning doors on architectural plans is an important aspect of conveying information to the contractor working in the field.  Residential designers and commercial designers tend to have different approaches to this situation as commercial projects generally utilize a door schedule referencing a number tag at the door and residential projects generally have the door size shown directly on the floor plan.  While it seems like a door size tag for residential projects would be a basic feature in Revit, there are no default tags to display the door size in typical methods.  In this article, we will take a look at a process to create a typical residential door tag.  This process can then be modified slightly to create other variations of the door size tag and also window size tags. 

Easily Print Selected Area in Revit

There are many times that you want to print just a specific area inside Revit and at a specific scale.  In AutoCAD, you have the option to print a window and set the scale in the print window, but that option does not exist in Revit.  That is very annoying to AutoCAD users moving to Revit.  However, there is an easy way to accomplish the same thing with Revit without much effort.

Corner Windows in AutoCAD Architecture 2013

Windows have been being placed at corner intersections of building walls for a long time, but they have not necessarily been an easy thing to show with design software.  AutoCAD Architecture users have found workaround solutions for them since the inception of the software, but that no longer needs to be the case with the 2013 release.  AutoCAD Architecture  2013 now has a new command tool specifically for placing Corner Windows.

Inexpensive Architectural Design Software

Architectural design software is renowned for being expensive for the major products that are on the market, especially the packages considered as Building Information Modeling (BIM) software. Many designers are looking for something less expensive. That may be due to limited financial resources to spend on software, or to the lack of a need for something more expensive and powerful. This article is devoted to mentioning some architectural design software packages available for less than $2500.

Roombook Extension for Revit 2012 Available

In January 2011, I wrote an article about Autodesk releasing the Roombook Extension for Revit Architecture 2011.  Autodesk has now released the Roombook Extension for Revit Architecture 2012.

According to Autodesk, “The Roombook Extension for Autodesk® Revit® Architecture 2012 software helps calculate the surface area of walls, floors and ceiling elements, room circumferences and the total number of furnishing elements within a project.”  It appears to be unchanged from the version available for Revit Architecture 2011.

The Roombook Extension can be downloaded from the Autodesk Subscription website for subscription members.

Read the previous article on the Revit Architecture 2011 Roombook Extension.

Revit Roombook Extension Available

Autodesk has released an extension for getting more information out of Rooms in Revit Architecture 2011.  The Roombook Extension was made available to Revit Architecture subscription members on December 9, 2010.  According to Autodesk, the extension “helps calculate the surface area of walls, floors and ceiling elements, room circumferences and the total number of furnishing elements within a project”.  This is a nice utility to get quantities for room-specific information that exists in the model and is valuable for quantity takeoff analysis.