slb
2004-05-17, 05:07 PM
O.K. so this isn't strictly architecture, but I was pretty impressed with myself on the effort...
Last summer we decided to put in a nicely landscaped sidewalk from our driveway to the front door. The flagstones just weren't doing anymore. Naturally I decided to use Revit to do some visualizations to get buyoff from the family. I took it further, however, and decided to let it do all of my deliverable takeoffs. The stones are individual families that I am able to schedule; the curbing is an in-place family from which I was able to measure the linear dimension to assist ordering. I used a floor under the stones to help determine a very accurate approximation of the square footage for the walkway, which in turn, helped me determine the yards of sand and gravel I was going to need (2 and 8 respectively).
In the end, I had about a dozen or so left over stones (which was by design to cover for breakage) and very little excess sand (new sandbox for the kids). My costing estimates came within $100, and the result, if I may say so, is a very nice walkway. Even if you don't particularly care for the design or material, it, at least, closely resembles the original design.
I must say, the most fun was designing the walkway and the lighting... moving 30 tons of material in and out of the hole has no glory in it and I never feel the need to do it again!
Last summer we decided to put in a nicely landscaped sidewalk from our driveway to the front door. The flagstones just weren't doing anymore. Naturally I decided to use Revit to do some visualizations to get buyoff from the family. I took it further, however, and decided to let it do all of my deliverable takeoffs. The stones are individual families that I am able to schedule; the curbing is an in-place family from which I was able to measure the linear dimension to assist ordering. I used a floor under the stones to help determine a very accurate approximation of the square footage for the walkway, which in turn, helped me determine the yards of sand and gravel I was going to need (2 and 8 respectively).
In the end, I had about a dozen or so left over stones (which was by design to cover for breakage) and very little excess sand (new sandbox for the kids). My costing estimates came within $100, and the result, if I may say so, is a very nice walkway. Even if you don't particularly care for the design or material, it, at least, closely resembles the original design.
I must say, the most fun was designing the walkway and the lighting... moving 30 tons of material in and out of the hole has no glory in it and I never feel the need to do it again!