Molding - Crown, Base, Casing, Trim, etc.

[dtownsend]

Does anyone have best practices for creating molding in revit?

- Crown Molding
- Base
- Casing (for Cased Openings / Doors)
- Trim

I am working on a large interiors project (contractor produced shop drawings) and I started out using wall sweeps - which works okay until you have to move a wall around and is over all a painful process when the wall is not perfectly straight.

The first phase of the project had a lot of changes and when I started moving walls it turned into a nightmare, so I ended up deleting all the wall sweeps and made a quick 2D line based detail family, so I could get the changes issues to the team.

For the phase I am working on how I am using in-place familes and creating sweeps with the molding profile. So far this is working out pretty well, but I am worried about in-place familes having an effect on my project later on.

The project is a 42 story Hotel and Condo's. I am working on Phase III of the project now - which is the hotel presidential suite.

Thanks

[iru69]

We use a lot of moldings in our residential projects and I've run into all sorts of problems with wallsweeps.

So, I've resorted to in-place families as well. You can also create a floor slab edge sweep. But they both have problems at doors and windows, so it ends up being a bunch of pieces... which not only takes a bit of work, but certainly could be problematic on a large project.

Unfortunately, Revit's simply not up to the task.

[whittendesigns]

line based families are great. you draw a line and lock it to the wall surface so if you move the wall, the line goes with it and so does your sweep (moulding)

[iru69]

Nice tip for some applications, but it has some inherent problems. For instance, if you go around an outside corner, the trim isn't going to join - on complex profile moldings, that's not going to look good.

[Joef]

I rarely do crown moldings so I am hardly an expert, but can't you include the sweep in the wall definition? It would definitely move with the wall.

[iru69]

One of the limitations of wall sweeps is that there's little control over how far they go. So, if you just want the sweep inside that corner room, you've got a problem.

You could split the wall so that it stops where you want it to, but not only does that create a mess of wall pieces, but you have big split lines running down your exterior wall.

And if you want to grab the end of that sweep and just drag it back, you have a bunch of break points at the doors... those don't just disappear, so now you're dragging half a dozen break points back along with it.

Unless someone really has an ingenious new idea to share, that's it for me. I've been through this already in previous threads. But it would be really interesting to see if anyone can come up with something... so let's hear it.

[whittendesigns]

I either don't follow you, or you don't follow me, LOL.

I have no problems at all with crown, base, custom, plain, anything at all.

[dtownsend]

Guys thanks for your input on this matter.

- whittendesigns

I have tried lined based familes before I tried the inplace familes, but it doesn't work for crown molding. I did get it to work for base.

So from here I am going to make crown molding with in-place familes and base (and other simple moldings) with line based familes.

I think a good request would be for a line based sweep that would work like the wall sweep, but instead of hosting to a wall it would allow us to draw lines.

[Joef]

I don't usually get a visible split line when I split a wall. And if you do I think you can get rid of it with join geometry. I would rather pull the sweep back from a couple doors than have to go around and draw every linear length of trim. I don't get a visible break when I pull the sweep back from a door.

[dbaldacchino]

Irusun, to solve the issue of sweeps that give you all those drag points at openings/doors/windows, all you need to do is to go to the sweep's type properties and check the option "Cut by Inserts". Now you'll only have drag handles at the start and end of the sweep, so positioning is easy.

I think you can make line-based families work just fine for the discussed application. New in 2008 is a face-based pick two Generic model family which I think should work awesome for this very modeling task. To mitre the edges of your moldings, all you need is a parameterised void (instance parameter) at both ends of your line-based family. You can probably rotate the void in two directions to also achieve compound-mitering, perhaps by nesting the family a couple of times.