What qualifies as a column?

[ws]

On my alteration projects I insert steel beams and columns into the Revit 2010 model.
Generally it works very well as Revit includes all the UK serial sizes of steel.

They are designed by an Engineer (on paper ;)).

Quite often he uses square hollow sections or angles as columns or at least vertical members (these are not large buildings).

However as far as I can see, Revit only seems to allow a structural column to use a Universal Column family - I cannot find a way of using other Revit steel framing families as structural columns.

Am I missing something really obvious (quite likely) or is this a general limitation of Revit would anyone know?

[ws]

D'oh :Oops:
Just noticed that there is a 'columns' folder with the same serial sizes but they come in as columns rather than beams.

So, as I was saying, it's er, really great that Revit allows you to put in all these bits of steel structure...

Not worked out the bit about structural and non-structural walls - the provided basic walls all seem to be 'non structural' as far as Revit is concerned but I just accept the error messages about this when placing beams on stone and blockwork walls, for the time being.

[Scott Womack]

Not worked out the bit about structural and non-structural walls - the provided basic walls all seem to be 'non structural' as far as Revit is concerned but I just accept the error messages about this when placing beams on stone and blockwork walls, for the time being.

The Structural, versus non-structural walls relate more to creating structural framing plans and collaboration with structural engineers using structure than anything else. Structural walls, and the normal walls where you set the Structural Use to a structural setting, show-up on structural framing plans, as well as can have structural analysis performed on them. The Structural Walls I believe draw from the Top down, instead of the bottom up, since it is intended that these might be drawn in a framing plan view.

[ws]

thanks Scott,

I'll stick to 'non structural' for my domestic buildings.