Whats the easiest way to add a floor finish to a floor?

[aaron_ramage]

Hey Guys,

Was just wondering what the easies way to add a floor finish to a floor is? I have the floor slab set up, is there a paint tool that allows you to put for example red carpet on to the floor?

Many Thanks,

Aaron

[Scott Womack]

This is a loaded question that hase sparked serious debate in the past. I'd suggest you search the form, and you'll get far more information.

You can use the Split face tool, then the paint tool to "paint" materials into the ares defined by the split face tool.

PERSONALLY, we model the floor finishes as thin slabs, on top of the main floor slab. These then go on separate worksets, as well as getting named consistantly. This is actually the way buildings are built as well.

[greg.mcdowell]

I like this approach too Scott. With the common name we can set them to be transparent in the floor plan so we can still see door swings and the like.

[cdatechguy]

Ditto....used split face once upon a time...moved some walls...split face areas were gone.

[patricks]

Thin floors do not need to be transparent to see door swings if your doors are made with the plan swing arc as a symbolic line in the Plan Swing - Cut subcategory. If your plan swing is a model line, then yes the floor finishes would need to be transparent... but then you'd see the arc in all your 3D views as well.

Thin floors can also get tedious if you have to draw the lines around lots of walls and into the center of door openings. You could just draw to center of wall, but then it won't look right in section unless you go around joining ALL your walls to ALL your floor finishes.

The FASTEST way to get thin floors is to define thin CEILING types with your floor patterns, set the height to 0, and then it will automatically sketch the ceiling outline and place it in the room to look like a floor. But then the floor finish doesn't carry through to the center of the door frame.

All methods have advantages and drawbacks, but doing thin floors on a separate workset has been our preferred practice lately, as I would call it the most "correct" way of doing it, although not really the fastest.

[Scott Womack]

Thin floors can also get tedious if you have to draw the lines around lots of walls and into the center of door openings. You could just draw to center of wall, but then it won't look right in section unless you go around joining ALL your walls to ALL your floor finishes.

This method of to center of walls causes serious problems with material take-offs, and when the model is exported to Navisworks, each of these becomes 4 clash detections in the report.


The FASTEST way to get thin floors is to define thin CEILING types with your floor patterns, set the height to 0, and then it will automatically sketch the ceiling outline and place it in the room to look like a floor. But then the floor finish doesn't carry through to the center of the door frame.

Again, this would report completely wrong in Navisworks. Not a bad methodology to get them in quickley though. Way to think outside the box Patricks8)


All methods have advantages and drawbacks, but doing thin floors on a separate workset has been our preferred practice lately, as I would call it the most "correct" way of doing it, although not really the fastest.

Although painful, this is the closest to the way the building is built. It allows a more reliable take-off, and works well in Navisworks as well.

[patricks]

This method of to center of walls causes serious problems with material take-offs, and when the model is exported to Navisworks, each of these becomes 4 clash detections in the report.

Which is why this is not my preferred method. However our office doesn't do material takeoffs in Revit, at least not yet, nor do we use any 3rd party software like Navisworks (at least not yet) and there are certain users in this office who will do a single large VCT floor that covers all rooms that have VCT tile. :roll: I was just putting it out there as an option for the *quickest* or the *easiest* way, though not necessarily the best or most correct.


Again, this would report completely wrong in Navisworks. Not a bad methodology to get them in quickley though. Way to think outside the box Patricks8)

Wasn't my idea, somebody else here on AUGI mentioned that method some years back. A floor finish tool that works like the ceiling tool would be SOOOO nice.

[twiceroadsfool]

I agree that a tool that "feels" boundaries would be nice too. Sans that, i would avoid the Ceiling methodology. Unless youve converted every single item in your office library that was Object Hosted to Face-Based, these are the types of workaround that will kick you in the nuts in the 11th hour. Nothing floor hosted will respond to that ceiling, nor with that ceiling respond to any Revit-catagory controls, which leaves you resorting to Filtration through other means (which isnt a bad thing if you planned for it ahead of time... We rely on Revit catagories less and less as time goes on, but you cant really skirt them for lineweight issues), and so on.

There are more benefits to actually sketching in the Floor finishes accurately. Suddenly Slab edges work very well for Wall Bases (if you choose to go that route to expedite the entry... which also schedules decently, so its not the WORST workaround for one of these things).

I use Filters regardless, to control when FINISH objects are visible or not. Whether or not you use that level of control in your Sections and Coarse Scale plans ultimately depends on what you want to show as an office. So if youre NOT doing material takeoffs or clashing, you can draw them to the center of the walls (i still wouldnt) and then filter them out with a Filter + View Template, and hit all the pertinent views in one shot.

My personal advice: Sketch them as floors, draw them accurately, and use Filters to control visibility where necessary (IE What Scott said, LOL).

[Phil Read]

The FASTEST way to get thin floors is to define thin CEILING types with your floor patterns, set the height to 0, and then it will automatically sketch the ceiling outline and place it in the room to look like a floor. But then the floor finish doesn't carry through to the center of the door frame.

Agree with Patricks. This is fast, maintains relationships to walls and is flexible. It's unfortunate that it conflicts with Navis, Energy take-offs, Scheduling, etc. This is important functionality that is still missing from the box.

IMO ceilings as floor finishes is the best work around from a design and iteration standpoint until something better comes along. Give the customer a better tool and we'll use it.

-Phil

[cliff collins]

Interesting "workaround"--using a ceiling for a floor. But this methodology can cause
serious problems in DD CD CA phases.

However, I'm not going to direct our Interiors Department to start using Ceilings
for Floors--I'm afraid I'm with Scott and Aaron on this one.

For us, best practice is:
Build thin finish floors in the ID model, which is Linked into the SC model.
Schedules, Areas, Materials Lists, Navis coord., E-Specs writes out the correct
spec section, etc.

Scott Brown has some good examples of his ID workflow-- search for some of his threads.

cheers...........

[Phil Read]

For us, best practice is:
Build thin finish floors in the ID model, which is Linked into the SC model.
Schedules, Areas, Materials Lists, Navis coord., E-Specs writes out the correct
spec section, etc.

Agreed as well. In a linked condition - there's no advantage to using ceilings. And if you have to sketch it - you might as well sketch as a floor category.

-P

[ron.sanpedro]

How hard could is possibly be for Autodesk to add a single check box for "Origin at Bottom" for Floors? Off by default, so everything behaves as now. But when making a "Finish" floor I check this box and those floors go up from their level not down. I know, not "sexy" like pointless UI dreck, just small, easy to implement IMPROVEMENTS. I know, I am dreaming. ;)

Gordon

[rudolfesterhuyse]

Editing your ceiling per room and copying the lines to a floor could work.

I prefer (at the moment) to build my slabs with floor finish in it and offset the top by the floor finish amount. I have not tried splitting the floor finish yet or changing it from room to room but by joining walls they go through floor finish on section but not through the structural part. Although revit allows you to set a section of the floor as finish it seems not to distinguish between these properly. The thick line still includes the finish as if it is part of the structure.

The actual floor finish then becomes a parameter in the room tag. In order to show different finishes in plan I will probably split the face and paint which will hopefulle also help with keynoting but I am still unsure about this.

The problem I am having is that I can at the moment only add spot heights in plan to the floor finish and not to the structural slab level!! Any ideas?

[cliff collins]

Probably repeating myself here, but here goes:

Best practice is to model the Finished Floors ( tile, carpet, etc. ) as separate floors
each one an individual sketch/floor, and place these on top of the "structural floor/slab".

In our office we have a Shell/Core Architectural model, a Revit Structure model, and an Interior Design model, all linked together.

Structural model has the "structural floor slabs".

Architectural model has a "place marker" Architectural floor slab, which is on its own workset
and will eventually be completely replaced with the RS floor.

Interiors model has the actual Finished Floors--tiles, carpets, wood, etc.

Seems to work well in complex, large projects.

cheers........

[rudolfesterhuyse]

I did it like this once but was very annoyed at that stage by the fact that every time a structural floor edge or wall changed I had to change the finished floor line as well. This does not seem very efficient or am I missing something?

[Gadget Man]

I did it like this once but was very annoyed at that stage by the fact that every time a structural floor edge or wall changed I had to change the finished floor line as well. This does not seem very efficient or am I missing something?

I think you are - while you define the floor finish "slab" you still can pick walls or pick-existing-object-as-edges lines (and LOCK them) rather than just draw the sketch lines around the room. Even if you just draw, you still can lock them to the walls by the way of aligning them later but that's an extra step. That's why I prefer to use the pick walls method or - if I can't - at least lines by picking existing objects as edges (with automatic locks ON).

Then the finishes change together with your walls - as they should.

By the way, in our region many builders unfortunately prefer to tile around the cabinetry rather than under it. In this case, I use the edges of cabinets (as well as showers, etc.) to define my floor finishes "slabs".

And only after I "tile" the floors, I insert the toilets, so they automatically sit on top of my tiles (usually 10mm above slab).

[rudolfesterhuyse]

Thanks, makes a lot of sense! I don't think I am using those locks enough.

What I did in the mean time is build a slab which is eactly like the floor in plan by copying and editing type. I then added a 35 mm finish to the second floor only and mover the top up by 35mm. Unfortunately revit would not allow me to have a floor which is just a finish (so that walls cut through it. I therefor kept the exact same concrete and then joined the two floors. I am not sure how this will work in material takeoffs but I a not using that at the moment. I also do not have to destinguish between finishes at the moment because it is all the same finish. I can now hide the floor with finish in plan to annotate structural slab levels and show it in section joining walls to the floor with finish only.

Probably still better buiding floors with the finish specified as structure under floor and build each rooms finish independantly. Thanks for the advice

[Gadget Man]

... Unfortunately revit would not allow me to have a floor which is just a finish...

Absolutely NOT true!!! (see the picture below).

The only requirement is that this single layer must be within the core boundaries.
After all, if anything has only one layer it is its core... isn't it?

Now, one could break down this 10mm floor tiles slab even deeper: say, 6mm tiles on 4mm adhesive bed, but I don't go THIS far... 10mm floor tiles slab is good enough for me.

[rudolfesterhuyse]

Yes, you can have a single core material, but what I am saying is if you do it this way for a floor finish then you cannot have one floor for all rooms regardless of internal walls because walls can only cut through the "finish" part of any floor on section, not through the floor core. This means joining the wall and the finish "floor" will make it seem like the wall is built on top of the floor finish. If on the other hand you could build a finish without the core part you could still cut through the finish on section.

[twiceroadsfool]

Rudolf, you can make the wall *win* when you do the join... But the value of the *finish* in the floor has to be greater than the Value of the *finish and structure* in the wall. When the layers were on Finish (4), the floors were continuous, as youre experiencing. Switching both floor layers to Finish (5) makes the walls dominate where the joinery occured...

[simo.anttilainen]

PERSONALLY, we model the floor finishes as thin slabs, on top of the main floor slab. These then go on separate worksets, as well as getting named consistantly. This is actually the way buildings are built as well.

I know we probably do a lot of things differently here in Finland, but I still just have to ask: why do you model the floor finishes at all? If we need to calculate the amount of floor finishes we simply do the math on the space/area object basis.

Simo Anttilainen
Brunow & Maunula Architects
Finland

[Gadget Man]

I know we probably do a lot of things differently here in Finland, but I still just have to ask: why do you model the floor finishes at all? If we need to calculate the amount of floor finishes we simply do the math on the space/area object basis.

Simo Anttilainen
Brunow & Maunula Architects
Finland

One reason (at least for me): my Clients want me to mark all the areas of floor tiles, carpets, polished timber flooring, etc. - for costing. In fact, I do a separare floor covering planes (layouts) with quantities of different finishes' materials...

[rudolfesterhuyse]

Rudolf, you can make the wall *win* when you do the join... But the value of the *finish* in the floor has to be greater than the Value of the *finish and structure* in the wall. When the layers were on Finish (4), the floors were continuous, as youre experiencing. Switching both floor layers to Finish (5) makes the walls dominate where the joinery occured...


Thats great! But how do you switch both to finish and have no structural layer. Revit does no allow me to do this

[D.Williams]

Thats great! But how do you switch both to finish and have no structural layer. Revit does no allow me to do this

I think you're confusing the layers designation and where they can occur in relation to the Core Boundaries. To get it to work as suggested, place the finish layers within the Core Boundaries.

[Scott Womack]

I know we probably do a lot of things differently here in Finland, but I still just have to ask: why do you model the floor finishes at all? If we need to calculate the amount of floor finishes we simply do the math on the space/area object basis.

You always have the ability to do things manually. However, what Revit is exceptionally good at is counting and quantifying (with a couple of known "holes"). Why re-introduce ANY manual process? Here, we often have only a portion of a given room in a given floor finish. Therefore we model the floor finishes, versus splitting the faces of the main slab an painting them. These, plus placing a filled region over top were the OP's original options.

Modeling allows a differently defined material name/pattern to be applied to the objects. This allows floors to be sorted into a special schedule for just finishes, It allows a material take-off schedule to add all of one type of material together for a total SF.

When a Construction Manager/Contractor uses it in Navisworks this begins to be a serious issue to consider as well. Besides, the finishes are actually built on top of the main floor system, either adding to the overall thickness, or requiring a recess be cast into the slab.

[wmullett]

I agree with Scott. We model the floor finish as a thin floor in an interiors workset. We turn off that workset for all views except perspective or floor finish plans.

[cliff collins]

Or better yet, place the thin finish floor in a Linked ID model, and use Filtering
for display control ( of all "finishes" like wall base, chair rails, etc. )

cheers.......

[Gadget Man]

Or better yet, place the thin finish floor in a Linked ID model, and use Filtering
for display control ( of all "finishes" like wall base, chair rails, etc. )

cheers.......

Yes, absolutely, since you can model all of it in your main building file and then group it and then save this group as a linked file.

[twiceroadsfool]

Or better yet, place the thin finish floor in a Linked ID model, and use Filtering
for display control ( of all "finishes" like wall base, chair rails, etc. )

cheers.......

Just be careful. If you do this with a Linked Model in 2010 or earlier, you cant apply a Filter from the parent project through the Linked Model. Youll have to put the Filter in the Linked Model and set it to By Linked View, which is just a different workflow for what youre trying to achieve.

I would evaluate how big the building is, for whether or not you need the ID to be a completely seperate file. Especially if youve already made the jump to newer 64 bit high memory workstations. Were doing a lot of projects with complex ID stuff on seperate worksets instead of Links (where Cliffs Filtering suggestion is put to great use).

Cliff, i believe you work on much larger buildings (high rises, i think, gathering from the pic you posted the other day in the rendering thread) where an entirely seperate ID model may make more sense. But for sub 250,000 SF projects, id just cram it all in one model and go nuts.

Funny, considering im the File Linking freak, i know...

[cliff collins]

Aaron,

Yeah--get your Linking philosophy straight!

cheers....