Curved Beams Cut Opening

[jabamax]

We are having a few issues with cutting a notch out of curved concrete beams. How has everyone been tackling this problem. You cant use opening by face on a curved beam.
Thanks

[Craig_L]

Concrete or steel beams? not sure it would make any difference, just interested to know..

Also have you tried a 'shaft' or 'by face' opening?

You could also try running a 'phantom' member through it, and coping to that member, or using a solid extrusion to do the job, so that wont show up on your schedules.

Also 'cut profile' is a handy tool, but that will only show in the active view as it isnt a physical cut, but its great for detailing.

[jabamax]

Concrete beams.
Have tried opening by face. Shafts do not cut beams (unfortunately). We tried an in place void & mass also. Coping did not work either.

[Craig_L]

What about building a void into the family, might be worth a shot.

You could set that up so it's able to be manipulated with dimension constraints, run a void extrusion thru in the family itself and constrain that. I mean actually open the beam family for editing and place the void in the family (obviously duplicate and rename)

I just tried that out quickly and it does work, although I didnt try constraining that void too much. Let me know if you can't get that to work I will try and quickly mod one up for you and you can just alter it to suit

[AdamCP]

We are having a few issues with cutting a notch out of curved concrete beams. How has everyone been tackling this problem. You cant use opening by face on a curved beam.
Thanks

Had a quick play around with this. I got it to work by using an in-place object (generic model, but other categories would work too I guess), but a solid, not a void. Then I used join geometry on the curved beam, picking the in-place object first. Finally I hid the generic object. Hacky, but all I could get to work. Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Adam.

[jabamax]

Adam,
This works well. Agree a bit hacky, but achieves the result......story of Revit sometimes.

[benmay]

You can also go one step further, and create a family, I would suggest with the framing category and assign the dummy solid to a new sub-category under structural framing
You can then control the dimensions with parameters and turn the visibility off with VG Overides

Still not very BIM, but I would always avoid inplace where possible