rendering exposed metal deck

[d_lee.162829]

Does anyone know the best way to do this? I looked on augi forums and the only suggestion that I could find was to get a material texture and apply it to the underside of the slab, but does that work in 3D? Does anyone else have an issue with modeling metal deck and then having to render it? Thanks.

[greg.mcdowell]

You could get a copy of Revit Structure - pretty sure you can get metal decking modeled with that.

If not you'll have to make custom extrusion/sweep to show the decking. No automated way in Revit Architecture (at least not for 3D).

[SamuelAB]

We simply modeled an extrusion for our needs in Revit Arch. See attached.

[d_lee.162829]

@ SamuelAB, If you modeled the deck, which I can, does it slow down the computer a lot? I don't want to have to do this and have the computer become super slow. Btw, why didn't you make a family? Just curious. Thanks!

@greg.mcdowell, I will see if I can get my engineer to provide me a deck as a family and see if I can import it into Revit. Thanks!

[SamuelAB]

@ d_lee, This was a team project at school. I did not model the roof, my crazy alcoholic friend did it while he was drunk. It may have been too complicated due to the multiple skylights. I created the serpentine truss family and oversaw the project team.

It will obviously require more memory, but if you have a good Revit machine (8+GB of RAM, 24GB if possible), it should not dent your performance. You can also just put it on a Workset that you turn off most of the time unless you are rendering, this way it will not affect performance at all.

[d_lee.162829]

I'm starting to go crazy. So here's what I tried to do. I created a new profile under families and then saved it as a metal deck. I then opened a new family, beams and braces. I deleted the original rectangle. I loaded the new profile into the beams and braces family and then made a sweep. In the sweep command, I drew one line on the floor plan ref. level from east to west, along the reference plane, a length of 10'-0". I finished the line and then tried to use the loaded profile, but it keeps erorring saying that it can't create the sweep. I followed these instructions, but for the life of me, I can't figure it out.
http://revitfamilies.blogspot.com/2008/08/quantify-profiled-roof-sheeting.html

I am uploading my profile to see if it's something wrong with that, or am I not making the sweep correctly or is there a setting I'm missing. Thanks!

[SamuelAB]

You drew a line instead of a profile. You need a closed loop with a material "thickness" , not a single line.

Add a thickness with the line offset command and close your loop. Try again and update.

[d_lee.162829]

I'm so lame . . . totally forgot about that . . . thanks!