yet another revit newbie....:P

[deafred]

hi there revit peoples,

i'm a project/tech architect in the land of australia. have been playing around with revit since version 6 or 8 and watched it develop on the sidelines. finally have decided to get serious with it. tutorial wise have been googling, watching lynda online (great), reading and have an old DG CAD dvd purchased some years ago. i'm pretty au fait with most operations/concepts, walls, windows etc all make sense - ex archicad user here......but primarily an acad user these days :(.

have a few basic questions (hopefully) mainly about annotations, drawing setups/conventions & items i cant get my head around atm. be great if someone could point me the right direction!!

- leaders/arrows, is there a way to run more than two lines? in acad you can set leaders to infinite, wondering if am missing something? or is this family controlled variable?

- dimensions - permanent. this is an acad issue as well. can vertical and horizontal dimension ticks point in the same direction rather than opposite? again is this a family variable?

- plotting to PDF - is there a batch to one single file option? or is this controlled by external software such as Bluebeam?

- titleblocks - anyone know of good tutorial to set these up? i would like to start from scratch.

- templates. in my mind i'd set one up with generic views & sheets loaded which can be edited on a project basis. what about say annotation families? i be inclined to include an office standards (arrows, texts dims, tag etc) in the template. is this best practice? gather revit has standard lineweights, gather these can be edited and/or customised to suit.

- in view visibility graphics can i turn off wall finishes leaving the structure core component showing? speaking of which whats the general consensus practice for walls? show all the wall build up or just draw with structure core? in manual drafting one would just draw & dimension the wall structure only, the builder would have to add/allow for finishes. from memory i think can dimesnion to wall structure only anyway.

- best practice for levels? say i have a house with split levels and don't want them as different views - is this possible? do people set all levels relative to reduced levels (RL)? if so do you run with a level RL 0.0 of which everything is referenced to? or just set the RL number and not to a height in Z co-ord? reason i ask this is most surveys here are 3D and already set to the correct RLs in the Z co-ordinate, i'm not sure how revit deals with this. what about levels in general - do people set different levels for structure and finished? generally we set FFL & FCL and let the builder figure out the in-between. but revit might be different.

- speaking of surveys. if i don't have a a 3D survey but a bunch of 2D contour lines and random points, can i make a surface from this? presuming this is possible, its easy in sketchup.

- structure. again if only have a 2D structural engineering (s.eng not using revit), is the best practice to integrate into the model or leave this detail out and refer to the S.Eng drawings? personally id prefer to integrate. can Revit draw complex suspended concrete slabs, steps, shapes and setdowns etc? like my question about walls, do people draw floor slabs with a structure core and finishes? or are structure floors and finished floor separate elements in Revit? reason for asking is have complex project that i documented in ACAD and want to try document in Revit for fun and learning. it has a ton of complex structural works.

hmm, there is probably quite a bit here!! and no doubt have a lot of further questions once get stuck in properly. i'd rather plan the attack than start out blind. i'm starting to learn about family creation at the minute :)

cheers, kudos for reading and thank you everyone in advance.

[irneb]

- leaders/arrows, is there a way to run more than two lines? in acad you can set leaders to infinite, wondering if am missing something? or is this family controlled variable?Unfortunately no. Silly aintit? And BTW, those "middle" points act more like the landing distances in acad than a 2nd point.


- dimensions - permanent. this is an acad issue as well. can vertical and horizontal dimension ticks point in the same direction rather than opposite? again is this a family variable?AFAIK you'd need to make 2 dimension styles to enable this "phenomenon".


- plotting to PDF - is there a batch to one single file option? or is this controlled by external software such as Bluebeam?External program yes. Though I prefer PDFCreator, but whatever takes your fancy. Wish RVT had a PDF export like it doe for DWF's :roll:


- titleblocks - anyone know of good tutorial to set these up? i would like to start from scratch.Perhaps these: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-3041184622411785%3Aaljemgsxg0t&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=titleblock&sa=Search&siteurl=therevitkid.blogspot.com%2F2010%2F05%2Ftutorial-titleblock-basics.html&ref=www.google.co.za%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D2%26ved%3D0CEQQFjAB%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Ftherevitkid.blogspot.com%252F2010%252F05%252Ftutorial-titleblock-basics.html%26ei%3Dv9nyUL2qJo3D0AWG-IDoCg%26usg%3DAFQjCNGHWchb9M--zzjVDquR9wKz0G2Miw%26bvm%3Dbv.1357700187%2Cd.d2k%26cad%3Drja&ss=2502j912006j10#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=titleblock&gsc.page=1


- templates. in my mind i'd set one up with generic views & sheets loaded which can be edited on a project basis. what about say annotation families? i be inclined to include an office standards (arrows, texts dims, tag etc) in the template. is this best practice? gather revit has standard lineweights, gather these can be edited and/or customised to suit.I'd say "Yes". ;)

...

Though usually I have a company-wide template with all sorts of stuff in it. Schedule Tags (Doors Windows etc.) / Text Styles / Line Weights / Line Styles / Dim Styles / Section Tags / Elevation Tags / Title View Tags / at least 2 levels / a Section / an Elevation / default details in Drafting Views / common Legends / etc. etc. etc. My company template is around 7MB in size - so there's quite a lot in there without any model per say.

What i then do is save-as that template to a project template - since I might make more than one RVT file per project I don't want to adjust stuff like logos and title block tweaks every time I make a new file. Note you can use the Transfer Project standards tool to import all these things from one project file into another - overwriting as required, but it sometimes gives hassles, and you need to keep the namings constant.


- in view visibility graphics can i turn off wall finishes leaving the structure core component showing? speaking of which whats the general consensus practice for walls? show all the wall build up or just draw with structure core? in manual drafting one would just draw & dimension the wall structure only, the builder would have to add/allow for finishes. from memory i think can dimesnion to wall structure only anyway.Generally speaking you always see the entire wall width. In the Course Detail Level - the wall indicates the entire width (including finish layers). Dimensions can dim to any one of Wall Centreline / Core Centreline / Wall faces / Core faces.

There are 2 workarounds:

In the Visibility Graphics (VG keyboard shortcut) the dialog contains a box at bottom right called "Override Host Layers". If you turn on the "Cut Line Styles" check you can customize line thicknesses, colours and hatches for the different layers of the walls. This is on a per view basis - but you can use View Templates to apply the same change to many views at once (similar but better than ACad's Layer States Manager).
Draw all walls as only core elements, only where you have detail blow-ups draw a secondary wall along the main one and Join Geometry so windows and door cut properly (or use filled regions) to indicate finishes such as plaster - note in some cases over here you'd end up with double layer plaster giving a 25mm thickness - especially in public areas or externally.



- best practice for levels? say i have a house with split levels and don't want them as different views - is this possible? do people set all levels relative to reduced levels (RL)? if so do you run with a level RL 0.0 of which everything is referenced to? or just set the RL number and not to a height in Z co-ord? reason i ask this is most surveys here are 3D and already set to the correct RLs in the Z co-ordinate, i'm not sure how revit deals with this. what about levels in general - do people set different levels for structure and finished? generally we set FFL & FCL and let the builder figure out the in-between. but revit might be different.I tend to create levels all over the show. You need not have a view for each level, though that sometimes helps to make your model more editable as well. Note you don't need to place all views onto sheets - some (indeed most) would simply be views used to adjust the model more easily / accurately.

Note you can customize the Project Browser to group different views to make it more manageable. You can even add extra project parameters (http://blogs.rand.com/support/2012/09/revit-customizing-the-project-browser.html) in order to do so even more customizably.

Then if you don't want a mess of all these "temporary" levels in your sections and elevations: you could either use Visibility Graphics - Filters (http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Revit/enu/2013/Help/00001-Revit_He0/1468-Document1468/1608-Visibili1608/1615-Controll1615), or instead of levels you could always use Reference Planes (though then you can't set a view onto them).

As for the datum level. Revit has 2 sets of values for such: One is the Project Location, the other is the Shared location. You generally draw using the project location, such that your building is close to the origin point (similar to acad's WCS 0,0,0) with the building aligned to the XY axes, and the "Ground Floor's" level set to Z=0. The shared location is the Survey Points - where you indicate such things a real-world coordinates, levels from datums / sea, true north. All relevant tags (such as spot level dims / spot coordinates / level tags) can use either one of these - configurable in their type parameters.


- speaking of surveys. if i don't have a a 3D survey but a bunch of 2D contour lines and random points, can i make a surface from this? presuming this is possible, its easy in sketchup.Reasonably easy, though I'd use acad to move each contour to it's required Z value, then import that DWG and use it to generate the Toposurface. Officially this is not the best solution, since it generates a much more complex toto than strictly needed. The officially suggested method is to ask the surveyor for a CSV file containing the survey points then import that into the topo surface.


- structure. again if only have a 2D structural engineering (s.eng not using revit), is the best practice to integrate into the model or leave this detail out and refer to the S.Eng drawings? personally id prefer to integrate. can Revit draw complex suspended concrete slabs, steps, shapes and setdowns etc? like my question about walls, do people draw floor slabs with a structure core and finishes? or are structure floors and finished floor separate elements in Revit? reason for asking is have complex project that i documented in ACAD and want to try document in Revit for fun and learning. it has a ton of complex structural works.Generally speaking you draw a different floor for each variation. I'd also suggest drawing the structure (i.e. suspended slab) as one floor with the finish as a 2nd floor on top of that. Just my opinion, though my reasoning is that you can then have spot levels indicating FFL and (using the finish floor's bottom) TOC in one go.

As for step-downs / recesses. I generally draw a hole in the floor-slab's boundary, then draw another type of floor inside that. Stay away from attempting to simulate these by simply drawing a Model in Place - usually causes issues later on.

You tend to draw columns and beams as (wait for it ....) columns and beams :lol:. Take note you have 2 types of columns: Architectural and Structural. See these as the difference between a dummy column and a true column. E.g. joining an arch col to a wall transforms it into something like a pier, while doing the same with a struct col would cut out the wall to make it surround the column.

From experience, the one tool you will use the most is Join Geometry. And you'll be doing it time and again, since joined geometry has a tendency to "unjoin" of its own accord for no apparent reason. One of my main steps in preparing documents for issue is to go through each view to check if some geometry has unjoined for the heck of it! Especially prevalent in sections.

[deafred]

W O W thank you irneb, wonderfully comprehensive reply. apologies for the embarrassingly lengthy time it took to a. find and read & b. to reply!! finally started back into revit land again, been watching lynda and dg cad tutes lately.

thank you again for all your excellent points, much appreciated.


Unfortunately no. Silly aintit? And BTW, those "middle" points act more like the landing distances in acad than a 2nd point.

Quite bemusing. What about spline type leader, could be a possible work around? same goes for stairs, any way to show just "up" rather than down?


AFAIK you'd need to make 2 dimension styles to enable this "phenomenon".

noted, thanks i'll experiment. bemusing again, not really an issue, have always wondered why CAD software does this.


- plotting to PDF - is there a batch to one single file option? or is this controlled by external software such as Bluebeam?

noted, thanks. i'm guessing its an autodesk-ism. tis why we purchased bluebeam CAD for autocad.


Perhaps these: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner...ock&gsc.page=1

awesome, cheers.


I'd say "Yes".

perfect, thanks.


Generally speaking you always see the entire wall width.

ok, great, thanks. i've jumped into the draw walls with finishes and dimension to finished walls camp. its a bit of a pain (fun maybe) at times when have multiple wall types within the one wall line. manageable with a bit of thought :)


I tend to create levels all over the show

yep, now agree. be nice to be able to change the text size and run an RL on the same line etc, gather have to create a new type. just testing the levels out, in elevation and section have set a level at 0 and all subsequent levels from this, means can just add the RL figure and Revit nicely calculates the dimension in between for me ie Ground floor finished level is 17.73m and GFL FCL is 20.53, giving the 2800mm offset for the ceiling line.


Reasonably easy, though I'd use acad to move each contour to it's required Z value, then import that DWG and use it to generate the Toposurface. Officially this is not the best solution, since it generates a much more complex to than strictly needed.

noted. unofficial version work around is probably what i would do.


Generally speaking you draw a different floor for each variation.

going through this now, agreed thinking its easier to create a structure floor and then a finishes floor. haha, yep understood on the column and beam front!!

thanks again.