High-Rise over Parking

[BomberAIA]

I'm ready to start a high-rise over parking. I've not drawn this type of project in Revit. I'm wondering if anyone has experience and could give me a heads-up on tips and tricks and also problems you incurred. Thanks.

[BomberAIA]

Great, no one has produced a high-rise in Revit exceprt SOM?

[sbrown]

we are working on this type of project right now. I recommend using worksets to separate the buildings. We actually used sep bldg. models, but that was for other reasons. the parking structure iwas very easy to model, use the ramp tool to figure everything out, but if you need the spaces attached to the slope of the ramp then create a sloped floor on top of the ramp. for the high rise, i really liked using the massing tools to get it going, but i modeled all the stair and elev. shafts from the start.

[BomberAIA]

Hi Scott:
Thanks for the reply. How do you separate your building into worksets? What I mean is, do you put your core and column grid on one, units on other and the parking on one.

[kpaxton]

Bomber,

Some of this depends on the scope of what you're doing. If you're talking about one building with 5 over 1, or 20 over 3, it's could be a bit different if you've got 3 buildings. Height really makes no difference to me as all that is keeping track of all the different levels required.

When you're starting your layout, think of what type of Systems you'll have and how they'll be worked on by the people in your office. IF everything is in one building file, I would typically lay out the grids, structural elements (columns) and core elements (stairs, elevators, etc.) in one workset. The exterior walls in another workset, and interior items in yet another workset. Additional worksets can be added later as required - but these would be the basic ones.

My only comment on high-rises revolves around Groups. I'm not sure how others are coping, but personally I've been burned by Groups. This is sad, because in theory, this is where Revit could really shine. The concept of having a 'typical' floor or even a unit plan, and having it repeat on 30 floors, and making one change and then it auto updates everywhere makes me salivate... but it's just not there yet. I guess what I'm trying to say is... be careful. Worksets go a long way in helping divide the work.

Scott's suggestions for the ramp are right on the money. It'll go faster than you think.

Good luck!
Kyle

[BomberAIA]

Thanks Kyle for your reply. I have the grid and structural grid already drawn. I will have 10 floors over 3 of parking, lobby/club and a few townhouses facing the street to hide the structured parling. I'll let you know how it goes.

[eldad]

mate,
I have been working on a few high risers with car park under, if you are the only one working on it, there is not much need for worksets, especially in the early stages of the building, sketch design.
I would use groups but will group similar elements, i.e. external walls, internal walls, fixtures...
I would not take walls all the way up, rather floor to floor.
Sit down and think hard about your building, how are you going to build it, how many people going to work on it, what are they going to do?...
doing ceiling plans, don't attach to walls, just pick the line.
and last but not least, you can always come back here should you have a problem :)
Good Luck.

[sjsl]

"High-Rise Over Parking", sorry, but it sounds like the title of a Asian movie classic.

And we have not done this yet.

[Danny Polkinhorn]

Bomber,

We're currently doing a hotel tower and office tower on top of a 3 story podium. We created worksets for the Core, Podium, Hotel tower (above the podium), and Office tower (above the podium). The great thing about worksets is that you can add or delete them as you see fit. So while this setup is working for us in early concept, it'll no doubt change before we get into DD. We'll probably end up with worksets along the traditional lines of Exterior, Interior, etc. We have two people on this project currently. We decided against using separate project files because we only have one document set. As Kyle says, split up your worksets based on who'll be doing what.

Hope that helps,

[Wes Macaulay]

Another to add is that if your building's curtain wall is pretty complicated and there's a lot of it (more than 40 storeys say) then put the curtain wall into a linked file. Keeps the main model file size smaller for better performance.

Downsides: can't tag the curtain wall (probably not a big deal) and the linked curtain walls won't provide an exterior boundary for your rooms -- you'll have to use room separation lines.

[BomberAIA]

Why wouldn't you run the walls all the way up?

[abarrette]

Because that isn't how a builing is built. Walls are built deck-to-deck or deck-to-ceiling not ground to sky. Also the future implications of reworking this building have to deal with verification and modification of single floors of information. This becomes highly irregular if your walls are continuous from ground to penthouse. It's more a consideration for an office tower but it makes no sense to change the process because you don't expect to change a condominium tower.

[MikeJarosz]

Why wouldn't you run the walls all the way up?

Well, no. For example, in the Freedom Tower, the cast in place shear walls change thickness every few stories. This is quite a complex architectural problem if you are trying to keep the inner face of shafts in a single plane. The setbacks in wall thickness have to be on the outer side of the shafts. And the north/south shear walls don't necessarily break at the same place as the east/west. With Revit I had a lot of fun coordinating this situation in full 3D. I found a lot of situations that wouldn't have been discovered until the formwork was in place.

The Waltham team also learned a lot about wall joins :-))