Sharing massing with Revit Structures

[Andre Baros]

Does anyone have any experience using masses with Revit structure. We have a building with a complex roof completely driven by a custom mass element, but no idea how to place structure using the mass. Neither we, nor our structural engineer have found a work around to the lack of "beam by mass" or even being able to pick mass faces as the work planes for beams. Each time the mass changes they have to redraw the structure, while we just update our roofs.

If we create a custom family which follows the same rules as the mass, will structural be able to use that for analysis?

Any ideas for work arounds are welcome.

[archjake]

How about a roof hosted beam / joist family?

[Andre Baros]

That's exactly where we started, the problem is that all the steel occurs at the intersection of the roofs and Revit was orienting it to one adjacent roof or the other. We created a sub-category of masses for structure which place a face perpendicular to each inflection line so that beams placed along those faces are oriented correctly in relation to the roof, but these is no easy way to place all those beams or keep them up to date.

I would be easy if we could just pin down the form and let structure fill in their information, but they actually need to be able to adjust the mass to make the structure work.