Beam pocket seat feature doesn't cut out wall...

[rob.goetze]

I placed some steel beams between two concrete structural walls. In the beam properties, I checked the box for "Beam Start Pocket Seat" and "Beam End Pocket Seat". In plan view, the result is satisfactory. However, I would like the beam to actually cut out the wall where it is going into the pocket seat. There are several reasons for this:

1. When I run Interference Checking, Revit lists these walls and beams and ignores the fact that the Beam Pocket Seat feature has resulted in this inadvertent "interference".

2. In a wall schedule, the volume calculation ignores the pocket seat and is therefore inaccurate. If the beam cut out the wall at that location, the wall volume would be correct.

3. For presentation purposes in 3D, it would simply look better.

Is there a user-friendly feature to cut out the wall for the Pocket Seat? I tried the following:
- Edit Profile of wall (lots of work, and the cut goes right through the wall instead of only halfway in --> still inaccurate for volume and presentation)
- Edit Cut Profile (great results ... but only for the section view in which one creates the cut profile. Volume still inaccurate.)
- Cut Geometry (doesn't work: won't pick the beam after I pick the wall)
- Have NOT tried a void -- I assume this would work, but am not interested in manually placing individual void objects at every beam location....

Any other suggestions?

[Paul Andersen]

It would be nice if voids could exist on their own in a family. This way they could be a part of a family (or nested into a family) for the purpose of cutting other model geometry once added to the model. If this were possible you could sheath the framing member in a void that could be used to cut walls and other geometry with after the member was placed in the model. Even better if you could tell that void what it should cut automatically so you wouldn't even have to use the cut geometry tool. This however is not possible.

I believe your best bet for making the 3D model appear accurate is the in-place void family. I realize this is an extra somewhat time consuming step that may not have much value beyond making the 3D model look correct and the wall volumes more accurate. If you take the time to go this route I would recommend locking your void extrusion sketch to the extents of the beam geometry or a dimensioned offset so that if the beam size changes your beam pocket will adjust automatically. I've posted a quick example file for your consideration.

The green member is sheathed in a full length void locked to the ends of the beam and it's bounding geometry. The red and blue members have separate voids at each end locked to the face and centerline of the wall as well as the beams bounding geometry. The blue member has dimensioned offsets. All of these voids will adjust relative to member size changes. I use a similar method for the top of piers that are integrated with and held down from the top of the foundation wall. If you come up with a better method I would be interested.

[rob.goetze]

Hi Paul:

Thanks for trying out the voids and for the sample drawing which does a great job of illustrating the various void options.

Autodesk Support tells me that such in-place voids are the only way to currently get the actual cutout, in order to have accurate volume, representation and interference checking.

It certainly would be good if voids could exist on their own within a structural member family, and then cut the structural walls automatically. Perhaps in Revit Structure 4?

Thanks again!

[AARON.78242]

Where do you even get to the beam start pocket seat. We are trying to just see a poctet.
Thanks for your help.