Revit and Historic Buildings

[Andrew Dobson]

I work for a practice specialising in conservation and am interested in Revit. Having used ArchiCAD, I know of the benefits of using BIM programs, but I am not sure how easy it would be to produce many features of historic and traditional buildings such as walls that vary in thickness in plan and in section.

Does anyone know how you would model something like an out of plumb rubble stone wall in Revit?

Some of the Revit features (like phasing) would be really useful in our line of work, and lots of traditional cornices etc can be easily modelled with the sweep tool, but how about things such as Corinthian Column capitals? How would you go about doing this in Revit?

Any thoughts would be very welcome!

Many Thanks

[jpolding]

You would have to start with the massing elements to get the shapes you need. There are a number of useful tools that would allow you to model and quantify any existing shapes. You could then apply textures, colours and materials to the mass.

[jwilhelm]

attached is an elevation I did with some neoclassical elements, its not so bad once you figure out some techniques.

[mcilrath]

Very nifty. Thank you.

[truevis]

attached is an elevation I did with some neoclassical elements, its not so bad once you figure out some techniques.
Well done. Isn't that shadow casting fabulous? They used to do it a hundred+ years ago with ink.

[cadkiller]

Very nice work.

I love the down spout system.

Did you model the ridges or is that line work on the elevation?

Can you post a 3D DWF file of that house?

[jwilhelm]

The ridges were modeled with a half circular extrusion using host sweep roof fascia, then I created a repeating detail roof tile that I applied to each elevation, it makes it pretty simple to draw a series of tile profiles. The downside of the repeating detail is that if the model chamges you often end up having to reposition it, but I havent found any way to model roof tiles or shingles easily. We have had clients after looking at these elevations insist thhat thier projects be done with REVIT.

[dbaldacchino]

Check this out:

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=29728

[tc3dcad60731]

attached is an elevation I did with some neoclassical elements, its not so bad once you figure out some techniques.

In the words of Bill and Ted, "Most excellent, dude!" That was amazing!

[Tobie]

http://www.vismasters.com/FORUMS/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=543

Not done in Revit, but still nice to see it can be done with BIM

[AP23]

http://www.vismasters.com/FORUMS/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=543

Not done in Revit, but still nice to see it can be done with BIM

Isn't it a bit suicidal to model all of those ornaments, and sculptural bits and pieces with the current modeling tools in Revit and the available hardware?

[Tobie]

Just good to know that we can push the BIM envelope and that elements does not have to be square.

[Max Lloyd]

I think it looks amazing. If I could ever get a render with that quality, I'd be very happy indeed.

[ejburrell67787]

attached is an elevation I did with some neoclassical elements, its not so bad once you figure out some techniques.Very nice work, thanks for sharing... post more in the gallery when you can, would be great!!

[Martin P]

I work for a practice specialising in conservation and am interested in Revit. Having used ArchiCAD, I know of the benefits of using BIM programs, but I am not sure how easy it would be to produce many features of historic and traditional buildings such as walls that vary in thickness in plan and in section.

Does anyone know how you would model something like an out of plumb rubble stone wall in Revit?

Some of the Revit features (like phasing) would be really useful in our line of work, and lots of traditional cornices etc can be easily modelled with the sweep tool, but how about things such as Corinthian Column capitals? How would you go about doing this in Revit?

Any thoughts would be very welcome!

Many Thanks

I have been there myself - we have done several fit outs of old existing buildings - where the walls on plan are a myriad of different thicknesses (sometimes on section too) where it is just not practical to create a new wall type for each thickness as surveyed.

I have had some success with modelling the walls as in place families (solids and voids you can chop up) I also had some problems too. all of the problems I had were reported and I was assured they were going to be addressed. The whole thing felt a little bit "work aroundy" if I am honest, but it did get there in the end without too much pain - I am sure if this was mostly what I did I would eventually come up with a good system to do them!! Thing like windows I created the "holes" for them and used curtain walls as the windows - this did have the benefit that the windows and openings were very easy to demolish and infill differently as required (normally if you demolish a window Revit fills in the hole - this way it did not do this) - in place walls behaved a little odd with windows and doors placed in them. Room tags also behave oddly, but you can define rooms manually anyway.


It does seem an area that little bit more development time could be spent on to be honest, not sure if version 9.0 will address any of these issues? but it is possible now - and yes phasing is VERY useful!!!



Before you ask - its an old building that is being fitted out to provide temporary accomodation for the homeless.

[mtogni]

To Martin P.
My compliments for the drawing and... if I can, what type of font truetype have you used? It's very good... Thx

[Martin P]

Thx for compliments, though I can only take credit for the drawing part of it, the job has been taken over by another couple of people in the office now who did all of the spec etc.

Architxt and Archittl are the ones used, I think there are others attached?...

Had downloaded a bit of freeware a little while back that lt you convert scans of your own hadwriting into fonts, keep meaning to do it!

here are the fonts I used with some others I had.

[Roger Evans]

That bay looks damned awkward Martin how was it done?

[Andre Baros]

I posted this once from my mac at home, but apparently it didn't stick.

We have had good results documenting existing buildings using two wall next to each other. One is parallel to the outside and one to the inside. The core layers of each wall overlap and get joined so that they clean up in plan. Any opening you place extend through both walls as long as they are joined. This also works great if you are demolishing a finish. You can draw structural walls (to remain) as one wall and finish walls (to be demo'd and replaces) as another wall and then use phases to take one out and put a new one in. The only thing to be aware of is that all openings should be hosted by the wall which remains.

For really complex details (we're working on a project by Louis Sullivan right now) we draft them onto the model (or in families for repeating details) Since they're model lines, they still show up in various views, etc. and then if we need a real 3D view, we mix in photos of the real thing.

Restoration and remodeling work is difficult in any program (as is any project where everything is just a little out of square) and Revit helps but doesn't solve all the problems. It's snaps and offsets are smarter than ACAD for example and phasing, as was suggested, really helps.

[AP23]

I guess the best way to model a historic building is to do the plans, sections and elevations in Revit and model the complex details like columns in an all purpose modeler and then import them into Revit.

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/attachments/hnr/Rijksmuseum_exterieur_3d_door_INDG.mpg
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/attachments/hnr/Rijksmuseum_interieur_3d_door_INDG.mpg

The left one was done in 3ds max and the right one was done in Rhino.

[mtogni]

To Martin P.
Many thanks for your post.

[Martin P]

That bay looks damned awkward Martin how was it done?


It was easy in the end to draw because all of the grey walls on that drawing are done as in place wall families (there are 4 other floors to the building). The bay had sloped faces as well and went up through 3 storeys, so its why I started down this path and made all of the existing walls as in place - that and the fact that none of the walls were really the same thickness, I was drawing from a survey and all of the existing walls were different. It had some down sides doing this, but It also had some plus sides. I would probably do it again in the same way - I would be more aware of some of issues I would face, ans all of them could be got around. the ease of drawing all the difficult walls in place outweighs the problems - the other thing I liked about it was that the existing walls were one big solid object that took a bit of effort to edit, kind of like reality - ie I couldnt accidentally move an existing wall or window window a bit of effort!!