"Pretty" Site Plans

[PHAAG]

I am trying to figure out a way to accomplish in Revit, what my company currently does in Microstation. When we do site plans we add lots of trees and shrubs and the like. We have all sorts of standard "blocks" in Microstation that we plop all over the site. Once we have added all of them, we use a "union" command that cleans up all the overlapping edges of the trees and shrubs to create a nice clean continuous "shrub line". How would I do the equivalent in Revit? Do I do something using 2D shrubs, 3D shrubs, detail components?. In the PDF you will see 2 groupings of shrubs, one is show as the "before" where the individual shrubs overlap, and one is the "after" where all the shrubs have been grouped or unioned together.

Drawing the shrubs each time like this is not an option. I would appreciate anyone's thoughts. Thanks.

[Chad Smith]

Fairly certain you can't do that. You would have to make a new family with the shrubs already union-ed together. Otherwise use detail/model lines or filled regions.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Create a family that's a simple extrusion. Copy a bunch of them to create your 'total planting experience' and then join geometry to form a continuous perimeter. You can even assign a transparent material to the family and set up your site plan as a 3D view oriented to plan so the planted areas will show sidewalk and curb lines below them.

Be sure to create the family as a generic model category, or any other that will allow join geometry.

PS Be sure to create a better looking plant than my example ;)

[davidcobi]

To take it in a different direction. After you've created your generic model and joined geometries... select your detail lines tool in pick lines mode... hover over the generic model and tab through until you have the boundary of your generic model selected and click. Now you can delete the generic model or mass if you don't want it to hang around.

[Knoll]

Be sure to create the family as a generic model category, or any other that will allow join geometry.


Good point. Generic Model Category is the only one that I've found that allows Join Geometry. Create the same extrusion shape with the Category set to Planting and it won't join.

This means that the planting is a 3D element that will show up on all plans but does not have a useful category to control it's visibility. Is that correct?

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Keep in mind that once you've done the join geometry you can change its category to planting. You can also create a sub-category for the family and control it that way.

[archjake]

Nice trick. I'm wondering if a user could then nest a planting family into the generic family so that it will schedule in any planting schedules that may be required.

Its probably worth playing with.