Revit for Interiors

[ron.sanpedro]

Interior Designers have some dramatically different needs from Architects, and yet Revit Building is the (most) appropriate tool for most of it. As BIM Manager at my new office, I will be meeting with the Interiors Group on Friday, and I would love to have some ideas to address their biggest issues. To whit...

1: Material hatches. For an Architect just knowing the floor is carpet is enough, but the Interior Designer needs to be able to divide that carpeted floor up into a bunch of areas and A: show a different hatch in each area for a finish plan, and B: scan actual carpet samples and do the infill in 3D. I can use Model Lines to get the basic subdivided area, but the only thing I can find for the hatch effect is Filled Region, which requires rebuilding the region (is there really no pick point option?) and only shows up in the specific 2D view. I have also tried the paint bucket, but it doesn't fill between a floor edge and a model line, it wants to paint the whole floor. I guess I could have the interiors people build a separate puzzle of 1/2" thick floors on top of the slab, and paint them. Is that what people are doing? Or are you exporting to AutoCAD and letting the Interiors people work there (heaven forbid!). By the way, all this applies to paint and wall coverings, highly designed tile counters and back splashes, mosaic tile floors, etc.
2: Furniture issues. Again, the Architects needs are simple, I want a side chair here. The interiors people want a specific chair, with specified finishes, and we would love to see that in 2D, 3D & schedules, both the specific furniture and the specific material. Has anyone experimented with an Interiors only furniture library? And do you create your furniture as a subtype so you can have either the simple Architects furniture on or the more specific Interiors furniture?
3: Casework. Interiors folks can really get into detailing the bejezus out of a reception desk, and at the other extreme it would be nice to have a really solid library of casework components. Anyone have any experience with this, even if to say "We tried, we failed, we drafted."
4: Plan paint callouts and such. You know, the nice thick line that sits a few inches off the wall in plan and shows the extents of a particular paint, and has a bubble callout for P1 or the like. Ideally the callout would be something that you pick the actual walls or corner points, and the line would show up a scale specific distance from the wall (1" at 1"=1', 6" at 1/8"=1', etc). with the callout moveable like with a note bubble. Actually, IDEALLY Revit would be able to tag this automatically based on the paint colors actually applied to the walls, provide a legend and render elevations and perspectives with accurate color. Failing that, a 2D callout is a step in the right direction.

So, any insights on Interiors use of Revit would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks,
Gordon

[Justin Marchiel]

1. you could use the split face tool and paint on different colors.

2. you would need to step up a bunch of parameters for material, but it could be done. biggest thing would be creating the different type of chairs.

3. we are establishing a modular way of creating casework. componants are 3d and tag to the various conditions. work pretty well so far, biggest thing is creating the actual pieces.

4. you might be able to do this with in place families, but would be really hard to actaully draw the walls. a line based detail componant would work, but the actual paint finish would not be on the wall. once again the split face tool and paint the different paint types. you could tag the material, but the extent would have to be manual.

Hopefully you get some more options, but this is what came to my mind at a first glance.

Justin

[ford347]

As far as painting walls and floors, I think the split region tool is the only way to go. You can split the region to whatever you would like and paint it. Pretty straight forward most of the time, however I know at which order you split a wall may it be a stacked wall or have some crazy joins can affect the outcome, so be careful...there is a thread around here addressing that one that is fairly detailed.

As far as you finishes, I have wondered how to accomplish this also, through schedules, keynotes and graphically. I don't have the resources to create furniture and casework to look like what I am actually going to specify, so I use everything out of the box, or at least copied out of the box and updated to frequently used sizes and the appropriate keynotes etc. I just posted an idea I had in this post: http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=49633, it was concerning keynotes and finishes. See what you think. But I think this way you are somewhat seperating what an architect might want to specify vs. what and Interior Designer might specify by having two diff. keynoting tags that are distinquishable from one another and also point to a diff. note block. The caviat is that for finishes etc., my idea is to use the old keynoting tool which takes quite a bit of work in my opinion, unless you just keep the keynote user defined in it's properties dialog box. Other than that, if you have the resources, building custom families for everything and assigning all the parameters you need to show up in a schedule seems like the most detailed idea, it would just take a heck of a lot of work. Not an option for myself. But hope this helped somehow.

Josh

[Andre Baros]

Interior elevations are so easy in Revit, we don't really do finish plans any more. If we really need to we use the room tags to report the finishes, if they're any more complex than that we elevate.

For millwork, we experimented with 3D millwork and found that it added a lot of overhead for things you couldn't even see. Now, we only model open casework (ie, shelves) and anything thats closed we model as a mass and break up with model lines. We have a few flexible detail components which we nest into sweeps so that wherever you cut the mass you see the right detail, but for 3D it's just a box (or whatever) with model lines over it.

For all of the fancy furniture, you could import that via dwg into families and use the visibility controls to show different levels of detail at course, medium, and fine. Arch level of detail at Medium and interior level of detail at Fine or something like that. Odd are that the arch would have the furniture turned off at fine anyway so you wouldn't have any conflicts.

For wall's split face, for floor, we draw a puzzle or we handle it in Max (to render).

[sbrown]

I"ve been working with our interiors group for 3 years now.

1. Don't paint floors, create multiple floor finish types and build the floors. Then you get real material take offs.
2. Build custom casework families(reception desks) start with drawing the plans, elevations etc in the families, then build the 3d geometry(if needed). Because you need to detail these.
3. Don't model furniture unless you are actually getting paid for it. Just use 2d plans and elevations and a generic 3d that approximates for interior perspectives.

[dbaldacchino]

I'm not a fan of the split region tool (I use it as a last resort) because when someone moves a wall and gets a warning about the split region and they ignore it....well you've had it. The region goes away and so does the pain, or other areas get painted with the wrong paint. You lose information or the end result is incorrect information. And that's not good in BIM.

I've built a family to create interior finishes such as wainscots and paint banding. The generic model line-based family is great for that....specify parameters for bands, materials, thicknesses, heights etc. and you've got yourself a pretty flexible family that will render and will tag with materials in elevation. Probably even of some value for material take-offs.

As for floors, I don't know....we haven't gone that far. I actually thought about using ceilings to generate floor patterns as a workaround to just "get it done" (using a 1x1 grid that can have other families attached to it such as light fixture families, but modeled as different colored tile or other flooring materials). But such solution would only be a workaround and is not the BIM way of doing it.....just a thought.
As for casework, we're not there yet either. We need to spend some serious time on this as I can see significant time savings for us in this regard. I'm thinking of modelling casework as masses with model linework and some symbolic representation in plan. And perhaps some other parameters added to schedule hardware or show # of shelves in the base cabinet, finish materials etc.

[ford347]

I've built a family to create interior finishes such as wainscots and paint banding. The generic model line-based family is great for that....specify parameters for bands, materials, thicknesses, heights etc. and you've got yourself a pretty flexible family that will render and will tag with materials in elevation. I'm curious as to what this family you've created entails. I'm not sure I know what you mean. Give me an example? Sounds useful.

Josh

[dbaldacchino]

Here's one that I've used a while ago. This was meant for laminate panel finishes, but can be used for paints too.

[ford347]

Hey, that's pretty cool. I never thought of that. I would have made a thin wall. I guess doing a material take-off might be out of the picture, but I don't really do that now anyway. So what could be the limitations, or how far to you take this method?

What is the void at the end of your reference line in that family? What is it doing?

thanks!

Josh

[dbaldacchino]

I haven't done any take-offs so I don't really know the limitations of this approach. But really, I don't see any geometric limitation. In this case, we were just modeling a wainscot (p-lam). Initially it was all p-lam with joints in between but we ended up having a first p-lam band with paint stripes and reveals in gyp (they're not really modeled like that, but it works in elevation with material tagging anyway). You can use the pick tool to place it on the face of a wall. It also has a flip arrow so if it goes into the wall instead of on the outside, just select it and hit the spacebar (or click the flip arrow). I also set it up so that I can create other types from the same family by specifying the number of bands and the rest would be ignored (see the formulas and yes/no parameters used inside it). Those other types were required for above door heads etc. or in locations where we only had a wainscot and no paint bands.

The reason for that void is because at one location, I needed to stop it against a curtainwall with a sloping edge and the only way to control it is through a void inside the family. See image below for an interior shaded view of where it was used.

[ford347]

You're the man! That is way cool. So I'll look closer, but I'm guessing you had some instance parameters in there for that void so you could pull that void into your geometry when needed such as the condition you just showed me. I like what you've done with this. I'll definitly be giving this one a shot for interior and exterior design.

Josh

[dbaldacchino]

Yep I have instance parameters. I remember posting about this because I thought you could use an in-place void to cut it in the project but there's no such thing available for generic models. I think Scott Davis pointed me in the right direction so I added it inside the family :) As for parameters, it depends on your application...for sizes of bands etc. you could make those instance parameters intead of type. In my case it made sense to create types, change the materials to the appropriate designation and place them were they're required. Glad it's of use....line based families are my favorite!

[veronica.lamb]

Has anyone needed to produce a Comprehensive Interior Design package for the Army Corps?
Have you used the scheduling tools in Revit? or Exported to Access to generate the reports?
While I'm on the topic of exporting ODBC... can I limit the group categories? or is it an all or nothing deal?

[Andre Baros]

Never worked for the Army Corp.
ODBC Out is an all or nothing deal.
If the data is in Revit, you can schedule it, if it's not, it may be easier to add it to Revit than to Export from Revit and keep the data live.

[veronica.lamb]

Keeping it in Revit would be ideal for coordination.

The packages are extensive, 200+ schedules. Every room & every object gets it's own 3d view, schedule, & sheet. I do mean everything...desks, chairs, trash cans, clocks, plants...everything. I imagine that number of schedules is bound to slow down the file. Not to mention, the Interior & Architectural departments work on the projects together.

Anybody had the opportunity to observe what kind of impact hundreds of schedules have on the performance of a project?

[dbaldacchino]

Shouldn't adversely affect performance. Schedules are just a type of view. As long as the information is in Revit and the schedules are not open, Revit doesn't have to think about them. Now if you have 100 schedules all open at once, that's a different question :)

[Alex Page]

Keeping it in Revit would be ideal for coordination.

The packages are extensive, 200+ schedules. Every room & every object gets it's own 3d view, schedule, & sheet. I do mean everything...desks, chairs, trash cans, clocks, plants...everything. I imagine that number of schedules is bound to slow down the file. Not to mention, the Interior & Architectural departments work on the projects together.

Anybody had the opportunity to observe what kind of impact hundreds of schedules have on the performance of a project?

Sounds like Facilities Management...apparently AUGi Univercity (2005) lecture notes are now avaliable somewhere since they are over a year old...(anyone know how to get hold of them?) FM was covered there I believe.

[Max Lloyd]

I agree with Scott's approach. Make individual elements to represent the various materials, ie: floor tiles, wall tiles etc. We have an interior design department here which is using a kind of 3d / 2d approach at the moment, but that is really down to a lack of revit know how on their behalves. They are currently simply thaking the revit elevations, then working them up using drafting lines in 2d. the results look great, but really much more of it could be 3d.

They also have the need to quantify, so the 3d approach would certainly work better for that.

I reckon I'll be able to get them doing it 'properly' in the next 6 months or so as they are currently under the impression that modelling objects takes much longer than drafting lines (in my experience, there's not much in it, and the benefits of objects being 3d are apparent when changes are required, or for future use)

I have attached a typical example of their work for doing interior bathroom drawings.

Just for fun, I have also attached a staircase drawing that I helped to do (I set up the 3d elements of it, and let interiors detail the 2d sections etc). Its just attached because I love the presentation of it!

Regards,

Max.

[Les Therrien]

Nice work Max!

Do you actually print your docs in colour?

[Max Lloyd]

Hi Les,

Yes we do print a lot of our documents in colour. We have an old HP550 or something and it works fine with a nice quality paper and really enhances the presentation of the drawings.

At previous offices I have worked at, we haven't really used colour, but for my money, the way revit can create beautiful presentations, it would be such a shame to do them the injustice of monotone!

It also helps that we have a realtively low print volume. All our drawings are created and saved as pdf's, so we usually just send them via e-mail to other contracters and let them worry about the print costs!

Happy christmas!

Max.

[Les Therrien]

Max,

Happy Holidays to you too!

I have an old HP 450c which also prints colour. I'd love to print in colour, but when I do, the plotting if draft mode is just way toooooo slow.

[Max Lloyd]

I"ve been working with our interiors group for 3 years now.

1. Don't paint floors, create multiple floor finish types and build the floors. Then you get real material take offs.
2. Build custom casework families(reception desks) start with drawing the plans, elevations etc in the families, then build the 3d geometry(if needed). Because you need to detail these.
3. Don't model furniture unless you are actually getting paid for it. Just use 2d plans and elevations and a generic 3d that approximates for interior perspectives.
Hi there,

I am using thin wall and floors to create tiles in our interiors drawings. This works great graphically and enables schedules, except I would really like to be able to schedule by room (ie relating to the room name)

However, I can't get the walls which represent the tiles to include a column for room name? I have tried unchecking these walls as room bounding, but am now stuck.

Any ideas?

Max.

[veronica.lamb]

Max,
I imagine that walls won't report room names since a room could occur on either side. At least doors can be logically associated with "to" and "from" rooms. Maybe some day we'll get the flexibility to relate rooms to interior/exterior faces of walls... In the meantime, I think you'd have to create a text parameter & manage it yourself.
--V

[Max Lloyd]

Thanks Veronica.

I was kind of thinking of doing that, but was concerned it would get a bit too tricky to manage.

Alternatively, I could try making in place extrusions that were on a different category that can report the room name. Trouble is, they then don't seem to report area which nullifies the point of the exercise!

I need to keep trying...I'm sure something will come up!

Max.

[cstanley]

i was reading through this old thing, and since we just rolled out our millwork standards, I thought i'd let you see 'em.

We adopted the The Woodwork Institute standards (which the AWI has just adopted as well.) These are the millwork bits that are available for download through the Autodesk site, I think.

Anyway, they are quite nice. Most of the standard casework that we use is included in the FREE model library. We have written (and have had for some time) the AWI manual of millwork into our specs, requiring the subs to adhere to the standards set forth.

the coolest part about it, is that for the most part we do not draw casework sections anymore (except for unique conditions, etc.) they are all covered int the spec, along with details, finish grades, and hosts of other instructions. Incidentally, it's what most shops use anyway, and we found that there were always too many discrepancies between our drawings and the spec. it generated more questions (RFIs) than it provided answers.

Anyway, I wrote them into type catalogs based on industry standard 3" increments for widths, tweaked most of the families, and away we go. The nomenclature is already established by the AWI, so the only thing the contractor needs to know is the type and the size. in fact, if you really wanted to, they have set it up so that you don't even need to provide elevations. just note them in plan and there you go!

Of course, it doesn't work for everything. some of our more complicated healthcare or fancy stuff may not be covered and needs a section, but there's enough there to get started.

Best part: It's all already built. and free. here's where the catalog is located: http://www.woodworkinstitute.com/manual.asp


looks like this:

[kmarquis]

Here's one that I've used a while ago. This was meant for laminate panel finishes, but can be used for paints too.

I just found this post and I'm curious about what you do for the graphics in plan. I like the approach but I'm curious about what you do at an opening or recessed equipment. What about a borrowed light window? I would immediatly say to have it on a finish workset and turn off that workset but my company tags wainscot in plan. I suppose I could tag it with an invisible or single line.

[jsteinhauer]

There has been a lot of changes to Revit since 2007. It maybe more appropriate to look at some of the newer features that came out in 2012.

[kmarquis]

There has been a lot of changes to Revit since 2007. It maybe more appropriate to look at some of the newer features that came out in 2012.

I think I'm aware of the new features as far as the construction modeling. Would you recommend including the wainscot or wall paneling in the assembly of the wall, seperating the assembly, dragging the finish to the correct height and tagging the wainscot using the parts tag? I'd hate to have to do that around the entire building. Can you recommend a better workflow based on the newer features?

[dbaldacchino]

I wouldn't recommend using parts to do wainscots...not comfortable enough with that functionality to be honest. My approach would be to still use a line-based family. With shared parameters, you can add any information you desire to tags and display them in any view. So if you want to show a wainscot type makr, you can; you want to show the height? You can....height? you can...and so on. If you fill the Assembly Code information, now you can also add filters to your views to turn off the wainscot representation in plan views were you don't want them displayed (without having to turn off the entire category and possibly affecting other elements).

[jsteinhauer]

I had a quick conversation with two of our interior designers. For wall panels, we might look at experimenting with curtain walls for interior accent walls. Otherwise, they have been using a wall against another wall on an interiors workset that doesn't show up in most views.

[kmarquis]

I think I decided that for finishes the best solution is an additional thin wall joined to the partition. I like the idea of the very thin wall family, especially for painted accent walls or wall covering because split face is so fussy but I just don't get how you work around borrowed lights, doors, etc without it cutting through everything in every view you have. This family solution is great for wainscot that is below the heights of door heads like a 3'-0" vinyl wall covering since you can just stop and start the panel at doors but anything higher seems tricky.

[sbrown]

What I suggest our interior designers do (that aren't in house) is to make a wall type with Gyp. Bd(5/8" thick), then whatever sweeps they need attached. They trace our(architecture walls) where needed. They will set the main Gyp. wall to a Material called Interior Finish - Gypsum Board - Painted - XXX, This will be the most common wall finish, then they can paint it where needed for accents etc. They will then create other finish walls for anthing that goes over gyp. board. Note they will ask the Architect to match the material that is most common on their walls so they don't have to do any walls but ones then need accent. Note you can make a wall type that is wood and a base profile and draw base wherever you want or crowns, just set the height of the wall to equal the height of the base. (note that I typically don't do this, slab edges are best for bases).

I'm doing a class this year at RTC on Interior Design in Revit.

[kmarquis]

Okay...This makes sense and seems to be what I was going towards..just using thin walls for all your finishes and wainscot. Does your workflow change at all if you're not working with linked files? I would link in an ID model but we tag waincot in our plans. I know you can tag elements from linked files but then you get some problems with graphics and not being able to join the 5'-0" high 3/8" thick tile wall to the gyp. stud wall. Would you suggest creating filters to make the finish very light in plan and keep with the linked file? Then what happens with the ID Linked file finishes at openings in the architecture file? It's going to cover your doors and borrowed lights? Also, when you create your walls in the main arch model do your walls also include the 5/8" gyp finish and the interior designers put their 5/8" gyp thick wall over top of your wall with a 5/8" gyp finish? Not sure I understand that first part of your post describing your workflow.

I think for paint I'll just use the split face and the paint bucket tool since that's only for design and won't be tagged in plan and for tile or wainscot finishes I'll work with an additional wall on top of the gyp wall that is joined and I can tag that as a wall tag with a alternate graphic representation. I'm hoping to be able to attend the conference this year and I'll make your class a priority. Thanks for your help.

[sbrown]

Don't link anything if you don't have too. If you are in one file that is great, then get the main wall should have the right finish(Gyp - PTD 1 or whatever) and just paint the accent ones. Don't do the extra drywall layer, thats only for out of office consultants. Add your additional finish walls as needed(for tile etc). I would model the wainscot as its own wall type with a sweep at the top and bottom then just set the height to unconnected and whatever height you want it.

[kmarquis]

Don't link anything if you don't have too. If you are in one file that is great, then get the main wall should have the right finish(Gyp - PTD 1 or whatever) and just paint the accent ones. Don't do the extra drywall layer, thats only for out of office consultants. Add your additional finish walls as needed(for tile etc). I would model the wainscot as its own wall type with a sweep at the top and bottom then just set the height to unconnected and whatever height you want it.

Thank you so much! Perfect.