Voids in Concrete Beams

[Tib]

Is there a video tutorial out there for using the Void Extrusions in Revit Structure? I'm fairly new to Revit. I've been putting together concrete pan joist building. I need to cut a piece out of the top of a concrete beam to allow for a recessed area. For the life of me I can't seem to get the Void extrusion to work. Maybe another method would be better. I have used the cut profile on slabs but that doesn't work on the concrete beams. Any advise would be appreciated.

[dbaldacchino]

You have to put the void inside the beam family. Then add parameters so you can flex the size of your void from the project, if that's desirable. You cannot cut beams with voids that are placed in the project environment.

[Tib]

Thanks David for the quick response. I'll head that direction.

[Alvin_Alejandro]

nice work dbaldacchino....but if you have many holes...I thing inplace is the solution..

Why is that the penetrations of beams are always perpendicular to the face?
This should be improved..

[Alan aka cadalot]

Mechanical Engineers just love to make you form holes on beams, usually at the last minute on site...

Hey if we all use a BIM system that might not happen!

[Andre Carvalho]

nice work dbaldacchino....but if you have many holes...I thing inplace is the solution..

Why is that the penetrations of beams are always perpendicular to the face?
This should be improved..

Add as many holes as necessary in the family and add parameters to control them. If they are the same, array them and then you can control the number of holes too. If you add a parameter for the extrusion lenght of the void you can control which ones are cutting the beam and which ones are not.

Andre Carvalho

[dbaldacchino]

The original question was specifically about voids. You cannot do "in-place" and cut a beam like that. You have to locate the void inside the beam family.

A better option to make openings on the fly is by using the new "Opening by Face" tool. Use voids in the family (and perhaps parameterize them) only if you have a lot of repetition, such as if you're creating the same beam over and over and it has the same opening/s, or you're doing a castellated/cellular beam, etc.

[chad_lueptow]

I'd agree with Dave. For beams with a "notch" or "ledge" it makes sense to copy and modify the concrete beam family. Although these notches or ledges can only follow the entire profile of the sweep.

On the other hand if you have notches or ledges that do not follow the entire length of the
beam your best bet is the opening by face.

*Autodesk* would be smart to put some work into joining of concrete beams and creating these beam families with notches and ledges out of the box. Since I'm sure everyone is using different parameter names for these.........

Openings are interesting:

If you have a beam and pan joist (and slab) system it would be nice to use the shaft
opening tool for openings. Unfortunately the shaft opening doesn't cut beams. If you
use the opening by face tool, you'll have to have one opening in the face of the slab and
another opening in the face of the slab.....

*Autodesk* would be smart to put some work into the shaft tool to make it cut concrete beams.

[jeremy.215413]

Any update on this for 2010?

Or is the only option to deal with setdowns in top of beams to create the void in the family.

Cheers

[G_J]

You can create a beam family that is a void, place this family in your project in the plane you want the void or set down to be and then use the cut geometry tool to cut the beam.