Tall buildings in revit

[sifuentes]

Hi,

We are going to model a tall building in revit. I am considering stacks of groups of the typical levels, with their corresponding lenght of columns, shafts, etc, versus a model with the tall vertical elements, constrained from bottom to top floors, with groups built arround them.

Also, I am thinkin to have curtain walls spanning all the height of the elevations, with curtain wall grids at appropiate intervals.

Thanks in advance for any insights into this.

[hand471037]

Beware of groups if you're going to have multipule users working on the project at the same time. If you're going to use worksets, and groups, and have three or more people working at the same time it can raise some issues.

What you can do is use Groups during the schematic phase, and then ungroup them once in DD or something. Or have one typical floor that's fully detailed... there's a lot of way to approach this.

[Mr Spot]

The main thing you have to remember about using groups is not to mix various types of elements and especially don't mix detail elements and model elements. Also try to keep grouped walls separate and if the walls are to join to elements external to the group where the joins may vary, make sure you set the wall joins in question to not join...

[JamesVan]

Certain elements work well in the bottom-to-top scenario, as long as they are not joined to many other things on the way up. Columns should work relatively well. Tall structural walls don't work so well when many other walls are joining to them throughout their height. In this case, I would split the walls into smaller 'chunks' and align the vertical pieces as needed. Groups that include common bathrooms, elevator banks and the like work well as long as the groups and the elements within them are on one workset.

If you are using worksets, try not to join tall vertical elements or groups things that are on different worksets. This will cause inconvenience to your team as your design progresses. Take time to properly think about your team's responsibilities and tasks before organizing your worksets.

[MikeJarosz]

How tall is tall? If the project is big enough and you are going to have multiple users using worksets, you will need to break things up. And, if you intend to be accurate in your model, it is unlikely that any structural item will remain unchanged all the way to the top. Structures get smaller as they grow up. So they will change anyway.

One way might be to break things up vertically by elevator zones. Another option is to have a separate Revit file and link them. That works fairly well in Revit. We have a large tower project where the exterior wall has been drawn by itself as a separate file and linked into the "guts".

Let us all know how you are progressing. We hear from many small projects in this forum. It would be good to hear about some larger projects.

[Scott D Davis]

We have a large tower project..... :D Cracked me up! So understated.....like "We're doing this house in Revit...."

[christie.landry]

I am considering stacks of groups

My suggestion would be not to mix modeling and annotation in groups. This will eliminate issues you may have later in the project.

[sifuentes]

Thanks for all the input. To answer Mike's question: it is a 33 level tower. 3 retail-commercial, 30 residential, about 350' tall plus 4 underground garage.

Linking separate projects sounds like a good idea. I'll keep you all posted. I am also starting two more threads, related with the work I will be doing in this project, but not precicely related with tall or big projects. I found a thread in this forum about SOM using Revit for WTC site project. It seems it will be a big and complex project. How can I add a link to my posts?

Thanks,