site layout help?

[Padave]

Ok, i know in a perfect world when starting a project , and you have intentions to throw a legit site plan into it, you prolly should use the actual elevations (from the civil drawings) but let's say you go through the project just using 0'-0" for finish first floor, and then say you get the civil layout with the actual elevations, shouldn't it be easy enough just to go into an elevation view and type in at the first floor elevation the new elevation ? that is what i understood you should be able to do anyways, and as you prolly guessed it, i do that and i have like 63 errors/warnings, the only other thing i can think of which will be a pain is to just do the math by taking the actual elevation of FFL and get the difference from the civil and then plot them from 0'-0". anyone have any other suggestions?

[twiceroadsfool]

Go in to an elevation view. Tools > Project Position > Relocate this project, then click and move in the appropriate direction up or down.

If your levels are set to read absolute Elevations, they will change without incident in your model.

You dont need to actually *move* the model...

[Gadget Man]

...let's say you go through the project just using 0'-0" for finish first floor...

This is a trap many Revit users get into and it's sort of Revit's fault (the way it invites users to use it).

When you open a default Revit template and go into an elevation view you see usually two pre-made levels: "LEVEL1" at 0.00 height and "LEVEL 2" at some distance above.

Now, let's think what the user does next...

He or she starts drawing/modelling the first level of the building on LEVEL 1. Logical? Sure is!

Then they may change LEVEL's 1 name to anything like "Ground Floor" or whatever. Then they draw/model the floors, roofs, other levels, etc.

Then comes the site... You import a survey DWG data. Right? Right!

And what level do you use to position your toposurface on? Well, you may create a separate view, call it SITE or whatever, but if you go to its properities it will show that it's based on... GROUND FLOOR (or whatever is or used to be LEVEL 1)!!!

So, if you want to create contours as per surveyors Datum (say, starting at 100) and you want to move your model (level) vertically to read 100 you move the site with it! It's a game you can play all day long... chasing your levels that automatically move your site as well. All because your SITE plan is based on the (original) LEVEL 1 which changed its name to "Ground Floor" (or whatever)...

On the other hand, if - at the very beginning - you named the LEVEL 1 say, "DATUM" and pinned it at 0.0 (optional), than changed the LEVEL 2 name to "Ground Floor" , everything would be sweet! You could also make DATUM a "shared" type level, while all the others could remain "project" type.

Your (later) created "SITE" would be based on DATUM - as it always should be - and you would be working on a REAL topography elevation, with your contours reporting the correct values.