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Thread: Best practices, typical floor elements

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    Default Best practices, typical floor elements

    Hi,
    I am relatively new to Revit, and our office is too. I am working on some office buildings that have several typical floors, where the building core repeats. I am wondering what are people's advice in organizing this area in the building model? In my first project, I made a large group with all the floors, walls, doors, toilets, etc, that were in the core, and copied this group to all the typical levels. I don't know it this was the most efficient way though, Does anyone have any suggestions? What to people think of floor-based toilet families vs. wall-based toilet families? or how about having the core walls start on the ground floor and extending to the roof, vs. small walls spanning from floor to floor, and repeating (with a group)?

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    Default Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    Hey there,
    The best advise I can give you is "model it the way you would build it".
    I don't like groups; therefore, I model each floor and then copy it to the various levels.
    I also like seeing clean "existing" plans when I go to start doing the Tenant Improvement projects later.
    Good Luck
    Steve

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    Default Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    You could, in fact, forego modeling all the typical floors, and model just one typical floor. It is, after all, typical of all the other floors. Many (if not a majority) would agree it is very seductive in Revit to model everything in excruciating detail. That ends up being a big time sink. In Revit, as with hand and CAD drawing, knowing what you really need to model is a big decision when starting a project.
    Another option with "typical" floors is file linking. Model your typical floor interior space in a file, and link it into a shell file. We've been doing some academic interiors projects, and having a stand-alone shell file of a building is nice.
    With regard to families, face-based families are really nice because you don't limit yourself to having to have a wall for a wall-based family, a floor for a floor-based family, and so on. Think of times you might have a convenience outlet on the side of some casework: a wall-based outlet won't host itself to casework.

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    Wink Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    A bit different perspective here:

    If the Revit models are ONLY being used to print out paper drawings as the required deliverable,
    the Mike's comments are valid.

    However, if the model is to used in a true BIM collaboration team, then modeling becomes more important
    if quantities are needed, clash detection/4D scheduling and 5D cost control is required.

    The BIM/IPD delivery method is changing the entire industry and how we think about doing our work.

    These things need to be decided early on and contractual language clearly agreed to by all project team members.

    Food for thought ( and lunch! )

    cheers

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    Default Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    As always, Cliff's comments are valid and valuable. Since your office is new at Revit, my feeling is it will be a while before you can fully benefit from 5d BIM. I hear horror stories about offices trying to use Revit as if it were AutoCAD, and that is obviously not what you would want to do, either.
    Your decision to embrace BIM, and to seek consultation on this forum, makes for two good moves already behind you.

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    Default Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    Quote Originally Posted by lennonstefan View Post
    What to people think of floor-based toilet families vs. wall-based toilet families?
    Wall hung toilets should be wall hosted, floor mount toilets floor hosted. Which one to use is an architectural decision, not a modeling decision.

    As to Mike Sealander's suggestion to use face hosting, I would only use face hosting when an object truly can be installed on any surface: wall, floor ceiling etc. I can't think of too many things besides paint that can pull off that trick. I have
    downloaded families from RevitSpace that did stick to anything, and looked ridiculous.

    2x4 lighting on walls, anyone?

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    Default Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    I agree with Mike on the use of face-hosted families. The only time I've used them is for roof- or curved ceiling-hosted light fixtures.

    Also, regarding the OP's original question: you could model a typical floor in the file, select everything, turn it into a group, copy the group to the clipboard and choose "Paste Aligned to selected level." That way you're only maintaining one "typical" level, while the others are updated automatically.

    Alternatively, you could build the typical level in a separate file and link it into each level of your project. The benefit of modeling each typical level is that, as Cliff said, you can extract more accurate quantity, etc. data if you model it as it would be built.

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    Default Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    Quote Originally Posted by MikeJarosz View Post

    2x4 lighting on walls, anyone?
    Yeah but: face-based is the way to go for lights because there many occasions where you don't have a ceiling to stick a light onto. Like onto the underside of a floor or roof slab.

    And there are lights I'll stick on a wall or a ceiling. Not many, but there are some that work on either.
    Last edited by gtarch; 2011-07-27 at 04:52 AM.

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    Wink Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    As to Host-based or Face-based families:

    The Face-based ones work better in Groups where the Group gets copied horizontally and/or vertically and mirrored. Host based families tend to cause issues in Groups.

    The "literal" analogy of real-world application to which family to use is in general a good starting point
    when deciding how to model certain elements in Revit; however once you try it on a large complex project you may find that another method is preffered due to the way the families interact in certain situations like Groups. ( The whole topic of Groups has been debated for years and continues.)

    Face-based families also work well when coordinating with consultants, where they Copy/Monitor the Arch. content. Problems can arise in this scenario if Host-based families such as lights and plumbing fixtures are used.

    cheers

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    Default Re: Best practices, typical floor elements

    More and more, I'm coming to realize a "wall" is a limiting construct, as is "floor", "ceiling", "soffit". "Face", however, is an operationally valuable idea. All things have faces. Not all vertical surfaces are walls. What's the difference between a sloped floor and a ramp? Why can one host a rail, and the other cannot?

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