Revit Tip: Frame Elevation Diagrams

Frame Elevation Diagrams

Instead of making tiny frame elevation tags, use a separate floor plan and edit the properties of the tags.







Problem

Using tiny frame elevation tags makes more work to hide the tag in the original plan, and requires you to manually hide every tag individually. This is time consuming and also means that any new plans will require the same amount of work to clean up and hide.






Solution

Create a new floor plan at a fairly large scale. I used 3/16" = 1'-0" for the entire building footprint. Draw all your frame elevation tags in this plan.













Now select the view portion of the tag.










Or you can isolate the tags, select them all, and filter out the elevation portion that you don't want.







Edit properties and change the "Hide at scales coarser than" setting to match the scale of you drawing.



Now, any of your 1/16" = 1'-0" or 1/8" = 1'-0" plans will automatically have the frame elevation tags hidden.

Revit Tip: Join/Unjoin Geometry

Join/Unjoin Geometry





One of the many uses for the Join Geometry tool allows you to cut multiple objects with one instance.

Problem

When we add a Wall Mod to a standard wall we have created two independent elements in the model.





If we cut the standard wall with an opening, a door, window, or storefront system, then we have only cut one of the two walls.










Solution

You could edit a sketch of the elevation of the wall mod and draw in your door cut to match the standard wall elevation.









Of course, this does not link both walls to the door and if the door moves, requires a new sketch.

Use the join geometry tool to link the wall mod to the core wall and the door opening will automatically cut and update.

Tangentworks 550

In case some of you were wondering, I have been contributing my Revit tips to a great blog on Line Meets Curve.






Tangentworks 550

This is a brand new company that has created a wonderful application specifically for the architecture, engineering, and construction fields. I use this software nearly as much as I use Autodesk Revit. My company adopted Revit early on, having realized the immense upper hand that it provides us with in the industry. Just like the advantage that Revit gives us to visualize our project from all angles immediately, Tangentworks gives us the same immediate control over our project collaboration. Tangentworks allows me to share project information with my client, consultants and contractor all in a few easy steps. I simply create a project workspace, add users and upload files. It will even keep track of file versions allowing us to review the entire history of the project. There’s a lot more to this software than I can explain here, so if you are interested you should seriously take a look at what it offers.

In the future, I plan to post all my tips and tricks to this blog as well. I might even go back and start reposting the information here, so stay tuned!