Showing elements from a ceiling plan in a floor plan

From time to time it’s nice to see overhead items in a Revit floor plan. Dropped ceilings, soffits, light fixtures, etc. are all useful to see in plan view, especially when arranging furniture and such.

Here’s a great and incredibly simple technique to show these items in plan using whatever line style you choose, while still maintaining the connection to the actual ceiling elements. I’ve found some designers simply using drafting lines to create these items in plan, but this is a non-BIM way of doing things, since there is no real connection between the items in plan and the elements in the RCP. Sure, you could constrain and lock them, but the following method is much simpler.

What’s the trick? Well, it makes use of Underlay, setting the orientation to Reflected Ceiling Plan, then using the Linework tool. The slick thing is that once you’ve overridden the line style, you can shut off the underlay and the lines you’ve modified are still visible. Nice, right?

I’m sure that’s enough to get a lot of you going, but here are the step by step details in a quick Revit tutorial.

Revit Tutorial – Show Elements from a Ceiling Plan in a Floor Plan View

Revit - Standard Reflected Ceiling Plan View

Here is a standard Revit reflected ceiling plan. We’ve got an acoustic tile ceiling with an overhead lighting fixture in the conference room.

Revit - Standard Floor Plan

As you know, by default in a Revit floor plan view, no ceiling items are shown.

Revit - Turn on Underlay with RCP Orientation

Set Underlay to Level 1 (same level) and make sure the Underlay Orientation is set to Reflected Ceiling Plan

Revit - Linework Tool

Use the Line Work tool from the Modify panel of the Ribbon to change the appearance of the edge of elements you’d like to be visible in the floor plan. You’ll notice that there is an Overhead style that exists for this very purpose.

Revit - Overhead Line Style

Piece of cake, right? Simple choose ‘Overhead’ from the Line Style drop down (or whatever line style you prefer) then click the edge of the element you want to be visible. You’ll see the line change from halftone (underlay style) to a dark line with whatever line style you choose.

Revit - Ceiling Elements in Floor Plan

Here’s the finishing touch! Turn off Underlay in the View Properties. Presto! The lines that we modified with the Line Work tool are still visible. Sweet, right?

Control visibility of masking region linework in Revit

While creating a custom office furniture family set for a client a while back, I had the need to control the appearance of boundary lines in a Revit masking region.

On the surface, it seemed like something pretty easy to do. While in Sketch Mode for the masking region, you can select the boundary line you want to paramaterize to control its visibility and add a Yes/No field to it. You can check out the accompanying image to see how I attempted this. Seems like it would do the trick, right?

The problem is that it just flat doesn’t work. For some reason, the Visibility parameter doesn’t apply to masking region boundaries. I fought with the masking region a bit before eventually, I figured out a pretty easy work around. It was one of those things I figured out while deep in the middle of a family creation project that saved the day, but I didn’t take the time to put together a blog post or video to share it with my fellow Reviteers.

Well, Jose over at Andekan has created a great (while lengthy) video showing the problem and the work around. Check it out, after this brief description of the solution. Here’s the trick:

You can’t control the visibility of a Revit masking region boundary with a parameter.

Instead, change the linework of the boundary lines that you need to control to ‘Invisible’. Now they will never be seen. Exit sketch mode for the masking region.

Next, draw new Symbolic Lines over the top of them. Guess what? Symbolic Lines CAN have a parameter that controls their visibility!

You should be able to take it from there. If you want to see a great step by step, check out the video from Andekan. Also, be sure to check out their high quality custom Revit families. These guys do a great job of creating powerful and parametric Revit content.

Revit Families – Endless combinations with nested families and the Family Type parameter

Have you ever created a Revit family that had several nested families in it that you wanted a simple drop down menu to give you the chance to choose which nested family you wanted? Well, here’s a brilliant method for creating powerful nested families that seems to be difficult to find solid documentation on. I’d like to thank Bob for reminding me about this easy to use yet dynamic technique for controlling the visibility of nested families.

Here’s the scenario:

Let’s say you have a family (we’ll refer to this as the parent family) that contains several nested families that are possible options within it. For example, you might have a door family that consists of the frame and the opening, but that has several panel families nested into it. One panel might be a typical flush door panel, another is a panel with glass, another is a panel with louvers, etc.

We want to make it easy for users to insert the door family, then choose the type of panel they want. Now the way I’ve seen this documented the most often is to use the Visibility control tied to a Yes/No parameter that controls whether Panel 1 is visible or not, Panel 2 , Panel 3, etc.

This method works ok, but has some potential problems. You end up inserting all the families into the parent family, then having to align and constrain each one, then you have to set up a bunch of Types in the family that in turn have those Visibility Yes/No parameters set correctly. Still following me? One of the problems we’ve run into is that the user now has to create their own types, or manually run through those parameters and make sure that the panel that they wanted is turned on and all the others are off. If they make a mistake, it’s possible that they have more than one panel turned on and all sorts of craziness can ensue.

Also, if you have quite a few nested family options, this list of parameters can get to be pretty unwieldy and difficult to set correctly.

What would be great is to simply have a dropdown parameter in Element Properties that shows all the nested family options and just lets you pick it, having it swap out the appropriate nested family. Well, with the technique we’ll show here, you can do exactly that.

The Solution – Create a Family Type parameter and use it to drive your family Label

After you’ve created your parent family, load up all the nested families that represent the options you want to have available. It’s important that these families be as identical as possible. They won’t be completely identical, of course, but you should create them from each other, keeping the reference lines in the same place to ensure that when one family gets swapped out for the other, things don’t jump around on you and constraints don’t break.

The next step is to create a new Parameter that is configured as a “Family Type” parameter.

Here I’ve named it “Door Panel Type”. You then need to choose which Category of families you want to be available to that Parameter. We’ve created our panels as Generic Models, so I choose this category.

Note that all families that are assigned to that category will be shown in the drop down for that parameter, so make sure you aren’t cramming too much into one family. For instance, if I also had a bunch of families nested in that represented door hardware – knobs, pulls, etc. and they were assigned to the Generic Model category, our drop down for the panels is going to be really confusing, because you’ll see families for both panels and hardware.

Now here comes the little trick that brings it all together: insert one nested family and position it correctly.

You don’t need to insert all of the nested families and go through the trouble of aligning them and constraining them. All the nested families have to be loaded into the main family, but not inserted. Now select the nested family and go to its Element Properties. At the bottom you’ll see Label. Set this value to use the parameter you created earlier (the Family Type parameter) so that this family instance will be driven by it.

That’s all there is to it! Now, when you change the parameter for Family Type, it will swap out this instance with the appropriate family. Brilliant!

In the example at the top of this post, we’ve got two instances of a nested door family that allows endless combinations. Each side of the door can have unlimited family options. This door has 7 panels for each door, giving us a LOT of possibilities.

Revit Implementation Series – Creating Keyplans for Titleblocks

Creating keyplans with filled regions on/off parameters that is embeded in the project titleblock is useful. Whats even better is the ablity to turn the keyplan outline off for non plan sheets. The time taken to create these are well worth the effort!

This is a outline of my working document for this year’s AUGI CAD Camp2010 hosted by CADsoft. A more fleshed out document will be appended to the end of my handout in Revit Implementation Series- Creating Titleblocks with Revision table and Keyplans in Revit.

See you there!

The basic process of creating a key plan is outlined in these steps.

Export models base outline to AutoCAD.

• Navigate to the view showing the floor plan.

• Create copy of the view using exp_floor plan as a name.

• Set a scale approx. 1”= 20’-0”

• Set visibility to show slab and other relevant recognizable outlines for key plan.

• To aid in sectioning the plan outline, make sure matchlines display in view.

Export view of exp_floor pan view to dwg format.

• From application button; select File>Export>CAD Formats>DWG.

• Tweak settings for current view and select Export.

• Save by exporting to a project folder.

Create new family based on Generic Annotation family template.

• Insert the dwg file and scale the dwg image to fit as needed into the titleblock. I used .0008 in this example and pick yes for import from Model space.

• Load into titleblock to check for correct fit.

• Save family to project folder.

Create sections based on match lines and slab outlines.

• Simplify building’s outline to just convey the building in simple form.

• Create and use a preferred filled region called Keyplan, create each section with filled region.

• Create detail lines of overall building pad outline.

• Create a Matchline Object Style with line weight and line style and add matchlines.

• Delete DWG file and save the keyplan with Keyplan_<project name>.

Create parameters with logical naming to control visibility on/off state of each hatch regions.

• One logically named on/off type parameter for each section of the plan.

• To control visibility of of each section, select each filled region and from element properties assign logically named on/off parameter to each section with a filled region using the Visibility parameter for each region.

Load keyplan family into title block.

• After loading into titleblock pick keyplan and in family types create same on/off parameters for region to control its visibility in titleblo

• Pick nested keyplan and from Element Properties, assign each parameter to the same on/off parameter in the family.

• Save Keyplan and load into project.
• Load titleblock with keyplan into project and test by.

Using new features in project.

• Insert the new titleblock into a project and select titleblock and go to Element Properties.

• Note new settings to turn on/off sections and keyplan in the titleblock.

Introducing Ecotect Analysis Training Series

What a busy Autodesk University this year! I’d like to thank all the attendees of my 2 sold out Ecotect classes. What a great time! It’s obvious that there is a lot of excitement about this great product and we’ve been getting requests from all over the country asking one thing – “Where can we go to get Ecotect training?” Well, I’m happy to announce the launch of a series of classes that CADsoft Consulting is offering starting in January that will get you up and running in no time. We’re kicking things off with 3 classes, instructed by me, Patrick Villella. They will be web based, so you can attend them from anywhere in the country. They will be live, though, so you will be able to ask questions and get answers as we proceed through the topics. Class 1 is an intro, and classes 2 and 3 will be hands on. You’ll be able to download the custom datasets and will be given time during the session to work through the exercises on your own workstation, while being able to ask questions as we go. Plus, you can attend from the comfort of your own office or home! Click the links for cost info or call up CADsoft Consulting at 480.820.0408 to ask about package pricing.

Each class will be 90 minutes in length.

January 15th – 90 minute Webinar

Class 1 will be an Introduction to Ecotect to analyze building performance. We’ll cover the following topics:

• Overview of Ecotect
• How to model in Revit for GBxml Export to Ecotect
• Overview of calculations that can be performed in Ecotect
• Possible workflows and steps for improving building performance

Register for Introduction to Ecotect to analyze building performance.

January 29th – 90 minute Hands-On webinar

Class 2 will be an in-depth look at Evaluating Material Selection Using Ecotect. We’ll cover the following topics:

• Establishing baseline heating & cooling loads
• Visualizing which materials and orientations need improvement
• Changing materials
• Analyzing improved material performance
• Creating custom materials

Register for Evaluating Material Selection Using Ecotect.

February 12th – 90 minute Hands-On Webinar

Class 3 will be an in-depth look at Evaluating Daylight and Artificial Lighting Using Ecotect. We’ll cover the following topics:

• Importing DXF files
• Establishing sky settings
• Analyzing daylight using analysis grid
• Creating lights
• Creating light fixtures using materials
• Importing and using IES files for electric lights
• Meeting lighting footcandle requirements
• Understanding the pros and cons of using Ecotect for LEED calculations

Register for Evaluating Daylight and Artificial Lighting Using Ecotect.